Frank Sinatra - Songs For Swingin' Lovers!

Released - March 1956

Genre - Jazz

Producer - Voyle Gilmore

Selected Personnel - Frank Sinsatra (Vocals); Nelson Riddle (Arranger/Conductor); John Palladino (Audio Engineer)

Standout Track - You Make Me Feel So Young

I'm back! I've not blogged on here in a very long time as I just sort of stopped finding the time and inclination for it (I'm well aware nobody really visits here much, it's largely an exercise in just writing stuff I'm passionate about for the sake of it, but my apologies to any regular readers anyway), but recently have felt like writing here some more, so onwards we go! Sadly, since I last posted here I've been listening to lots of new music, much of which falls into the 20-year timespan I've already covered of 1955-75. I'd just got up to Joan Baez's Diamonds & Rust, but I've now got quite a lot of other entries to go back and fill in. I don't think many of the regular readers were that invested in the internal chronology of the blog anyway, so there we go.

My first new entry is a direct follow-on from the very first album I wrote about, and often considered the first iteration of "the album" as we now understand it anyway, Frank Sinatra's In The Wee Small Hours. On that album, Sinatra's jazzy, poppy youth appeal had deserted him as he reached his late 30s and a series of broken relationships led him almost to suicide. He teamed up with producer Voyle Gilmore and arranger Nelson Riddle to channel all the heartbreak and loneliness he felt into the first ever concept album, a collection of old jazz standards all themed around late-night remorse and regret abandonment. It's a bleak and sombre listening experience, but a masterpiece nonetheless, and saw Sinatra's career reignited. The next move seemed like an obvious one - what if the same team turned their attention to an album that would be that one's complete opposite? A collection of songs themed around the exuberance and excitement and confidence of new love?

The result is, perhaps understandably, a far more enjoyable record, but an equally assured and mature one. These are the same kind of songs Sinatra was recording in his youth, but the upbeat swagger and bonhomie of the recordings is no longer borne out of the naivete of youth but from the celebratory kind of happiness that emerges from coming out the other side of a great sadness. The Sinatra here is the crystallisation of exactly how he's remembered as a pop culture icon - not the brash pop singer of his youth, nor the sad, lonely figure of In The Wee Small Hours, but an older, wiser man still able to summon up all the enthusiasm and joy of youth albeit now through the lens of a maturer take on love.

Some of the tracks here have become straight-up classics and standards, some of the go-to songs one thinks of not just when thinking about Sinatra, but about the vocal jazz tradition of the Great American Songbook itself. His take on "You Make Me Feel So Young" is wholly definitive, its bouncy flourishes and skipping confidence wholly infectious. "I've Got You Under My Skin" has become equally definitive, as much for Riddle's band arrangement as for Sinatra's winning vocal performance.

In fact, that's the centre of what has often been my nagging problem with Sinatra - his takes on these classic songs have been the definitive take forever, but there's always a sense that that's as much down to his collaborators as it is to his performance. Sinatra's vocals are always nothing other than perfect - his voice as clear-cut and full-bodied and powerful as you could ever wish, with every note perfectly pitched. You can hear his enjoyment in every one of these songs, and it really sells the emotion behind all of them. But sometimes that perfection has an alienating effect - are we really sure we're hearing Sinatra's own version of these songs, or are we just listening to him singing them exactly as they should be sung? It sounds a silly thing to complain about, that his version is too perfect, but it's that problem that makes me enjoy Songs For Swingin' Lovers! much more than In The Wee Small Hours - on that album, the odd imperfection, the odd sense that Sinatra was doing these songs his way (no pun intended), would sell the alienation and sadness of those songs all the more. Just look at the way Tom Waits's growling or the cracks in David Bowie's voice render their songs all the more affecting - sometimes you just wish some sort of crack would show in Sinatra's facade. It's much less a problem here, as these songs really suit the confident, breezy, note-perfect rendition he gives to everything, but you can't help but feel, then, that the praise belongs as much to the songwriters and arrangers as to Sinatra himself. The one song here where Sinatra's take really jars is "Makin' Whoopee" - it's such a great song that it's still a highlight, but Sinatra's insistence on playing everything fairly straight-faced and sincere feels tonally wrong for a song that's so playfully aware of its own inanity that it's actually crying out for someone to affectionately take the piss out of it as they sing it. For Sinatra to play it as committed as does here just sounds odd.

Speaking of the songwriters, some of the big standouts come from predictable sources - Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "Anything Goes" are among the best ones here, while the gorgeous strings applied to George & Ira Gershwin's "Love Is Here To Stay" give that song a near-perfect rendition. For those strings, major credit is due to Nelson Riddle, who is able to have much more fun here than on the starker, bleaker songs of In The Wee Small Hours - from the warm strings of "Love Is Here To Stay" to the cheeky brass flourishes of "You Make Me Feel So Young" or the subtle syncopated horns of "It Happened In Monterey" (an underappreciated classic, whose gently tinkling piano part is one of my favourite bits of the album), he's having a ball throughout. Nowhere more so, though, than on "I've Got You Under My Skin." It's hard now to imagine there ever being a recording of this song that didn't heavily draw on Riddle's iconic arrangement, which builds from the quiet, lilting sax and soaring strings at the beginning into the full-on, joyous celebratory full-band chorus. Apparently the whole thing was recorded in one take, with the band not having played the arrangement before seeing it, and all burst into spontaneous applause for Riddle as soon as the take was done. Richly deserved.

Altogether, then, it's a wholly joyous listen which takes all the wisdom and maturity of the previous record and channels it all into exuberant, winning confidence and perfectly captures all the breeze and spirit of 50s jazz, as well as crystallising the iconic image of Sinatra that lasts to this day. As I said in my other Sinatra review, that slightly distancing perfectness of his voice has stopped me from delving further into his discography, though I said that when all I knew was In The Wee Small Hours with no idea I would discover something as fun as Songs For Swingin' Lovers!, so perhaps I'll hear more of his work one day.

Track Listing:

1. You Make Me Feel So Young (Mack Gordon & Josef Myrow)

2. It Happened In Monterey (Billy Rose & Mabel Wayne)

3. You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me (Al Dubin & Harry Warren)

4. You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me (Irving Kahal; Pierre Norman & Sammy Fain)

5. Too Marvellous For Words (Johnny Mercer & Richard A. Whiting)

6. Ole Devil Moon (E.Y. Harburg & Burton Lane)

7. Pennies From Heaven (Arthur Johnston & Johnny Burke)

8. Love Is Here To Stay (George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin)

9. I've Got You Under My Skin (Cole Porter)

10. I Thought About You (Johnny Mercer & Jimmy Van Heusen)

11. We'll Be Together Again (Frankie Laine & Carl T. Fischer)

12. Makin' Whoopee (Gus Kahn & Walter Donaldson)

13. Swingin' Down The Lane (Gus Kahn & Isham Jones)

14. Anything Goes (Cole Porter)

15. How About You? (Ralph Freed & Burton Lane)