Nobody Wins

This all started with Frank Sinatra.

I’m sure a lot of stories start this way, given the Chairman of the Board’s incredible impact on modern music.

God knows how many people are walking this earth because their parents heard a Sinatra song, stopped being strangers in the night, and got down to the dooby-dooby-doo.

Frank’s rendition of “Nothing but the Best” is my theme song for 2023 and I still give that tune a listen when I’m feeling low.

Lately, I’ve been interested in a Sinatra song that starts low and goes even lower. It’s called “Nobody Wins” and it’s from Sinatra’s 1973 album Ol’ Blue Eyes is Back, which he recorded after coming out of his brief retirement two years earlier.

Other songs on the album include “Send in the Clowns”, “You Will be My Music” and “Let Me Try Again.”

“Nobody Wins” is a slow and mournful account of couple calling it quits. To be honest, it took me a while to connect with this song, since it’s so somber, and I could perfectly understand why some people wouldn’t go for it at all.

“Anymore it doesn't matter who's right or wrong,” it begins. “We've been injurin' each other much too long. And it's too late to try to save what might have been. It's over; nobody wins.”

Okay, so “Fly Me to the Moon” it ain’t, but I find it so heartfelt and authentic.

It’s a postmortem on something that was once very special, and Sinatra puts so much emotion into it.

He was nearly 60 years old when he made this album, and you can hear the mileage in his voice.

I don’t think the song would have worked had he recorded it when he was young. You get this kind of pain the old-fashioned way—you earn it.

It's the Livin' That's Hard

The song made such an impression on me that I decided to do some research, and I learned that it had been written by Kris Kristofferson for his 1972 album Jesus Was a Capricorn.

Of course, this being the internet I had to keep on digging and I ended up learning things about Kristofferson that I never knew.

I always knew him as a singer and actor—which is plenty--but he has had such a full and fascinating life.

Born in Brownsville, Texas, he was the son an U.S. Air Force major general. While a student at Pomona College, he published essays in The Atlantic Monthly. He was a Rhodes Scholar and while at Oxford he was awarded a Blue for competing at the highest level in boxing.

Pressured by his family to join the army, he was commissioned a second lieutenant, reached the rank of captain, and became a helicopter pilot.

He formed a band while he was stationed in West Germany and when he was given assignment to teach English literature at West Point, he instead chose to leave the service and pursue music, much to the dismay of his family, which disowned him.

Determined to succeed, he was working for an oil company when he landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s lawn in hopes of giving the Man in Black a demo tape.

Cash liked to tell people that the young singer got out of the chopper with a beer in one hand and a demo in the other, but Kristofferson said he would never drink and fly, and that Cash wasn’t even home when he made his unscheduled appearance.

Either way it’s a cool story.

“Nobody Wins” has been covered at least 20 times over the years by such artists as Brenda Lee, Ray Price, Roy Clark and Kristofferson’s ex-wife Rita Coolidge.

I haven’t heard all these versions, but I doubt anyone will displace Sinatra in my mind. I’m just not a country music fan and I find the original a bit too twangy.

God knows I waste so much time going down various internet rabbit holes. But like that landing outside Johnny Cash's house, Kristofferson’s life story is a hell of a ride.