So your first ever cleaning job was for a Frank Sinatra session?
Not quite. I once picked up something I believe was an emptied crisp packet during an early Acker Bilk session but that was in a purely amateur capacity with no remuneration changing hands. So in a professional, sense The Wee Small Hours was my first actual job as a studio cleaner, yes.
How did you get the job?
Well my father, who is no longer with us, ran a merchant bank with a reasonable degree of success until the summer of 1955 when he briefly ran it with no success at all. That’s rather the problem with Merchant Banking I’m afraid, you can enjoy substantial triumph for an extended period but a small window of failure is all that’s required to see the whole thing come crashing down to earth. Which is also the fate that befell father when he heard the news in his 19th floor corner office and took the collapse of his financial empire less than well. Consequently, I found that the fortune I was looking forward to inheriting had totally dried up and much of the family estate had to be sold to cover debts, so I was homeless and jobless. But we did manage to maintain a flat in Hollywood which father owned for reasons I’ve never been able to determine. So I moved in.
And how did you pick up studio cleaning work?
Well, I’m British, as you may have noticed, and Americans in the 1950’s did have a tendency to see English people as either butlers or royalty. So I was employed under the belief that I would be reliable, capable of cleaning and unerringly polite. All of which are true.
What was Sinatra like?
Mr Sinatra was a lovely man. Moody and irritable at times with something of a low threshold for error but as long as one remained on his “right side” as it were, he was a delightful chap.
And how did the recording for Wee Small Hours turn out? Were there any problems?
I remember it didn’t begin at all well, for a start there was a stain on one of the rugs that was extremely stubborn and required far too much of my time, but there was also an issue with Frank himself who was supposed to be singing some mournful ballad type songs but he was altogether too ebullient. He would bound into the studio and when someone inquired how he was he made some remarks about his personal life and shared some very intimate details about his evening with Ava Gardner, which I won’t share if it’s all the same to you as they were definitely not for polite company. So while he was required to emote with feeling on the pain of lost love, he was grinning broadly while recalling his previous evening of passion with a film starlet of considerable charm. I remember it was causing much consternation in the control booth where Mr Gilmore, the producer, was pacing the floor in frustration. Which is where I’m afraid I might have made rather a rash statement.
What did you say?
I was emptying the ashtrays and casually mentioned that I was sure Mr Sinatra would be able to deliver the material with the required feeling if his relationship with Ms Gardner was more Othello and Desdemona and less Tristan and Isolde. I didn’t actually mean anything by it, and I had to explain the reference, but it I could see Mr Gilmore’s eyes light up and he signalled a lackey and the next morning Frank arrived with a heavy heart because his relationship was “On the Rocks” as they say. His singing vastly improved from that point onwards.
So you think they did something to sabotage his relationship for the sake of the album?
Well one doesn’t like to speculate too much but something definitely occurred during the course of the previous evening. Frank was frequently in tears but the studio executives were delighted, although that might have been because I did manage to sort out that stain in the rug which had been there for goodness knows how long and I’m quite sure must have been playing on his mind as it did mine.
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