By the old Moulmein Pagoda Looking eastward to the sea There's a Burma gal a settin' And I know that she waits for me

It was Frank's second recording session with Nelson Riddle, and - after the That makes two more mentions than most South-East Asian cities get in the Sinatra oeuvre, and one more than Singapore (as in "On A Little Street In...", recorded by Frank with the Harry James band in 1939).

But tourists do come, and they take the road to Mandalay, and the young Burmese tour guides who show them around, if they know Kipling's song at all, know it not through Peter Dawson's or any other imperially evocative recordings but only as a Sinatra swinger. We said, 'What's happening?











And "Mandalay" starts off great, Frank and his "Burma broad", gongs and other oriental flourishes, a little sparring between swing and march tempo in the instrumental, and Sinatra all nice and loosened up for the second verse:But the end was difficult.

Dorothy Fields slips a sly allusion to Kipling's "If" into that one:In 1966 Sinatra made his first ever spoken-word recording, of another of Kipling's Time marches on like British troops on the road to Mandalay. Burma's post-independence history has been mostly bloody, brutal and ugly, and much of its own past is unknown to contemporary citizens of "Myanmar". In America it was a popular song about an exotic love.






Certainly Kipling's British soldier knows the difference between the girlie by the old Moulmein Pagoda and the lasses back home:Kipling wrote it to be sung to an old waltz tune he knew, but the journeyman songwriters of the late 19th century had other ideas. Get track

Let us know what you think of the Last.fm website. And so these days you'll be on the road to Mandalay and ask the tour guide if he digs the song and the response will be Submission of reader comments is restricted to Mark Steyn Club members only.

And she forbade the inclusion of "Mandalay" on the Frank didn't care for Mrs Bambridge's enforcement of her copyright, and made a point of singing "Mandalay" in foreign stage appearances, especially in front of British subjects.

The first he'd sung four-and-a-half years earlier, on May 2nd 1953, at the beginning of the Capitol era. Maybe, for once, May should have worked on it a little longer. If you are not yet a member, please Havent heard Peter Dawson's name for a while. Javascript is required to view shouts on this page. Brimming with post-war resentments against their imperial masters, Burma just checked out: One minute it was a Crown Colony under the King-Emperor with Sir Herbert Rance as Governor. © 2020 Mark Steyn Enterprises (US) Inc. All rights reserved.No part of this website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of Mark Steyn Enterprises.receive the latest by email: subscribe to steynonline's free weekly No part of this website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of Mark Steyn Enterprises. But on October 1st 1957 Frank Sinatra walked into the studio for the first of three sessions spread over eight days in which he would record his first album with Billy May: You didn't need to be east of Suez to raise a thirst: Billy May drank at the conductor's podium during the He was a famously last-minute arranger.





"Billy had written the arrangement," percussionist Frank Flynn told Sinatra historian Chuck Granata, "so that when we got to the line that says, 'And the dawn comes up like thunder', I would hit this huge gong as a punctuation. was abolished, and Burma lost to the world.And so it might have gone for the great song of imperial romance, too.



108,185 Frank Sinatra featured this song in his 1958 album Come Fly With Me.

Well, no.

Then the Union Flag came down and it was a sovereign republic with Sao Shwe Thaik as president.




We all laughed like mad.

Speaks was not a son of Empire but an all-American boy, born in Canal Winchester, Ohio in 1874, and a popular baritone in local churches. 5