Saturday, December 12, 2015

Sinatra At 100

Today is Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday. I'll skip the usual eight thousand word essay and instead simply suggest some stocking stuffers for that special someone in your life who might be ready to discover Ol' Blue Eyes but has no idea where to start:

The Capitol Years Box Set
(A terrific 3 cd collection from Sinatra's peak years, 1953-1961. 75 classic songs. A must for anyone with ears.)

Songs For Swingin' Lovers! (Unwilling to spring for more than one cd? This is best of the finger-snappin' Sinatra records, including such standards as "You Make Me Feel So Young" "Too Marvelous For Words" and what I consider the single best recording of his career, "I've Got You Under My Skin.")

Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely (Prefer your Sinatra sitting alone in a bar at 3 in the morning? This is the one to get, my favorite Sinatra album, featuring the classic suicide song "One For My Baby.")

Sinatra: Best Of The Best (Okay, so you really, really, really only want all the good stuff and you don't want to spend a lot for it. This has everything from "I've Got The World On A String" to "New York New York" and all the other hits in between. It's like $10. Go for it and feel good, you cheap bastard!)

From Here To Eternity (Sinatra was also an Oscar-winning actor. The best picture of 1953, From Here To Eternity is the story of love in the surf in the final days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.)

The Manchurian Candidate (My favorite Sinatra picture, here he unravels the mystery of a brainwashed American hero doing the bidding of evil Commies.)

On The Town (And one more makes lucky seven, this is a movie from Sinatra's early teen heartthrob period.)

2 comments:

Frank Black said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinatra%E2%80%93Jobim_Sessions

For me, this is his best post-Capitiol work by some distance.

Mythical Monkey said...

Funny you should mention the Sinatra-Jobim sessions. I was listening to a lot of Sinatra yesterday, among them the Jobim sessions. Great stuff.

One thing Sinatra perhaps doesn't get enough credit for is his willingness to stretch himself as an artist. He invented the concept record with In the Wee Small Hours and worked outside his perceived niche again and again.

Perhaps I should have written that 8000 word essay after all ...