Within the autumn of 1966, Frank Sinatra was at Western Recorders, the place he started work on a brand new album with producer Jimmy Bowen, made up of ten tracks organized by Ernie freeman. On October 18, with an orchestra carried out by Donnie Lanier, Frank recorded what turned that album’s title monitor – That’s Life.
When it was launched as a single, it made the Billboard Scorching 100 on November 19 – the best new entry of the week, coming into at No. 75. Eight locations under it was one other new entry, Nancy Sinatra’s “ Sugar Town.” By Christmas Eve 1966, Frank was at No. 4 on the charts, with Nancy two locations behind; the next week Nancy climbed to No. 5. (A model of “That’s Life,” organized by Nelson Riddle, featured on the CBS TV particular, A Man And His Music Half II, which aired on December 7, little doubt serving to to propel the track up the singles charts.)
Based on Life journal, the track was “an absolute corker” – an appraisal that actually applies to the album itself. The LP made the final Billboard album chart of 1966, and finally hit No. 6 on the American charts, the place it stayed for effectively over a yr.
Russ Regan had discovered the title track for Frank. “I was a recording artist at Capitol for a little while in 1959 – as a singer – but I didn’t have anything to do with Frank Sinatra,” he recalled. “I did work at Warner/Reprise for about a year, and I worked at Loma Records, which was an R&B Warner arm with a lot of artists. While I was there, one of the writers, Kelly Gordon, brought the song to me, and wanted to record it himself. I said right away that it wasn’t a song for him, and that it was a Frank Sinatra song, so I took it to Mo Ostin. He agreed and passed it through to Frank, and within two days Frank said he wanted to do it.”
The ability {that a} huge hit single has to promote an album can’t be underestimated. Thanks partly to the only’s success, Sinatra’s That’s Life LP bought effectively over 1,000,000 copies when it was first launched – and have become the final Frank Sinatra album to make the High 10 of the US album charts for 1 / 4 of a century.
Store for Frank Sinatra’s music on vinyl or CD now.
