Ask folks to call Frank Sinatra’s saddest album and most will say In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning, however Frank Sinatra Sings For Solely The Lonely could be sadder. It’s additionally nothing lower than a front-runner within the “Frank Sinatra’s best album” stakes, and undeniably a masterpiece. Frank even stated it was his personal favourite album, but it was conceived in exceptionally unhappy circumstances.
Shortly earlier than Nelson Riddle started work on arranging the songs for this album, his six-month-old daughter died from bronchial bronchial asthma. Frank and Nelson went into the studio on Might 5, 1958, to start work on the album, however not one of the three songs that had been minimize that night time had been used. Nelson’s mom was critically sick and it may well solely have affected the session; she died 4 days later. Three weeks later, Frank returned to the studio and whereas the preparations for the album had been Nelson’s, it was Felix Slatkin who performed the orchestra on Might 29, earlier than Nelson returned for the final two classes that accomplished Frank Sinatra Sings For Solely The Lonely.
Frank’s singing is the epitome of disappointment, whereas the preparations have an added dollop of despondency. It was a travesty that this album did so poorly on the inaugural Grammy Awards, the place it solely gained for its cowl — a design that Sinatra himself got here up with and which was interpreted by Nick Volpe. (The album was inducted into the Grammy Corridor Of Fame in 1999 to partially atone for the oversight.) In December 1958, Peter Jones, within the British music paper Document Mirror, stated, “I feel the LP as a whole has so much magic it is a ‘must’.”
Among the many standouts are the title track, written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, which was recorded on Thursday, Might 29, 1958. Frank instructed creator Robin Douglas-Residence about pacing an album. “Tommy Dorsey did this with every band-show he played. Paced it, planned every second from start to finish. He never told me this; it just suddenly came to me as I sat up on that stand every night. This is what I’ve tried to do with every album I’ve ever made.” It’s a track that stands up as certainly one of Frank’s greatest scene-setting openers.
One other basic is Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “One For My Baby,” recorded a month later. This now-classic quantity was helped within the recording course of when Sinatra’s new producer, Dave Cavanaugh, created the best temper by placing the studio lights proper down and illuminating Frank with a single spot. With Invoice Miller beside him on the piano, it created the ambiance of a nightclub. Having picked out simply two songs right here, nevertheless, it’s solely proper to say that each track is nearly good, from the unadorned fantastic thing about “Angel Eyes,” to dynamics that present how brilliantly the Capitol engineers had mastered the brand new studio within the Capitol Tower. There’s the stark and sparse “What’s New,” a temper duplicated in “Willow Weep For Me,” and the poignancy of Rodgers and Hart’s “Spring Is Here.”
Launched in September 1958, the album first entered the US charts on September 29 and reached No. 1 on October 13, the place it stayed for 5 weeks. It made No. 5 within the UK after it was launched in December of the identical 12 months.
Store for Frank Sinatra’s music on vinyl or CD now.
