Frank Sinatra - Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely
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CD Details
Artist: Frank SinatraEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 1998-05-26
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
- Only The Lonely
- Angel Eyes
- What's New?
- It's A Lonesome Old Town
- Willow Weep For Me
- Good-Bye
- Blues In The Night
- Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry
- Ebb Tide
- Spring Is Here
- Gone With The Wind
- One For My Baby
- Sleep Warm
- Where Or When
Music reviews of Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely
Music Review: A WatershedWistful and Wonderful.
Rating: 5 Stars
I grew up in a Tony Bennett household. The way things shook out, my dad, a onetime member of the vocal group Billy Ward and the Dominoes had some very distinct opinions about what was good music and more importantly, good singing. He sang baritone and one would think that he would favor a kindred soul in timbre like Frank Sinatra. No dice, Clyde. Daddy loved Tony Bennett and that as they say was that. We grew up hearing the great baritone singers my dad loved, like Billy Eckstine, Al Hibbler, Arthur Prysock and Brook Benton. But Frank just didn't register on papa's musical radar and because he controlled the family's purse-strings (music buying included), he never registered on our radar either. Years later, old enough to make our own money, my brother and I bought our own radios and broadened our musical horizons. My brother, the contrarian, in the face of P-Funk, Earth, Wind & Fire, Kraftwerk and KC & The Sunshine Band's mass assault on the radio waves tuned his radio into "Saturdays with Sinatra", a local music program. Still under my dad's influence a bit, I resisted Frank's "leisurely" crooning wafting from my brother's radio until one day I happened to catch the tail end of a tune that stopped me in my tracks. It was Frank plaintively easing out the words "S'cuse me...while I...dis-a-ppear. The words faded off into the song's final note like a curlicue of blue smoke. You could almost feel the singer's blood draining away as if he had nothing left to live for. I waited through three more songs to find out the title of the one that riveted me so: it was "Angel Eyes". What the hell was my dad's problem? How could you discount such an incredible voice that could pack this much emotion through equally great phrasing? I began to collect what little bits of Sinatra I could get my hands on. Which unfortunately at the time was mostly latter-day Reprise greatest hits repackages and worse single albums. Where was the Frank who sang "Angel Eyes"? More years went by. Working in radio, I collected just enough Sinatra to get by...nothing more. I happened onto PBS on night and they were showing an episode of the old Frank Sinatra Timex Show from the late fifties and caught him singing one from his "latest" LP, "Sings For Only the Lonely". It was Angel Eyes again. With...the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, thank you. The next day I devoted the better part of 4 hours looking for this record which I found on vinyl at a used record store. I had no idea what I was in store for when I got home to listen to it. The title cut, "Only the Lonely" sent chills up my spine. How could a guy surrounded by a God-knows-how-many piece orchestra, a concertmaster and various engineers sound so utterly alone? When Frank's voice breaks near the end of the song on the line, "You'll know the loneliness", you actually DO know the loneliness. "Angel Eyes" heard in it's entirety, veers manic-depressively from resignation to confusion to the darkest despair as only a soul-burning love affair at it's end can do. Every word...every note and letter spoken has a reason in this song. The playful curl of the voice on the words "old devil" in the line "That old devil sent" speaks volumes about the wicked fickleness of love's fleeting manner. His take on "What's New" makes you wonder why Linda Ronstadt ever tried it. It reconstitutes the sentiments of 10cc's great "I'm Not In Love" back to it's full and bitter strength. There are no losers on this album. (Which I later found was to be titled "For Losers Only") From mournful weepers like Gordon Jenkins' "Goodbye" to the resignation-drenched "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry" you will realize why no less an authority than Frank Sinatra Jr. said that this album should be sold "by prescription only". Many people find the standouts on this, his finest album of ballads (followed closely by "In The Wee Small Hours") to be his definitive take on Harold Arlen's paean to fickle dames, "Blues In The Night" and the pit of despair favorite of memory and brain-cell killers everywhere, "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)". I won't argue this. In fact, listening to "One For My Baby" makes you want to say "Damn, that's cold, brother". But my picks are the first two of this stellar collection. They kick-start (or nudge off the cliff) this legend amongst "concept" albums like no other songs ever, save for Marvin Gaye's leadoff two on "What's Going On". I later got this album when it came out on CD and found it even more incredible upon hearing the remastered music, particularly Nelson Riddle's sumptuous arrangments. The CD contains two additional wistful cuts not included on the original album but from his very next singles sessions. They are the lush "Sleep Warm" and the filled-with-wanting "Where or When". As an epilogue, I sat one night listening to the album and wondered why my dad wasn't hot on Sinatra when it suddenly hit me. The Frank he knew was the end of his hit-making years Frank of the mid 40's to early 50's. The "Mama Will Bark" Frank, if you will. The R & B and Rock and Roll which my dad was swept up in totally obscured the redefinition of pop standards Sinatra initiated. By the time Frank was relevant again record-sales wise, the voice was on the down side. The "That's Life" Frank. Pop had missed the earth-shaking Capitol years that "Angel Eyes" turned me on to. I wish he were here now so I could pull his coat to some really great singing.
Description of Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely
Digipak edition of this 1958 album from the legendary crooner. Orchestra conducted by Nelson Riddle. and Felix SlatkinLook past the tacky, sad-clown velvet painting on the cover (a Grammy-winner for album design in 1959!), there's nothing cheap or sentimental about this record--the bleakest and blackest album of popular songs ever recorded, so quietly powerful it can leave you slumped in your chair with the ice cubes still rattling in your glass. Every single "suicide song" (as Sinatra liked to call 'em) on Only the Lonely is a stunner that will take your breath away. Nelson Riddle's arrangements are like shadows, almost colorless and motionless, so that all you hear is the ache in the singer's voice. "Angel Eyes" and "One for My Baby" each deserve an album to themselves-- so exquisitely moving that at the end of three minutes you feel like you've just heard a lifetime of loneliness. My only regret--and it's a big one--is that this flawless masterpiece doesn't include Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," which truly belongs here; Sinatra put it into an already overcrowded recording schedule and, when fatigue and the difficulty of the song defeated him after a couple takes, he gave up and never attempted it again. We got the chillingly lovely "Willow Weep For Me" instead, so I'm really not complaining--but that just adds to the pang of loss that this album expresses so vividly. Drink up! --Jim Emerson
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