FRIDAYS ARE FOR FRANK: “Imagination” (feat. Tommy Dorsey Orchestra)

Posted on July 17, 2020 in Heritage

“Imagination is funny
It makes a cloudy day sunny
It makes a bee think of honey
Just as I think of you…”

Frank Sinatra first recorded this Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke tune with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1940, as he began to lay the strong foundations of his spectacular career. He never could have imagined at that point just how far this whole singing thing would take him.

“Imagination is crazy
Your whole perspective gets hazy
Starts you asking a daisy
What to do, what to do…”

Decades later, another incarnation of Frank Sinatra revisited the tune for the 1961 album I Remember Tommy…, a tribute to his former bandleader who passed in 1956.

It’s a tale of two Franks—the same song sung from different points of view, different points in time, different points in his career. No matter where he was or what the world was doing at the time, Frank stayed vibrant and hopeful. He pushed the limits of his own imagination, and in doing so went from the backstreets of Hoboken to “the top of the heap.”

Have you ever felt a gentle touch
And then a kiss, and then and then
Find it’s only your imagination again

Imagination is silly
You go around willy nilly
For example I go around wanting you
And yet I can’t imagine that you want me too.