Teasing the Korean

Glad it was good, and I will let him know. I don't think I've been there, so I'll add that to my list!

I don't think I've ever unloaded an LP because I found the CD. I'm more than likely to do the opposite: Extract the tracks from the CD and get rid of it.

Sinatra's Columbia era overall doesn't do much for me. Then he signs with Capitol, sings "I've Got the World on a String," and there's Frank.

According to Wiki, for what it's worth: Sinatra rushed through the (Point of No Return) sessions to fulfill his obligation to Capitol, something which Stordahl said upset him.

I too thought that it was meant as an acknowledgment of sorts. I don't remember where I read what I did. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I think Frank sounds engaged on maybe about half of the tracks. The others as you say sound dry to my ears.

It was probably the last Capitol album that he cared about. The last three were contractual obligation records. Supposedly, Frank kicked off the tunes at faster tempos than Riddle had in mind. Still, there is at least one gem on that album, "I Concentrate on You," with one of Frank's great pregnant pauses on the last stanza.

About 10 years ago, my combo recorded an album live, all in one room, no headphones, maybe no baffles (I can't remember). Grand piano, vibes/marimba, acoustic bass, conga, bongos, Latin drum kit. Minimal overdubs, only animal sound effects and additional bongos on two tracks that didn't have them. I did have to edit parts of different takes together, though. It sounds like an album from the late 1950s, everyone playing together in one room, the way it was always done. I love that natural room ambience.

@GA Russell: Nice & Easy - Capitol - July 1960 Sinatra's Swingin' Session - Capitol - January 1961 Ring a Ding - Reprise - March 1961 Come Swing with Me - Capitol - July 1961 Swing Along with Me AKA Sinatra Swings - Reprise - July 1961 I Remember Tommy - Reprise - October 1961 Sinatra and Strings - Reprise - January 1962 Point of No Return - Capitol - March 1962 Sinatra & Swinin' Brass - Reprise - July 1962 I agree with @JSngry, Frank often sounds like he is phoning it on the later Capitol albums, but he's pulling out all the stops on the early Reprise. Agree about Stordahl's charts on Point of No Return. Unfortunately, Frank had checked out. Stordahl was dying of cancer. Supposedly, he was coughing up blood between takes, and Sinatra would drolly say "next." He just wanted out at that point.

One was plenty!

My Dad did a number of sessions there in the 1950s and 60s, and he hated that reverb. I believe it was a Mitch Miller directive. My Dad thought it blurred the voices of the singers and made the lyrics less distinctive. But having grown up with that sound, I can't imagine hearing those records any other way.

Yup. And I consider the Ellington album to be the last in what I feel is the classic run of Sinatra albums. I should add that I do love Watertown, but that brings him into different territory. After his 1970s comeback, he became essentially a legacy act for me.

If you closely listen to any singer with a career as long as Sinatra's, you will pick up subtle and not-so-subtle signs of age and degradation along the way. Sometimes they go through a rough patch and bounce back to a certain degree. I'm not sure that I hear anything as dramatic as you do between those years. I certainly hear subtle changes over the course of his Capitol and early Reprise era. I still think Frank sounds great on the Jobim, Ellington, and the overrated September of My Years, heck, even Watertown. He sounds older, though in control technically. The big jump with Frank that I hear occurs after Wee Small Hours. You know that the later Capitol and early Reprise albums overlap by a couple of years, right?

I hear a change after Wee Small Hours. And then another change maybe in the mid-1960s. He had a long career, so that is only natural.

Bump. Is Formula 1 still on ABC?

Perfect! 👍

While we're reflecting on Tony Bennett, may I say how much I love the sound of the distinctive Columbia 30th Street reverb heard on Columbia - and some non-Columbia - vocalists, beginning circa 1957 or '58 and extending through the 1960s, maybe into the early 1970s. You hear it on Tony, Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, Eydie Gorme, and on non-Columbia artists such as Jack Jones (who sometimes recorded at Columbia). This is the sound of my childhood. Musical comfort food.

I guess it all depends on where you come from. When I started buying jazz records, all I could find was either fusion or twofer reissues of artists like Bird, Rollins, and Trane. The jazz/classical hybrids were very exotic to me, and not readily obtainable. In another thread, I mentioned that I went for a number of years during which I could not listen to jazz. What led me back to straightahead jazz was my love for the Great American Songbook, and my interest in tangential musics such as Latin and Brazilian music. Oddball hybrid albums like those by Loussier also played a role in bringing me back into straightahead jazz. So in my musical world, it all connects.

When you say that Tony Bennett wasn't a jazz singer, is that because of what Tony said to you in 1991, or because he does not meet your criteria for a jazz singer?

Serge Gainsbourg - Du jazz dans le ravin (Philips) A 1990s compilation of Serge's 1960s jazz recordings.

"An album featuring a man singing love songs to other men was revolutionary in 1960—and belatedly it's become a gay cultural treasure." https://jazztimes.com/features/profiles/the-true-boundary-pushing-story-of-gene-howard-and-love-is-a-drag/?fbclid=IwAR24qJDd0z7APi7-iHhd2D3Z5xv8OCxpBIn9Z896YXZfbnavxyCGxZi7a3g#:~:text=FREE TRIAL Available!-,The True%2C Boundary-Pushing Story of Gene Howard and Love,March 4%2C 2022 – James Gavin

I kind of agree. Frank's Reprise catalog to me has higher peaks than Capitol, but deeper valleys also. That said, those early Reprise albums are killer, including Ring a Ding, Swingin' Brass, and the Basie album with Hefti charts. There are other good albums sprinkled along the way (Jobim, Ellington, etc.), but there are some dogs too.

I have all five volumes and like them all (except not so much the last one). In another thread here, some of our European members criticized these albums as an attempt to make jazz "respectable" to European connoisseurs of classical music. But being from the US, I feel that these albums convey the Europe that I was first drawn to as a kid, via 1960s Italian films shown on TV.

Yes, that is around the time that things shifted. (Those films are from 1964.)

By the mid-60s, the contemporaneous single was often on Sinatra's Reprise album. But the Capitol singles collections were really separate from the concept albums. The only Capitol album that took an approach similar to the San Francisco album was This is Sinatra Volume 2, which was half singles and half tracks from an abandoned concept album. So even with that one example, Capitol - and Reprise, until about the mid-1960s - did not take as many liberties with Sinatra albums as Columbia did with Tony's.

I want to clarify an earlier comment that I made about Tony's albums during his first Columbia period vs. Sinatra's Capitol and early Reprise albums. I had written, more or less, that Sinatra's albums were expertly conceived and that Tony's were sometimes scattershot. Both Sinatra and Bennett recorded some schlock during that period, but the schlock was usually in the form of then-new songs, sometimes gimmicky, reserved for singles, in the hope of scoring a quick hit. These kinds of tunes were typically left off the contemporaneous albums. The difference between Frank and Tony is that Sinatra probably had more pull with Capitol on the content of his albums. While Tony made some many cohesive and solid LPs during that first Columbia phase, Columbia was still able to quickly assemble albums. For example, the San Francisco album, was hastily put together after the single became a hit. The LP was drawn from outtakes from previous albums, failed singles, and even a couple of tracks that had already appeared on albums. It is a real grab back. Schlock like "Candy Kisses" and "Have I Told You Lately" deserved to remain obscure singles, but Columbia was able to include them. It would be like Capitol adding "High Hopes" to the Where Are You album. So if Tony's albums were not as consistent as Frank's, Columbia is at least partially to blame.