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:..:... Supplier: SER 2003 Release Date: 11/07/2003 ...:..:
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...:..: Genre: Vocal Label: Columbia : :
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Frank Sinatra was arguably the most important popular music figure of
the 20th century, his only real rivals for the title being Bing
Crosby, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles. In a professional career that
lasted 60 years, he demonstrated a remarkable ability to maintain his
appeal and pursue his musical goals despite often countervailing
trends. He came to the fore during the swing era of the 1930s and
'40s, helped to define the "sing era" of the '40s and '50s, and
continued to attract listeners during the rock era that began in the
mid-'50s. He scored his first number one hit in 1940 and was still
making million-selling recordings in 1994. This popularity was a mark
of his success at singing and promoting the American popular song as
it was written, particularly in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. He was able
to take the work of great theater composers of that period, such as
Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Richard
Rodgers, and reinterpret their songs for later audiences in a way that
led to their rediscovery and their permanent enshrinement as classics.
On records and in live performances, on film, radio, and television,
he consistently sang standards in a way that demonstrated their
perennial appeal.
The son of a fireman, Sinatra dropped out of high school in his senior
year to pursue a career in music. In September 1935, he appeared as
part of the vocal group the Hoboken Four on Major Bowes' Original
Amateur Hour. The group won the radio show contest and toured with
Bowes. Sinatra then took a job as a singing waiter and MC at the
Rustic Cabin in Englewood, NJ. He was still singing there in the
spring of 1939, when he was heard over the radio by trumpeter Harry
James, who had recently organized his own big band after leaving Benny
Goodman. James hired Sinatra, and the new singer made his first
recordings on July 13, 1939. At the end of the year, Sinatra accepted
an offer from the far more successful bandleader Tommy Dorsey, jumping
to his new berth in January 1940. Over the next two and a half years,
he was featured on 16 Top Ten hits recorded by Dorsey, among them the
chart-topper "I'll Never Smile Again," later inducted into the Grammy
Hall of Fame. During this period, he also performed on various radio
shows with Dorsey and appeared with the band in the films Las Vegas
Nights (1941) and Ship Ahoy (1942).
In January 1942, he tested the waters for a solo career by recording a
four-song session arranged and conducted by Axel Stordahl that
included Cole Porter's "Night and Day," which became his first chart
entry under his own name in March 1942. Soon after, he gave Dorsey
notice. Sinatra left the Dorsey band in September 1942. The recording
ban called by the American Federation of Musicians, which had begun
the previous month, initially prevented him from making records, but
he appeared on a 15-minute radio series, Songs By Sinatra, from
October through the end of the year and also did a few live dates. His
big breakthrough came due to his engagement as a support act to Benny
Goodman at the Paramount Theatre in New York, which began on New
Year's Eve. It made him a popular phenomenon, the first real teen
idol, with school girls swooning in the aisles. RCA Victor, which had
been doling out stockpiled Dorsey recordings during the strike, scored
with "There Are Such Things," which had a Sinatra vocal; it hit number
one in January 1943, as did "In the Blue of the Evening," another
Dorsey record featuring Sinatra, in August, while a third
Dorsey/Sinatra release, "It's Always You," hit the Top Five later in
the year, and a fourth, "I'll Be Seeing You," reached the Top Ten in
1944. Columbia, which controlled the Harry James recordings, reissued
the four-year-old "All or Nothing at All," re-billed as being by Frank
Sinatra with Harry James & His Orchestra, and it hit number one in
September. Meanwhile, the label had signed Sinatra as a solo artist,
and in a temporary loophole to the recording ban, put him in the
studio to record a cappella, backed only by a vocal chorus. This
resulted in four Top Ten hits in 1943, among them "People Will Say
We're in Love" from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical
Oklahoma!, and a fifth in early 1944 ("I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last
Night") before protests from the musicians union ended a cappella
recording.
In February 1943, Sinatra was hired by the popular radio series Your
Hit Parade, on which he performed through the end of 1944. Adding to
his radio duties, he appeared from June through October on Broadway
Bandbox and in the fall again took up the Songs by Sinatra show, which
ran through December. In January, it was expanded to a half-hour as
The Frank Sinatra Show, which ran for a year and a half. In April
1943, he made his first credited appearance in a motion picture,
singing "Night and Day" in Reveille With Beverly. This was followed by
Higher and Higher, released in December, in which he had a small
acting role, playing himself, and by Step Lively, released in July
1944, which gave him a larger part. MGM was sufficiently impressed by
these performances to put him under contract. The recording ban was
lifted in November 1944, and Sinatra returned to making records,
beginning with a cover of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" that was
in the Top Ten before the end of the year. Among his eight recordings
to peak in the Top Ten in 1945 were Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's
"Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)," Johnny Mercer's
"Dream," Styne and Cahn's "I Should Care," and "If I Loved You" and
"You'll Never Walk Alone" from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical
Carousel. Sinatra insisted that Styne and Cahn be hired to write the
songs for his first MGM musical, Anchors Aweigh, and over the course
of his career, the singer recorded more songs by Cahn (a lyricist who
worked with several composers) than by any other songwriter. Anchors
Aweigh, in which Sinatra was paired with Gene Kelly, was released in
July 1945 and went on to become the most successful film of the year.
Sinatra returned to radio in September with a new show bearing an old
name, Songs by Sinatra. It ran weekly for the next two seasons,
concluding in June 1947. Among his eight Top Ten hits in 1946 were two
that hit number one ("Oh! What It Seemed to Be" and Styne and Cahn's
"Five Minutes More"), as well as "They Say It's Wonderful" and "The
Girl That I Marry" from Irving Berlin's musical Annie Get Your Gun,
Jerome Kern's "All Through the Day," and Kurt Weill's "September
Song." He also topped the album charts with the collection The Voice
of Frank Sinatra. His only film appearance for the year came in Till
the Clouds Roll By, a biography of the recently deceased Kern, in
which he sang "Ol' Man River."
By 1947, Sinatra's early success had crested, though he continued to
work steadily in several media. On radio, he returned to the cast of
Your Hit Parade in September 1947, appearing on the series for the
next two seasons, then had his own 15-minute show, Light-Up Time,
during 1949-1950. On film, he appeared in five more movies through the
end of the decade, including both big-budget MGM musicals like On the
Town and minor efforts such as The Kissing Bandit. He scored eight Top
Ten hits in 1947-1949, including "Mam'selle," which hit number one in
May 1947, and "Some Enchanted Evening," from the Rodgers & Hammerstein
musical South Pacific. He also hit the Top Ten of the album charts
with 1947's Songs by Sinatra and 1948's Christmas Songs by Sinatra.
Sinatra's career was in decline by the start of the '50s, but he was
far from inactive. He entered the fall of 1950 with both a new radio
show and his first venture into television. On radio, there was Meet
Frank Sinatra, which found the singer acting as a disc jockey; it ran
through the end of the season. On TV, there was The Frank Sinatra
Show, a musical-variety series; it lasted until April 1952. His film
work had nearly subsided, though in March 1952 came the drama Meet
Danny Wilson, which tested his acting abilities and gave him the
opportunity to sing such songs as Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's
"That Old Black Magic," "I've Got a Crush on You" by George and Ira
Gershwin, and "How Deep Is the Ocean?" by Irving Berlin.
At Columbia Records, Sinatra came into increasing conflict with
musical director Mitch Miller, who was finding success for his singers
by using novelty material and gimmicky arrangements. Sinatra resisted
this approach, and though he managed to score four more Top Ten hits
during 1950-1951 -- among them an unlikely reading of the folk
standard "Goodnight Irene" -- he and Columbia parted ways. Thus, ten
years after launching his solo career, he ended 1952 without a record,
film, radio, or television contract. Then he turned it all around. The
first step was recording. Sinatra agreed to a long-term, boilerplate
contract with Capitol Records, which had been co-founded by Johnny
Mercer a decade earlier and had a roster full of faded '40s
performers. In June 1953, he scored his first Top Ten hit in a year
and a half with "I'm Walking Behind You." Then in August, he returned
to film, playing a non-singing, featured role in the World War II
drama From Here to Eternity, a performance that earned respect for his
acting abilities, to the extent that he won the Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actor for the part on March 25, 1954. In the fall of 1953,
Sinatra began two new radio series: Rocky Fortune, a drama on which he
played a detective, ran from October to March 1954; and The Frank
Sinatra Show was a 15-minute, twice-a-week music series that ran for
two seasons, concluding in July 1955. Meanwhile, Sinatra had begun
working with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle, a pairing that produced
notable chart entries in February 1954 on both the singles and albums
charts. "Young-at-Heart," which just missed hitting number one, was
the singer's biggest single since 1947, and the song went on to become
a standard. (The title was used for a 1955 movie in which Sinatra
starred.) Then there was the 10" LP Songs for Young Lovers, the first
of Sinatra's "concept" albums, on which he and Riddle revisited
classic songs by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Rodgers and Hart in
contemporary arrangements with vocal interpretations that conveyed the
wit and grace of the lyrics. The album lodged in the Top Five. In
July, Sinatra had another Top Ten single with Styne and Cahn's "Three
Coins in the Fountain," and in September Swing Easy! matched the
success of its predecessor on the LP chart. By the middle of the '50s,
Sinatra had reclaimed his place as a star singer and actor; in fact,
he had taken a more prominent place than he had had in the heady days
of the mid-'40s. In 1955, he hit number one with the single "Learnin'
the Blues" and the 12" LP In the Wee Small Hours, a ballad collection
later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
On September 15, 1955, he appeared in a television production of Our
Town and sang "Love and Marriage" (specially written by Sammy Cahn and
his new partner James Van Heusen), which became a Top Five hit. Early
in 1956, he was back in the Top Ten with Cahn and Van Heusen's "(Love
Is) The Tender Trap," the theme song from his new film, The Tender
Trap. As part of his thematic concepts for his albums of the '50s,
Sinatra alternated between records devoted to slow arrangements (In
the Wee Small Hours) and those given over to dance charts (Swing
Easy). By the late winter of 1956, the schedule called for another
dance album, and Songs for Swingin' Lovers!, released in March, filled
the bill, stopping just short of number one and going gold. The rise
of rock & roll and Elvis Presley began to make the singles charts the
almost-exclusive province of teen idols, but Sinatra's "Hey! Jealous
Lover" (by Sammy Cahn, Kay Twomey, and Bee Walker), released in
October, gave him another Top Five hit in 1957. Meanwhile, he ruled
the LP charts. The Capitol singles compilation This Is Sinatra!,
released in November, hit the Top Ten and went gold. Sinatra began
1957 by releasing Close to You, a ballad album with accompaniment by a
string quartet, in February. It hit the Top Five, followed in May by A
Swingin' Affair!, which went to number one, and another ballad album,
Where Are You?, a Top Five hit after release in September. He was also
represented in the LP charts in November by the soundtrack to his film
Pal Joey (based on a Rodgers & Hart musical), which hit the Top Five,
and by the seasonal collection A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra,
which eventually was certified platinum. The Joker Is Wild, another of
his 1957 films, featured the Cahn-Van Heusen song "All the Way," which
became a Top Five single. In October, he returned to prime time
television with another series called The Frank Sinatra Show, but it
lasted only one season, and subsequently he restricted his TV
appearances largely to specials (of which he made many).
In February 1958, Sinatra reached the Top Ten with "Witchcraft," his
last single to perform that well for the next eight years. That month,
Capitol released Come Fly with Me, a travel-themed rhythm album, which
hit number one. The year's ballad album, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only
the Lonely, released in September, also topped the charts, and it went
gold. In between, Capitol released the compilation This Is Sinatra,
Vol. 2, which hit the Top Ten. 1959 followed a similar pattern. Come
Dance With Me! appeared in January and became a gold-selling Top Ten
hit. It also won Sinatra Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and for
vocal performance. Look to Your Heart, a compilation, was released in
the spring and reached the Top Ten. And No One Cares, the year's
ballad collection, appeared in the summer and just missed topping the
charts. Sinatra gradually did less singing in his movies of the '50s,
which is why they are given less attention here. But in March 1960, he
appeared in a movie version of Cole Porter's musical Can-Can, and the
resulting soundtrack album hit the Top Ten. Meanwhile, Sinatra was
beginning to think about the approaching end of his Capitol Records
contract and to enter the studio less frequently for the company. His
next regular album was a year in coming, and when it did, Nice 'n'
Easy was a mid-tempo collection, breaking his pattern of alternating
fast and slow albums. The wait may have caused pent-up demand; the
album spent many weeks at number one and went gold. Although Sinatra
had not yet completed his recording commitment to Capitol, he began in
December 1960 to make recordings for his own label, which he called
Reprise Records. As a result, record stores were deluged with five new
Sinatra albums in 1961: in January, Capitol had Sinatra's Swingin'
Session!!!; in April, Reprise was launched with the release of Ring-a
-Ding Ding!; in July, Reprise followed with Sinatra Swings the same
week that Capitol released Come Swing with Me!; and in October,
Reprise had I Remember Tommy..., an album of songs Sinatra had sung
with the Tommy Dorsey band. There was also the March compilation All
the Way on Capitol, making for six releases in one year. Remarkably,
they all reached the Top Ten. Meanwhile, Reprise's first single, "The
Second Time Around," a song written by Cahn and Van Heusen for Bing
Crosby, won Sinatra the Grammy for Record of the Year. By 1962, the
market was glutted. Capitol released its last new Sinatra album, Point
of No Return, as well as a compilation, and Reprise put out three new
LPs, but only Reprise's Sinatra & Strings reached the Top Ten. In
1963, however, all three Reprise releases, Sinatra-Basie, The Concert
Sinatra, and the gold-selling Sinatra's Sinatra, made the Top Ten. The
onset of the Beatles in 1964 began to do to the LP charts what Elvis
Presley had done to the singles charts in 1956, but Sinatra continued
to reach the Top Ten with his albums of the mid-'60s, albeit not as
consistently. Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, and Other Academy
Award Winners hit that ranking in May 1964, as did Sinatra '65 in
August 1965. That same month, Sinatra mounted a commercial comeback by
emphasizing his own advancing age. Nearing 50, he released September
of My Years, a ballad collection keyed to the passage of time. After
"It Was a Very Good Year" was drawn from the album as a single and
rose into the Top 40, the LP took off for the Top Five and went gold.
It was named 1965 Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, and Sinatra
also picked up a trophy for best vocal performance for "It Was a Very
Good Year."
In November 1965, Sinatra starred in a retrospective TV special, A Man
and His Music, and released a corresponding double-LP, which reached
the Top Ten and went gold. It won the 1966 Grammy for Album of the
Year. Sinatra returned to number one on the singles charts for the
first time in 11 years with the million-selling "Strangers in the
Night" in July 1966; the song won him Grammys for Record of the Year
and best vocal performance. A follow-up album named after the single
topped the LP charts and went platinum. Before the end of the year,
Sinatra had released two more Top Ten, gold-selling albums, Sinatra at
the Sands and That's Life, the latter anchored by the title song, a
Top Five single. In April 1967, Sinatra was back at number one on the
singles charts with the million-selling "Somethin' Stupid," a duet
with his daughter Nancy. By the late '60s, even Sinatra had trouble
resisting the succeeding waves of youth-oriented rock music that
topped the charts. But Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits!, a compilation
of his '60s singles successes released in August 1968, was a million
-seller, and Cycles, an album of songs by contemporary writers like
Joni Mitchell and Jimmy Webb, released that fall, went gold. In March
1969, Sinatra released "My Way," with a lyric specially crafted for
him by Paul Anka. It quickly became a signature song for him. The
single reached the Top 40, and an album of the same name hit the Top
Ten and went gold. In the spring of 1971, at the age of 55, Sinatra
announced his retirement. But he remained retired only until the fall
of 1973, when he returned to action with a new gold-selling album and
a TV special both called Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back. In this late phase of
his career, Sinatra cut back on records, movies, and television in
favor of live performing, particularly in Las Vegas, but also in
concert halls, arenas, and stadiums around the world. He refrained
from making any new studio albums for six years, then returned in
March 1980 with a three-LP set, Trilogy: Past, Present, Future. The
most memorable track from the gold-selling set turned out to be "Theme
From New York, New York," the title song from the 1977 movie, which
Sinatra's recording belatedly turned into a standard. By the early
'90s, the CD era had inaugurated a wave of box set reissues, and the
1990 Christmas season found Capitol and Reprise marking Sinatra's 75th
birthday by competing with the three-disc The Capitol Years and the
four-disc The Reprise Collection. Both went gold, as did Reprise's
one-disc highlights version, Sinatra Reprise -- The Very Good Years.
Sinatra himself, meanwhile, while continuing to tour, had not made a
new recording since his 1984 LP L.A. Is My Lady. In 1993, he re-signed
to Capitol Records and recorded Duets, on which he re-recorded his old
favorites, joined by other popular singers ranging from Tony Bennett
to Bono of U2 (none of whom actually performed in the studio with
him). It became his biggest-selling album, with sales over 3,000,000
copies, and was followed in 1994 by Duets II, which won the 1995
Grammy Award for Traditional Pop Performance.
Sinatra finally retired from performing in his 80th year in 1995. He
later died of a heart attack at 82. Anyone will be astonished at the
sheer extent of Sinatra's success as a recording artist over 50 years,
due to the changes in popular taste during that period. His popularity
as a singer and his productivity has resulted in an overwhelming
discography. Its major portions break down into the Columbia years
(1943-1952), the Capitol years (1953-1962), and the Reprise years
(1960-1981), but airchecks, film and television soundtracks, and other
miscellaneous recordings swell it massively. As a movie star and as a
celebrity of mixed reputation, Sinatra is so much of a 20th century
icon that it is easy to overlook his real musical talents, which are
the actual source of his renown. As an artist, he worked to interpret
America's greatest songs and to preserve them for later generations.
On his recordings, his success is apparent.
http://www.sinatrafamily.com/
Tracks:
01. Somebody Loves Me (1:53)
02. I've Got A Crush On You (3:18)
03. Embraceable You (2:55)
04. Someone To Watch Over Me (3:20)
05. Oh Bess, Where Is My Bess? (2:56)
06. Porgy And Bess Medley 1 (5:20)
07. It Ain't Necessarily So (3:45)
08. 's Wonderful (1:06)
09. A Foggy Day (1:45)
10. I've Got A Crush On You (2:28)
11. Night And Day (1:29)
12. Soon (1:57)
13. Embraceable You 2 (2:38)
14. Porgy And Bess Medley 2 (8:37)
15. Someone To Watch Over Me (2:22)
16. Love Walked In (3:04)
17. Songs By Sinatra (Show Closing) (1:27)
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