1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die 2. Frank Sinatra – Songs for Swingin’ Lovers (1956)

Dr Simon Reads... Listens... to the 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die. 


Here’s a new concept. Inspired by the book 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die (compiled by Robert Dimery) I intend to do just that. Since an album is usually around about an hour at most, and I can listen to them while doing something else, and I suspect the majority of them will be on Spotify, hopefully I will be able to do them before I die. Even at the rate of 1 a day, that’s three years. 

2. Frank Sinatra – Songs for Swingin’ Lovers (1956) 

True Fact: Some time back in the end of the 80s I was working in my parents’ flower shop when I picked up a phone call “from the office of Frank Sinatra”. Apparently, Ol’ Blue Eyes had been visiting Michael Caine, who lived nearby, and wanted to send Caine and his wife some flower to say thank you. One thing I can tell you about Sinatra, he was willing to spend a lot of money on flowers. 

Songs for... is kind of the counterpoint to Wee Small Hours. It’s a collection of songs about the joy of love, rather than the sorrow of heartbreak, which is probably why Dimery chose them as a matching diptych. Actually that belies the emotional depth of the songs on both albums. Better, perhaps, to say that Wee Small Hours is melancholic rather than miserable – it revels in its sadness, while Swingin’ Lovers is joyful, yes, but also speaks of the how joy can stem from the uncertainty of new love. Probably because it covers songs by the likes of the Gershwins and Cole Porter, it’s unsurprising it has lyrical depth. 

The orchestration is more pronounced here, with classic swing tune motifs of the horn sting, with Sinatra doing what we may think of as classic Sinatra synchopation as he makes it sound easy jazzing around the tune.  

Because many (all?) of the songs are covers, they’re somewhat familiar even if you haven’t heard the Sinatra version – Pennies from Heaven, Anything Goes, I Got You under My Skin, Makin’ Whoopee, Old Devil Moon.  

Probably my favourites from this album would be the first two tracks. You Make Me Feel So Young is a Sinatra classic, and you have to admire Myrow and Gordon’s lyrical legerdemain of 

“Every time I see you grin, 

I’m such a happy in ..., 

...dividual”. 

The second track, It Happened in Monterey, is quintessential “lounge”, and we can imagine the Rat Pack living it large somewhere that never sleeps. Certainly more entertaining than In The Wee Small Hours. And already we're at an album that I've heard before.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dr Simon Reads... Appendix N. Part One: Poul Anderson

Image
Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N: Introduction This is a new series that will feature sporadically, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. You will either know what I mean by “Appendix N”, or you will have no clue. In the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide, Gary Gygax provided a large number of appendices, from random smells to reputed magical properties of herbs and gemstones. Appendix N was a bibliography of works that inspired him. Back in 1982 when I first got hold of this book, there were only a couple of items on there that I’d read, and only a few other authors that I’d even heard of. Many years later, after, much reading, I returned to Appendix N expecting to have added greatly to the works on there that I’d read; but actually, there were still very few. Many of the authors were obscure or out of print authors of, for want of a better expression, golden age pulp; the kind that feature in Amazing Stories and the like. Now, ...
Read more

An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 121: Closing Thoughts

It took half as many posts to tackle the Qur'an as it did the Bible, 120 compared to 248, but it felt like longer sometimes. Perhaps because the Qur'an is written by a single man and deals with pretty much the same topic over and over, whereas the Bible is a compilation of multiple works, some of which are historical, some apocalyptic, some laws or building instruction, some philosophical, some poetic, some a bit of each. From that point of view, I'd have to say that the Bible was the more interesting work to read. Have I learned any great wisdom from the Qur'an? I'd have to say … no, not really. Granted, I probably didn't approach it with a particularly deep understanding of the material in the first place, but that (as with the Bible readthrough) was always my intent. Picking through line by line is still something of a deep dive, and in both books I tried to be alert for symbol and metaphor. Doing it that way, however, it's easy to miss thematic callb...
Read more

An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 140: The Fall and Rise of (Slightly Tarty) Cities (Isaiah 21-25)

Isaiah 21-25 The Fall and Rise of (Slightly Tarty) Cities Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version). In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology. For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP And now: Isaiah 21 “And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights:” Isaiah has a vision that causes him pain like the pain of childbirth, apparently. From out of the desert comes a chariot bearing news that Babylon has fallen, but I don’t know to whom. This chapter says to “ watch in the watchtower ”, from which I guess the Jehovah’s Witnesses get the name of their little newsletter. Also Isaiah, or the people to whom he speaks, are told to “ go set a watchman ”; another line ...
Read more