999,808: Della Reese — It Was a Very Good Year

As nostalgia trips go, Frank Sinatra's version of "It Was a Very Good Year" is utter male shallowness masked by the singer's insouciant delivery and its sophisticated, lustrous string arrangement. "What a grand old life I've led," says this song, "let me tell you about the three years when I managed to get laid a bunch." In "the autumn of my years", the singer looks back wistfully and remembers that he hasn't gotten any since he was 35. Obviously the song is magnificent.

Maybe "get laid" is a strong term, though, depending on the version. If we're talking about the original recording by The Kingston Trio's Bob Shane, whose uptight phrasing suggests little more than chaste closed-mouth kissing and hand-holding, comparing it to sex is like asking for the jelly at the Polaner All Fruit tea party. Perish the thought! We are discussing romance.

With Sinatra, as always, we are discussing romance while winking and firing a hand up her skirt. With Della Reese's cover, however, debuted at Chicago's Playboy Club, we are talking about straight-up, make-no-mistake fucking. It's not just the deep funk arrangement, which is frankly a bit of a mess. The horn chart, aping Gordon Jenkins' strings on Sinatra's version, doesn't quite work, bending notes to an almost clownish degree. It takes Della Reese's powerful vocal, sort of an Eartha Kitt purr tied to a rocket-fueled jump-kick machine, to make the song.



And it's not simply a matter of switching the lyrics around so all the females are males, or Reese calling herself "sexy at 21". Sure, in '67 a woman *gasp!* talking about sex (a woman! enjoying sex!) was still a thumb in the societal eye, but Reese went further. Della positions herself as not just the pursued—she's one of the big city girls who has an apartment upstairs from Sinatra (and maybe even Bob Shane, who'd visit a girl a couple doors down and give her a peck on the cheek goodnight in the hallway)—but as a self-aware object of male lust who's running her own game back on him. By thirty-five, grey-templed men would "ride" her in limousines...oh, she was much wiser at thirty-five.