Vic

In Mr. Viola’s own words regarding the recording session of “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” (Reference page 140 “Sessions with Sinatra” by Charles L. Granata”) recording session of the album “Only the Lonely” “The next scheduled session for the album was May 29 (1958). I was on another recording date in the afternoon and the Sinatra session was supposed to start at 8:00pm, Viola recalls. I got a call from the session manager Klein through my service ‘they want you to bring your string guitar tonight’. I begin looking at the parts from Vern Yocum, the copyist, and I see “Guess I’ll hang My Tears Out to Dry”. I explain to Bill Miller about the F-sharp in the intro and al that like stepping on eggs, because it is just Frank and the guitar here. Viola the consummate professional used his ingenuity to get around the problem. There is no F-sharp
on the guitar it is always an E. On that tune I raised it to an F-sharp pedal point, and it’s ringing out – it sustains- That is how I got away with it. We did one take, and Frank looked at me and said “Yeah Dago! That was clean! The F-sharp was screwing everything up-it was too hard to maneuver and achieve the way Nelson had written it, but I did it.

It is said that Sinatra’s studio musicians were the very best and played at a higher level for him. This is a perfect example.
Listen carefully to the introduction of this beautiful song from my favorite Sinatra album and picture Al Viola making it seem effortless.

A truly great musician….May he rest in peace.