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Sinatra Song of the Week: Luck Be a Lady

"A Lady doesn't leave her escort ..... It isn't fair, and it's not nice A lady doesn't wander all over the room blowin' on some other guy's dice"

One of Sinatra's swinging classics, this song was most recently re-released on a compilation of gambling themed songs called "Lucky Numbers". Originally released as a promotion for the "New York New York" casino in Las Vegas, it is now available in a record store near you. "Luck Be A Lady" was originally written by Frank Loesser for the musical "Guys and Dolls", and first recorded by Sinatra in 1963.

Sinatra was, of course, in the movie version of "Guys and Dolls"--but not as Sky Masterson, who sings "Luck Be A Lady" in the production. Sinatra played Nathan Detroit, and had some good numbers of his own in the film, but "Luck Be A Lady" was performed by none other than Marlon Brando. Sinatra felt that he should have been cast in Brando's role, and re-recorded "Luck" in 1963. It has been suggested that he did the song to show that he could do it better than Brando could, which pretty much goes without saying. The original version in "Guys and Dolls" was performed at a very fast tempo, which almost sounds comical in contrast to Sinatra's swinging arrangement by Billy May. In his definitive work on Sinatra's music "Sinatra! The Song Is You", Will Friedwald noted that this version of "Luck" has "since become so definitive that all the original-cast versions now seem ridiculously fast. Frank Loesser wrote the piece to depict smarmy Forty-second Streeters bereft of necks shooting craps in a sewer: Sinatra and May transform these Damon Runyan types into smooth-groove Vegas high rollers, complete with glitzy, brightness-at-midnight lighting and gold Visa cards."

Sinatra performed the song frequently in concert, and perhaps the best recorded version of it is on the reissued CD version of (surprise!) "Live at the Sands" with Count Basie. In that performance, Sinatra introduces the number by saying that its song "about a pair of dice". Frank would frequently enhance the live performance with dice roll motions, and shout "Eleven!" as the band stops playing at the conclusion. The classic studio version of the song is in the various Reprise box sets, as well as the "Best of Reprise" CD. It was also performed on one of the "Duets" CD's along with Pretenders lead vocalist Crissie Hynde, whom Friedwald suggests "sounds like William F. Buckley in drag!"

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