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Buy 'Sinatra & Company' from Amazon.co.uk.Sinatra & Company

There is, of course, more to be said about Frank Sinatra than would fit on this or a stack of album jackets. He is the best popular male singer since the discovery of syncopation. He is almost beyond challenge as the pre-eminent American entertainer of his times.

His admirers now span all the age groups. But I suspect that the heart (and soul) of his audience consists of those of us who go all the way back with him, back to the near-anonymity of the Dorsey days and those Saturday afternoon remotes from Frank Daley's Meadowbrook, and the swoonings and the wall-to-wall lapels.

And what remains unique about Sinatra is the way in which his own seasons have continued to match those of his audience. The surpassingly romantic and idealistic early Sinatra, I mean, was just right for our young years. He provided the sound-track for our most optimistic dreams

Then, after a period in which it could be said that he and we were all preoccupied, there was suddenly a new Sinatra. The unmatched gifts of timing and phrasing and the respect for the lyrics were unchanged or had become richer. But there was something else, a new maturity.

The romantic idealism had been tempered with bittersweet wisdom, which did not, however, go all the way to cynicism. The same lyrics to the same songs now had some new, wry overtones. Forever after had been redefined as maybe until the middle of next week if it still makes sense to both of us. What stayed unchanged was the unshakeable joie de vivre.

Still later, in what I think of as the "September of My Years" period, a new mood crept into Sinatra's work, a mellow nostalgia for all the pleasures which life had provided along with the cinders in the eye and the loves who went away, a deeper wisdom, a warmer appreciation for present and remembered joys.

It was a time when Frank - and all of us - found a new sovor in life. Neither he nor we were ready for pipe, shawl and slippers, and only a downbeat away from the autumnal songs were all manner of uptempo and rockin' things.

To listen to Sinatra here, today, is to be reminded all over again that, among all the things which are true about him, one is that he holds title to more of our musical memories than anybody else. Also, that if he is made to seem like the last angry man from time to time, what he really is in a special sense is the last passionate man. The emotions he conveys may or may not be, in the nature of things, complex, but they are powerful and persistent and widely-shared.

It comes clear, always, that singing a song superbly is a matter of passionate importance to Sinatra. He communicates not only the emotional sense of a song but a kind of overlay which is his own evident and ebullient delight in being able to do it uniquely well.

With Sinatra there is always a special awareness that the private man, the private experience, has infused the material with a further range of meaning and overtone. And there is always, also, that remarkable sense of the inseparability of his own history and our own, the way in which, from the beginning, his cycles have, in different magnitudes, confirmed our own.

The present album is Sinatra of these current vintage years, assured and compassionate, mellow but vigorous, transmuting pleasant if largely unfamiliar material into something special and unmistakeable.

But what is most extraordinary is that, these many seasons later, Mr. Sinatra is still providing the sound-tracks of our very best moments.

Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times


Sinatra & Company (1971)

Reprise 2-1033

Drinking Water (Aqua de Beber)
Someone To Light Up My Life
Triste
Don't Ever Go Away (Por Causa de Voce)
This Happy Madness (Estrada Branca)
Wave
One Note Samba (Samba de Uma Nota So)
I Will Drink The Wine
Close To You
Sunrise In The Morning
Bein' Green
My Sweet Lady
Leaving On A Jet Plane
Lady Day

Buy Sinatra & Company from Amazon.co.uk.

Songs For Swingin' Lovers
The Sinatra Christmas Album
Come Fly With Me
Only The Lonely
No One Cares
Nice 'N' Easy
Ring-A-Ding Ding!
Point Of No Return
Great Songs From Great Britain
Sinatra-Basie
The Concert Sinatra
September Of My Years
Moonlight Sinatra
Strangers In The Night
The World We Knew
Sinatra-Jobim
A Man Alone
Sinatra & Company
Some Nice Things I Missed
Sinatra Love Songs
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