Sinatras zehn besten Alben nach dem berühmten
Musikexperten Will Friedwald. ("Frank Sinatra - Ein Mann und seine
Musik")
Statt eine holprige Übersetzung habe ich den englischen Orginaltext von Friedwald
beibehalten. (Eine eigene "Top - 5" findet Ihr unter dem Menüpunkt
"Kritiken") Die Auswahl muss nicht unbedingt die Meinung des Autors
wiederspiegeln
Wer mehr Informationen über eines der vorgestellten Alben erhalten möchte, einfach nur den jeweiligen Titel anklicken!
Um Euren Lieblings-Sinatrasong selbst einzugeben, folgt diesem Link.
http://www.datatelemark.de/karacent/sinatra/sinatra.asp
1. SONGS FOR SWINGIN' LOVERS!
From 1953 to '62, Sinatra made 17 LPs for Capitol, mostly "concept" albums organized by mood and tempo, and Songs For Swingin' Lovers! Is the model refined to perfection . Crooning 15 sharp, sophisticated selections like Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "Anything Goes" with Nelson Riddle's eight-cylinder arrangements under him, Sinatra hereby set the standard for postwar cool.
2. FRANK SINATRA SINGS FOR ONLY THE LONELY The most devastating of Sinatra's dark, introspective albums. Collaborating with arranger Nelson Riddle again, Sinatra crystallizes despair, so he can then examine it from 12 heart wrenching angles. From the grandly semiclassical piano of the opening title track to the moody saloon tinkling of longtime accompanist Bill Miller on the closer, "One For My Baby", this is a melancholy masterpiece. In the words of Frank Sinatra jr. This "suicide song" album is so emotionally harrowing that it should be sold "by prescription only"3. CLOSE TO YOU
Sinatra offers his tenderest and most intimate song stylings ever on this capricius collection of love songs backed with just four strings, a small rhytm section, and a series guest solists, arranged by Riddle. Every breath, every vocal gesture, every phrase is exactly where it ought to be - there's not a nuance out of place. The CD has the added advantage of restoring three marvelous cuts recorded for but crowded out of the orginal LP, among them a masterpiece of dryly ironic humor called "There's a Flawin My Flue"
A rare case in wich the sequel is so good it almost eclipses the orginal: The immediate follow-up to Swingin' Lovers! contains 15 more exquisite of Sinatra and Riddle and Co. in and upbeat mode. As usual, Riddle's introductions - wonderful melodies of their own that rarely quote the song as originally written - are so distinctive that even casual listeners will be able to identify each tune before Sinatra's entrance. A generation of singers based their entire careers on the two Swingin' albums.
Like Billy Holiday, one of his key influences, Sinatra proves here that you don't have to sing fast to sing jazz. Four selections constitute Sinatra's only mature studio recordings with a jazz-style quartet. Along with Dave Mann's classic title song, the disc's highlights include a riveting treatment of Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo"featuring Sweets Edison, master of the instrumental understatement.
Sinatras contemplation of old age may have been somewhat premature, consedering that, since he was abaout to turn 50, he had another 30 years left on the road. Yet no Sinatra performance is more movingly bittersweet. The dead-serious nature of the album made it an ideal project for Gordon Jenkins, the equally serious orchestrator, in his fifth and best collaboration with Sinatra. Jenkins' gloriously heightened sense of drama helped Sinatra turn a program of predominantly new songs into aperfectly realized concept album. For 13 tracks, Sinatra reflects nostalgically on the very good years of his youth, when the wind was green and beautiful girls walked a little slower.
7. SINATRA - BASIE An Historic Musical First
The first of three team-ups with jazz's preeminent swing orchestra finds the Chairman knuckling down in a straight-ahead groove that brings him close to the economical blues of singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Altough there is a preponderance of reamkes of Capitol tunes here, the package in general shows how refined Sinatra's rhythmic sense had become by 1962. On "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter", his unfailing feeling for syncopation allows him to imply entire lines of lyrics, dropping sections and, in the process, swinging his hardest.
8. TRILOGY: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE
The most ambitious project of Sinatra's career, this musical contemplationis far less pretentious than it sounds. The Past, a collection of Tin Pin Alley classics under the swinging baton of May, is worth the price of the double-disc alone. The Present, a sampling of then-contemporary covers conducted by Costa, has plenty of moments, particularly the splendiferous "Summer Me, Winter Me" and "New York, New York". Even the Future, an over-the-top all-original song suite by Jenkins speculating on space travel and the end of war, is blessed by the conviction that Sinatra brings even to ludicrous material. Trilogy is Sinatra's epic, and it captures all his sides: swinging, loving, serious and grandiose
Facing middle age in the '60s, Sinatra's resisted recording youth-oriented material by rock-generation songwriters, yet he knew he couldn't keep swingin' with his old vigor. The bossa nova craze-and ist star composer, Jobim-gave him another out, briefly. Here's an utterly unique Sinatra, delicate and gently poised. "I haven't sung so soft," he joked during the recording sessions, "since I had the laryngitis."
10. THE CONCERT SINATRA
Okay, there wasn't a real concert, but this session was an event as grand as a night at Carnegie Hall, with an orchestra so huge that Sinatra had to book a Hollywood soundstage. Still, Sinatra's singing and Riddle's orchestrations are so direct and emotive that they make the music miraculously intimate. All but one of the eight extra long tracks is by Richard Rodgers and/or Oscar Hammerstein Il, and Sinatra's treatments of such odes to the plight of humanity as "Ol' Man River", "You Never Walk Alone" and "Soliloquy" are definitive.
Midi: "Almost Like
Being In Love"
(zu hören in "Come Swing With Me" 1961)