Songs For Swingin' Lovers!
Capitol Records (1956)
Number 23 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 50
coolest albums of all time.
- I've Got You Under My Skin
- I Thought About You
- We'll Be Together Again
- Makin' Whoopee
- Swingin' Down The Lane
- Anything Goes
- How About You?
- You Make Me Feel So Young
- It Happened In Monterey
- You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me
- You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me
- To Marvelous For Words
- Old Devil Moon
- Pennies From Heaven
- Love Is Here To Stay
An album of breathtaking rightness. If you want to start a Sinatra collection, this is the place to start. If you have room in your collection for but one Sinatra album, make it this one. This was the first Sinatra album I purchased 20 years ago and it has lost none of its appeal—I return to it again and again and it rarely is out of my CD changer (I even pull out one of my gray label LPs occasionally to listen to it in its original glory). It was a serendipitous discovery that is as fresh today as it was in 1986 and in 1956.
As he approached his 40th birthday, and with more than 15 years of experience to call upon, Sinatra's interpretive abilities and warm, rich baritone give these performances a timeless appeal that show the singer at his romantic best. As noted by New York Times music critic and former Rolling Stone editor John Rockwell in his book Sinatra: An American Classic,
Sinatra's singing on this album has a verve and conviction
that make his records of the Forties sound bland. He has learned to tease
and twist a vocal line without violating its integrity. By now, he knows
how to kick forward a song's rhythmic impetus by the percussive articulation
of key one syllable words... The album as a whole breathes with a delightful
blend of Riddle's naughty sweetness and Sinatra's witty bravado.
Surrounding himself with some of the jazz world's greatest studio musicians
and accompanied by Nelson Riddle's sultry, jazz-inspired arrangements, Sinatra
set the standard by which popular singing is and for six decades has been
judged. The breezy, insouciant style first heard on Songs
For Young Lovers and Swing Easy is fully developed here and all the more powerful due to
the superior song selections contained on this album. Sure there are a few
lesser-known songs among the A-list tunes (Did anyone really remember 1923's
Swinging Down the Lane
or 1930's It Happened in Monterey
by 1956?), but
Riddle's reworked tempi and Sinatra's updated interpretations make them
work and sound as modern as any song in his expanding repertoire.
After recovering from the loss of the aging Bobby Soxers fan base and his
later descent into the Dark Ages
of the late 1940s and early
1950s, Sinatra grew as a performer in ways that made him seem like a different
man than the boy singer of his Dorsey and Columbia years. The vocal performances
are filled with the wit and playfulness of a singer who is at the absolute
top of his game and knows it. It takes an enormous ego to believe you're
this great, but it takes real genius to demonstrate it so convincingly.
Fifty years after this album was committed to vinyl, it's all but impossible
to imagine these songs being performed any other way as nearly every singer
still uses these performances as the blueprint. The zenith of vocal performance;
others can only hope to reach these heights.
Recorded on January 9, 10, 12, and 16, 1956, except for Love Is Here To
Stay
(recorded October 17, 1955).
