Perfectly Frank
My goal is to present Frank Sinatra’s best recordings; the tracks I might play to argue for the man’s value and importance to someone unfamiliar with his music.
He had a long career, making recordings from 1939 to 1994, but the majority of my favorite recordings were made during the Capitol years, 1953-1962. I have not made choices to reflect important benchmarks in his career, nor his best-selling or most popular songs, only on my subjective take on his most successful recordings.
When Scott Woods interviewed me in 1996 he asked about my obsession with Frank Sinatra, here is part of what I said:
I was drawn to him as a personality first, in the way that he’s a very charismatic and exuberant, fun person, but also he could be very mean-spirited and kind of boorish. As I started to get into his music, he became an icon of the perfect artist, not that everything he did was perfect, but at his best he was untouchable. He did his form of music better than anyone else ever has or I believe ever could.
Even though he’s behaved badly, he’s also someone who has taken life in a hard way…people can see his vulnerability, and they can see that he takes love and heartbreak very personally and is affected by it in a way that you don’t see in most performers. I think that’s one of the things that made him a big star.
Although I include a range of song styles I’m most impressed by the mid-tempo tracks. The ballads can lean into the sentimental emotion of the songs, and the upbeat ones can bowl you over in their boldness, but the mid-tempo records are either transparently successful or not, with no place to hide. This is a space where Frank Sinatra succeeds like few others.
25. Best Is Yet To Come (Reprise 1964)
24. Nice ‘N’ Easy (Capitol 1960)
23. Come Dance With Me (Capitol 1959)
22. Me And My Shadow [with Sammy Davis Jr] (Reprise 1962)
21. My Funny Valentine (Capitol 1953)
20. The Coffee Song (Reprise 1960)
19. You Make Me Feel So Young [Live] (Reprise 1966)
18. You Go To My Head (Capitol 1960)
17. Brazil (Capitol 1958)
16. Witchcraft (Capitol 1957)
15. Change Partners [with Antônio Carlos Jobim] (Reprise 1967)
14. Send In The Clowns (Reprise 1973)
13. Dancing In The Dark (Capitol 1959)
12. I Get A Kick Out Of You (Capitol 1954)
11. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning (Capitol 1955)
10. What’s New? (Capitol 1955)
9. Night And Day (Reprise 1962)
8. One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) (Capitol 1954)
7. Baubles, Bangles and Beads (Capitol 1959)
6. It’s Nice To Go Trav’ling (Capitol 1958)
5. (Love Is) The Tender Trap (Capitol 1956)
4. Come Fly With Me (Capitol 1958)
3. I’ve Got You Under My Skin (Capitol 1956)
2. I Wish I Were In Love Again (Capitol 1957)
1. I’ve Got The World On A String (Capitol 1953)
Image: Pulled from a live concert photo in 1989, and a Polaroid transfer negative, circa 1993.