Customer Reviews

Love Songs

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Man, I can't think of nothin' better than listening to Frank Sinatra sing about some love and romance, 'specially when the recording is so old, it crackles through your speakers like your listenin' to radio in the '40s, and jus' immerses you in nostalgia. When you consider that my favorite genre of music is hip-hop, it's quite a feat for a vocalist such as Sinatra to wedge his way into my CD collection, much less become probably my all-time favorite singer. Now maybe I'm trippin', 'cause most people who consider themselves Sinatra afficionados say that his long tenure at Capitol in the '50s were his best years, but, in my personal opinion Frank was at the top of his form during his years at Columbia between 1943 and 1952. This was back when he was a true crooner, who stood up on stage calmly, closed his eyes, and poured all his emotion into that microphone while the girls in the audience grinned, went cross-eyed, and melted to the floor. While this collection is pre-Columbia Records (he was still with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra) I think it definitely set the stage for his up and coming years when he'd finally be recognized as a singer on all his own terms. Recorded between 1940 and 1941, what you have here is a 25-year-old Frankie putting down some killer songs in that way that only he can. It's great to hear the band playing behind him, but the voice is everything. This was a time when singers would become the center of attention in the music world. Every song has that lush romanticism of that wonderful time period. My favorite numbers in this collection are 'Violets for Your Furs' and 'Night and Day'. This was a legend about to reach his peak, before the rumors, before he fell in love with Ava Gardner, before he won the Oscar, before the great big Hollywood party known as The Rat Pack, before he hung with the President, back when he was simply Frankie, the self-proclaimed hoodlum from Hoboken.

There are quite a few CDs on the market now chronicling that period of Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra when his featured male vocalist was Frank Sinatra, primarily 1940-1943. This one from BMG in 1997 doesn't advertise itself as presenting 16 tracks that were hit singles for that combination, but even so, considering that they had 13 alone in 1940 after their first collaboration, Polka Dots And Moonbeams (a # 18 in April), you would think they would have included 16 hits. Especially since most would have met the album's title of "Love Songs."

The earliest hit included here is I'll Never Smile Again which, with vocals by Frank and The Pied Pipers, went all the wat to # 1 in summer 1940 and stayed there for 12 weeks. Before that, Frank had also scored with the above-mentioned Polka Dots as well as Say It (# 12) and Imagination (# 8). This volume then jumps to Star Dust, a # 7 in January 1941, again involving The Pied Pipers, in a re-recording of the 1936 Dorsey hit when the vocalist was Edythe Wright.

Before that, however, Frank and Tommy had scored with All This And Heaven Too, The One I Love Belongs To Somebody Else (with The Pied Pipers), Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear To Tread, The Call Of The Canyon, Love Lies, Trade Winds, I Could Make You Care, Our Love Affair, and We Three (My Echo, My Shadow And Me) - all in 1940. In early spring 1941, Frank, Connie Haines and The Pied Pipers had a two-sided hit with Oh, Look At Me Now b/w You Might Have Belonged To Another, before Dolores (track 3) hit # 1, again with The Pied Pipers in April. The same combination also had a hit with Do I Worry? in April before Frank went solo on Everything Happens To Me (# 9 in May - track 4).

This Love Of Mine (track 5) was a # 3 early that fall, and in October The Pied Pipers again joined him on I Guess I'll Have To Dream The Rest (# 12 - track 6). Before that, Frank alone had You And I reach # 11 in September. Violets For Your Furs came out early in 1942, but failed to make the charts, while There Are Such Things became another monster # 1 (six weeks) in December, once more with The Pied Pipers. That, in fact, had come out as the B-side to Daybreak, based on Ferde Grofe's Mississippi Suite, and it didn't fare too badly either, reaching # 10.

Before then, however, he had hits with How About You? from the film Babes on Broadway, I Think Of You, The Last Call For Love (from the film Ship Ahoy), Just As Though You Were Here and its flipside, Street Of Dreams, I'll Take Tallulah (each with The Pied Pipers), Take Me and its B-Side, Be Careful, It's My Heart, and Light A Candle In The Chapel. Note that track 12 - Just As Though You Were Here - is a "live" recording and not the hit version. In early 1943, Frank and The Pied Pipers had the last of a string of hits together when It Started All Over Again made it to # 4. In June 1944, Tommy Dorsey and Frank had a # 4 with I'll Be Seeing You on Victor 1574, but that was recorded in 1940 and issued then on Victor 26539 without success,

Tracks 13 to 16 were recorded in Hollywood with members of the Tommy Dorsey orchestra, but conducted by Axel Stordahl. Night And Day b/w The Night We Called It A Day, came out on Bluebird 11463 and the A-Side reached # 16 for what was, technically, his first solo hit. Shortly after, The Lamplighter's Serenade b/w The Song Is You on Bluebird 11515 failed to chart.

Only Forever (track 11) was the uncharted B-Side of Our Love Affair in late 1940, several months after Tommy had had a # 7 hit with it as the B-side of Trade Winds. However, the vocalist then had been Alan Starr.

The sound quality is very good, and in the fold-out insert which contains a large photo of Frank at the microphone (as well as smaller shots of him, Tommy and The Pied Pipers in action) there are seven pages of liner notes written by Will Friedwald, author of Sinatra! The Song Is You, and one page showing recording dates for each track (but no label/chart information).