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Romance: Songs From the Heart	No One Cares	Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely
The Capitol Years	A Swingin' Affair	Come Dance with Me!

Most of these songs represent Sinatra with singing songs including Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You Make Me Feel So Young," Rodgers & Hart's "The Lady is a Tramp," and "Come Fly With Me." But as great as Sinatra is at swing, his mastery is best displayed in his saloon songs. "My Funny Valentine" is recorded at a perfect tempo that takes full advantage of Sinata's unparalleled phrasing and makes this the definitive recording of the Rodgers & Hart tune. Equally great is his superb "In the Wee Small Hours," the title track from his first LP where he captured the sense of heartbreak and loneliness that we have all assumed came out of his breakup with Ava Gardner. Again, Riddle comes up with the perfect arrangement to set the stage for the devastating vocals. Add "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)" and you have the three crown jewels of Sinatra as the ultimate saloon singer.

Even though this is a collection of Sinatra tunes pulled from various albums "Classic Sinatra" still serves as a reminder that to really enjoy Sinatra you have to listen to his concept albums. This is not really a Sinatra "hits" collection, at least not by Billboard standards. Only a few of these songs charted as singles: "All the Way" (#2), "Witchcraft" (#6), "Nice 'n' Easy" (#60). That was because when Sinatra released an LP in the Fifties you were supposed to listen to the whole thing and he put out most of his greatest albums in that decade.

The other thing to be aware of is that a lot of what you hear here is not necessarily the definitive Sinatra version of these songs because Sinatra kept working at these songs over the rest of his career. There are a couple of live versions of "The Lady is a Tramp" that are even better than what you have here, and every Sinatra fan will be able to point other tracks here where they can find a version they like better. But even if you want to make an argument that these songs just establish ground level for Sinatra, his bottom floor is way higher than the ceilings of the fast majority of vocalists who ever recorded in the 20th century.


Nice repackaging of classic Sinatra tunes...   April 25, 2000
 49 out of 50 found this review helpful

There is probably no way that anyone can take 20 songs from Sinatra's Capitol years and NOT come up with a five-star album. That said, this is one of the better Best of packages, and I would recommend it to anyone who has not already bought the Best of the Capitol Years or, better still, the original concept albums. Songs like It Happened in Monterey and Put Your Dreams Away are more imaginative and deserving selections than those on the numerous other Capitol Sinatra compilations. This set also earns high marks for original recordings, avoiding the awful studio-engineered duet trap that marred the otherwise okay Sinatra 80th 2-CD set.

If this is your only Sinatra purchase, you are missing the enjoyment of the concept albums, which were assembled carefully to create a mood and an experience -- swinging, melancholy, etc. Ironically (or maybe not!), the best songs on the concept albums were not always the opening tracks (Come Fly with Me, Come Dance with Me,...), and by limiting yourself to this set you may be missing some great tunes.

There are several less available concept albums, such as Close to You (mentioned by another reviewer below)and No One Cares, but these are not represented here -- which would have made this set much more attractive to Sinatraphiles who already own everything on Classic Sinatra. Capitol would have served us better by finding something new in the Sinatra archives (such as the great 1957 Seattle concert released last year!) rather than resequencing admittedly great songs that were already readily available. In the meantime, I would strongly recommend to serious fans to find used copies of the more obscure Capitol albums: they do exist on CD, and if you are patient you can find them reasonably priced on eBay or other auction sites. Or you can buy the big Capitol set for a few hundred dollars...


At the Top of His Game   May 1, 2000
 47 out of 47 found this review helpful

I came of age musically in the 1970s, which is when I first became acquainted with Frank Sinatra. By this time, his voice had long been in decline, and he was experimenting with questionable contemporary material like "It's Not Easy Being Green" and that hideous disco version of "Night and Day." I did like him then, but he sounded tired bellowing his way through latter-day concert versions of his 1950s-era hits. Yes, he sang as if he had lived his songs, but I still wondered why his longtime fans consistently used superlatives to describe him.

Acquiring this CD and listening to The Voice upclose and personal finally awakened me to the genius that everybody has been applauding for generations. The Capitol-era Sinatra possessed a rare combination of subtlety, control, spontaneity, and swagger that are evident on these classic '50s sides. I can feel the lilt in his step on "I've Got the World on a String" and the fragility and heartbreak in "One for My Baby." His phrasing of "Come Dance with Me" and "I Get a Kick Out of You" ("It would bore me terriFFFFFFFF - ic'ly too") is delightfully playful and inspired. It is now obvious to me why so many regard Sinatra as the quintessential American pop singer.

If you're new to Sinatra and overwhelmed by the avalanche of CDs to choose from, you'll have no regrets buying this one first.


Just a Pretty Face   May 27, 2008
 38 out of 73 found this review helpful

Look at that mug! Is that the face that launched a thousand hot rods and toppled the towers of Vegas?

Don't mind me, folks. I'm the guy who gave negative reviews to the Da Vinci Code, Glen Gould, 300, and the King James Bible. I'm either a kneejerk liberal or a rabid right-winger, depending on which you execrate most. But the proof of what a whacko I must be is that I can't stand Frank Sinatra. I have been known to drop milk bottles and rush out of supermarkets when the oily sound of his voice comes over the speakers. I once grabbed a casette of Sinatra out of the hands of the captain of a Portuguese freighter sailing from Newark to Lisbon, and tossed the accursed thing into the Atlantic. The captain literally had the power to make me walk the plank, but he'd played Frankie three times in a row! There are limits!

Sinatra could sing in tune most of the time, which put him a step closer to music than Tony Bennett, but whoever got the notion of calling him a jazz singer? Where's the jazz phrasing? Where are the blues, the soul, the deep dregs of life? You wanna hear jazz singing, listen to Chet Baker or Billie Holliday, or even Mel Torme! Sinatra was a pop singer, and no number of Playboy subscribers could vote him into jazz.

So if he wasn't a singer, what was he? An image. A vicarious trip into arrogant nastiness. The bad boy someone's mama was afraid she'd be attracted to. Lord, if You promise me that there'll be no Sinatra on the sound systems of Heaven, I'll reform my agnostic ways and rejoin my church choir.

Now let's see how many "unhelpful" votes one review can get in a day.


Great sampler of his "concept" albums   March 29, 2000
 30 out of 31 found this review helpful

If you are a big enough fan to own all of Sinatra's 50s concept albums, then you really do not need this CD as the songs are all from those albums. However, this is a wonderful sampler for casual Sinatra fans and it includes all his greatest songs from that era (I particularly like "One More for My Baby.") If you want to get one of the actual full albums from this era of Sinatra, start with Songs for Swingin' Lovers - it's terrific!