‘Willow Weep For Me’, by Frank Sinatra
During the time Sinatra recorded ’Only The Lonely’, a dark collection of melancholic ballads about sadness and loss,his divorce from Ava Gardner became final. Some biographers have said that she had been the love of his life, and perhaps that is why the songs on this album cut deeper and why Sinatra seemed so haunted by these numbers. Also, the arranger of the album, Nelson Riddle, had recently suffered the deaths of his mother and daughter. Of these events Riddle remarked: “If I can attach events like that to music, perhaps ‘Only The Lonely’ was the result.”
Today’s song ‘Willow Weep For Me’, a jazz standard covered by dozens of artists, was written by Ann Ronell, who was romantically involved with George Gershwin at the time she wrote her most famous song. Speculation in the New York City composer community is that Gershwin actually wrote the song and gave her the copyright as a gift. However, this has never been proven and is still based on the striking similarities in the song to the blues-inflected style of Gershwin.
