In this particular style of phrasing, we can still feel the 1 and 3 musically, and the strong syllables that ought to fall on those musical beats. The overall sense of phrasing, though, is fluid: the phrasing floats above the metrical beats, and the accents can be anticipated or delayed, or otherwise displaced. There is a kind of "stretchiness" there. Sinatra does this, and Lester Young, for example, as an instrumental example. (I dislike it, in Sinatra, when it becomes a mannerism.).
The result of this is a conversational tone, a more flexible speech rhythm superimposed on a 4/4 beat, without being subjected to it. The brilliance of it is that the musical rhythm no longer forces the speech rhythm into a Crustacean* bed.
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*Not the word I need, but "Proctrustrean" is too hard for me to spell right now.
"September Song" by Sarah Vaughan.
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