Today would have been Frank Sinatra’s 95th birthday so I figured it was a good time to resurrect a post I first published on December 12, 2005.

I grew up listening to Frank Sinatra. It wasn’t because my parents were particularly Sinatra fans, but growing up in New Jersey, you really couldn’t help it. In big ways and small, Sinatra was everywhere. On the radio. Blaring over the speakers at Yankee Stadium at the end of a game. In Atlantic City.

So, I guess it isn’t a surprise that I turned into a fan myself. It started in 1990 when CBS aired a 75th birthday special, which coincided with the release of greatest hits collections from Capitol Records and Reprise. I ended up buying both collections that Christmas and listening to them throughout the winter of 2001. Then it was on to the albums to the point where now, I’ve pretty much got every album Sinatra released from the 1950s onward —- which makes for a lot of CD’s.

Had he lived, Frank Sinatra would be 90 years old today. So I’ll take that occassion to provide my own list of my ten (plus one) favorite Sinatra albums, and the reasons I like them so much.

1. Songs For Swingin’ Lovers

If you’ve never really listened to Frank Sinatra before, this is the album to start with. Just as the combination of Lennon and McCartney was a revolution in the 1960s, the combination of Frank Sinatra and his arranger Nelson Riddle was a revolution in the 1950s. Together, Sinatra and Riddle pioneered the idea of the concept album; a collection of songs paired together to create an image or mood, or to tell a story. Swingin’ Lovers was the first concept album and remains one of the best.

The highlight, of course, is the masterful performance on I’ve Got You Under My Skin, with a trombone solo by Milt Bernhart that blows me away everytime I hear it.

Extended editions of this album released on CD include the bonus track “Memories Of You”, left out of the original album for reasons I can’t contemplate.

2. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning

Admit it guys, its happened to all of us. The gal that got away. The torch that burned bright and then died. It happened to Frank too, her name was Ava Gardner, and this album, along with “Only The Lonely” is what he did about it.

In my opinion, the mark of a great singer, is their ability to reach within themselves and bring out something that touches your soul. By the time you finish listening to this CD, you’ll think that someone has reached into your soul, taken it out, and thrown off a tall building. Catharsis is the only word to describe it.

3. A Swingin’ Affair

What can you say about an album that contains “Stars Fell On Alabama”, a blow-you-away performance of “Night and Day” and “At Long Last Love” ? As with “Swingin’ Lovers”, Sinatra and Riddle once again pull off absolutely perfection.

4. Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely

Sinatra once joked that they were going to sell this album with its own revolver because the songs were so depressing. Whereas “In the Wee Small Hours” was catharsis, this album is nothing but pathos, each song is more emotional than the next. The emotion doesn’t roll you over, it just sinks in, song after song, until you’re left numb and absolutely stunned at the same time. The album includes two songs that Sinatra would later sing in concert for years to come as what he called “saloon songs” — the song sung by the lonely guy in the bar at 2am — “One For My Baby” and “Angel Eyes.”

Many consider this to be the greatest album of Sinatra’s career, and its easy to see why that might be the case.

5. September Of My Years

Though recorded when he was still 49, this is Frank Sinatra’s reflection on what its means to turn 50. Each song flows into the next as Sinatra and arranger Gordon Jenkins tell a story, in song, of a man looking back life. If the tone is meloncholy, that’s only because of regrets of missing times now passed. This is an album that Sinatra could not have pulled off in the 1950s, and definately not in his younger days, but with the mellow voice that came with age and the subdued arrangements from Jenkins, everything fits together perfectly.

6. Sinatra & Strings

This was Sinatra’s first album with arranger Don Costa, who he would work with several more times over the years, but it is unquestionably the best. The first reason for that is the material itself; these are some of the great songs of American popular music. Sinatra had recorded most of them before, but not in this way. Costa’s “Night & Day” is an absolutely masterpiece and possibly the best studio recorded version that Sinatra ever did. The blow-away piece on the album for me, though, is “Come Rain or Come Shine”; Sinatra’s voice had never sounded quite so powerful.

7. Come Fly With Me

Sinatra and Billy May together for the first time, and the results are pure genius. Together, they take us on a tour around the world that mixes ballads with swingers and leaves the listener wanting more, much more, at the end. The best song on the album is the title tune, which became part of Sinatra’s concerte repetoire for years to come.

8. Come Dance With Me

“Hey there cutes, put on your dancin’ boots and come, dance with me.”

You’ve got to know that an album that starts with that line is going to be swinging fun all the way through, and this one does not disappoint. Not surprisingly, this was one of Sinatra’s most commercially successful releases of the 1950s.

9. Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

Nothing may sound more improbable than the idea of Frank Sinatra singing bossa nova, but that’s exactly what this album pulls off, masterfully. With Brazilian master Antonio Carlos Jobim playing guitar (and providing Porteguese vocals on several tracks), and a string orchestra staying lightly in the background, Sinatra goes places he’d never been in his career before. The result is a true classic, with the duo’s rendition of “The Girl From Ipanema” being the one that steals the show.

10. Sinatra At The Sands

Until the late 90s, there were only two officially released live albums in Sinatra’s entire catalog. One, The Main Event, was released in 1974 to coincide with his out-of-retirement comeback tour and is related to the ABC television special of the same name that aired in October 1974. This is the other one, and its clearly the better of the two.

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie. Both from New Jersey — one from Hoboken, the other from Red Bank — and both together live on stage at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in 1966 The only thing better than listening to this concert on CD would be having actually been there in person. Unlike other recordings that have been released since Sinatra’s death, this album does not contain much of the Rat Pack banter that Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis had become famous for, though there is one long monolouge track that gives you a flavor of what those days were like.

If you want to know what the big deal about seeing Sinatra peform live was all about, this is the album that tells the story.

11. Frank Sinatra With Red Norvo Quartet, Live In Australia 1959

I’ve added this in as something of a bonus track. The one thing that Sinatra fans had in common with Grateful Dead fans is the underground market they created in bootleg concert performances. Many of those bootleg recordings have been recorded on to CD in the past decade and made available, through European channels where the copyright laws are weaker, for sale in the United States. A select few have been legitimized and officially released in the United States. This is one of those recordings.

In 1959, Sinatra went on a tour with a quartet led by vibraphonist Red Norvo. Because there wasn’t the support provided by a large concert band, it was an environment that challenged Sinatra vocally and led, in this case, to some of his best work. The sound quality on this recording is not as good as it would have been had the concert been recorded officially, but it is acceptable. Since Sinatra never took the small group format into the studio, though, its the one of the few recorded examples we have of him singing the songs he’s best known for in an entirely different format.

And there you have it. I’ve listened to each of these albums so many times over the years that I’ve lost count. Tonight, though, I might just have to pop one or two into the CD player, pour myself a drink, and raise a glass in honor of the legend that was Frank Sinatra.

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• The Return Of Old Blue Eyes
• The Return Of Old Blue Eyes

Cue Old Blue Eyes:

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In his massive hit “Empire State of Mind,” Jay-Z raps that he’s “the new Sinatra.” And it turns out he wasn’t joking.

During Saturday’s 142nd running of the Belmont Stakes, “Empire” will be played as the horses are brought out onto the race track, replacing Sinatra’s classic “New York, New York,” according to a spokesperson for the New York Racing Association.

“[It's] the quintessential 21st century theme song for New York City,” an NYRA official told The Associated Press.

A spokesperson for the NYRA confirmed the change to MTV News.

“New York, New York,” (or, as it’s actually called, “Theme From ‘New York, New York,’ “) is most closely associated with Sinatra, though it was actually written for — and first recorded by — Liza Minnelli for the 1977 Martin Scorsese film of the same name. Sinatra recorded it for his 1980 album Trilogy: Past, Present And Future, and it became the last of his many signature numbers.

Sinatra’s version has been performed as the field for the Belmont Stakes makes its way to the starting gate since 1997. Before that, the vaudeville tune “Sidewalks of New York” was performed. At Saturday’s race — which is held at Belmont Park on Long Island — teen singer Jasmine Villegas will perform “Empire.”

No. Fucking. Way.

And no, I’m not going to embed Jay-Z’s atrocious piece of crap, you can Google it.

Oh, and how would Frank respond if he were around ?

Something like this:

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In 1948, this article appeared in the pamphlet, Red Betrayal of Youth, written by Kenneth Goff…….It concludes that Sinatra was, in a memorable (and laughable) turn of phrase, “swooning the youth of America into the arms of atheistic Communism.”

Here’ an excerpt from the article:

One of the outstanding young Reds in Hollywood is Frankie Sinatra, the young man who expects every young maiden to swoon at the sound of his rasping voice. Yet behind that Dr. Jekyl voice is the voice of Bloody Joe enticing our youth into his deadly Marxian philosophy. Sinatra co-operates closely with the American Youth for Democracy and the C.I.O.-P.A.C. Early this year he was one of eight who was awarded medals from the A.Y.D. for “major contributions to democracy and to the war effort.” He has been active in appearances in racial troubled zones. Other awards were to Peggy Ryan, entertainer; Bill Mauldin, left-wing cartoonist; Slim Aaron of “Yank” magazine; At. Edvina Todd, navy nurse; Edward Carter, Negro service man, and Harry Tannye, Japanese American. Frank Sinatra, commonly called “the voice,” is one of the star performers at A.Y.D. rallies where young people are recruited into the Communist party.

His bold promotion of “bobby sexism” has added to the great waves of juvenile delinquency in America. In San Francisco on March 23, 1946, fifty-six adolescent Sinatra fans were taken into custody by police as they stood shivering in a waiting line in front of the Golden Gate Theater at 4:30 in the morning, six hours before the “voice” was scheduled to appear. The police hauled 53 indignant bobby soxers and three boys to the juvenile home on technical charges of violating the curfew law which prohibits anyone under 18 from being on the streets between 11:00 p. m. and 6 a. m. Most of the children were from Oakland.

One father said, “The police were well justified in picking up the girls. I think Sinatra should be run out of town.”

It’s all pretty laughable now, of course, but there were many on the right in the 40’s who lumped Sinatra, who was a Democrat back in those days, in with the rest of what was then considered the Hollywood left, especially when he made a short film called The House I Live In:

The House I Live In (1945) is a ten-minute short film written by Albert Maltz, produced by Frank Ross and Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Frank Sinatra. Made to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice at the end of World War II, it received an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946.

(…)

In the film, Sinatra sings the title song, and his recording became a national hit. The lyrics were written in 1943 by Abel Meeropol under the pen name Lewis Allen. (Meeropol later adopted Michael and Robert, the two orphaned sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after the 1953 execution of the couple.)

Meeropol was enraged that in the film, the second verse was cut. Meeropol protested against the deletion of the verse referring to “my neighbors white and black” when Sinatra’s movie was first shown.

The lyric was allegedly cut by studio executives because of concerns about how it would be received in southern states.

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Scott at Power Line reminds me that today would have been Ella Fitzgerald’s 93rd birthday:

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Ella Fitzgerald. She was a remarkable artist. Each period of her long career is rewarding, though she deepened her art as she got older. She excelled in a wide variety of material and in every musical setting. There is an emotional reserve or detachment in her singing, but there is also joy and an irrepressible sense of fun in her approach.

The songs that served as vehicles for her virtuosity invariably displayed her sense of fun. Listen, for example, to “How High the Moon,” “Air Mail Special,” “Flying Home,” “C Jam Blues,” or “You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini).” The fun is vividly on display in her startling impersonation of Louis Armstrong on “Basin Street Blues.”

She could also bring out the beauty in a ballad, as she did, for example, in “Stormy Weather” with Joe Pass. Ann Hampton Callaway calls this “her unspoken side.”

Fitzgerald became a professional singer at an early age, but the route was surprisingly indirect. She originally turned up at amateur night at the Apollo Theater on a bet at age 17 to perform as a dancer. She reassessed her prospects when she took a look at the competition and decided to sing instead. She performed “Judy” and “The Object of My Affection” in the style of her idol Connee Boswell (of the Boswell Sisters). Biographer Stuart Nicholson reports: “To Ella’s delight and surprise, she brought down the house.”

Ella’s first breakout hit came in 1938 with A-Tisket, A Tasket:

In 1958, Ella recorded a concert in Rome that was turned into an album that included her own distinctive twist on Mack The Knife:

She recorded three classic studio albums with Louis Fitzgerald:

But one of the greatest travesties of American music is that Ella Fitzgerald never got into the studio with Frank Sinatra; all we have of the two of them at the height of there careers is one television appearance from 1967:

A performance they reprised in 1990 when Sinatra became only the second recipient of the “Ella Award,” the Lifetime Achievement Award given out by the Society Of Singers:

They don’t make them like Ella anymore.

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And the runner up.

See ya Monday

None Found

Here’s what it might have sounded like:

None Found

• Old Blue Eyes On A Stamp
• The Return Of Old Blue Eyes
• Old Blue Eyes On A Stamp
• The Return Of Old Blue Eyes
• Happy Birthday Old Blue Eyes

• Happy Birthday Old Blue Eyes
• Sorry Diddy, But Frank Was Way Too Cool To Hang Out With You
• Sorry Diddy, But Frank Was Way Too Cool To Hang Out With You
• One For My Baby, And One More For The Road
• One For My Baby, And One More For The Road