Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:11 pm
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/7066 ... all-Hours/
Nick Butler, STAFF
Rating: 5/5 Classic
Having been a star for over a decade, Frank Sinatra's career looked like it was over when the 1950s dawned. A bitter dispute with his record label led to his departure from their roster, which meant that not only his recording contract was null and void, but that he was left without a radio show, and could no longer appear in films or on television. Sinatra was dead. The man who looked like he might become the next Bing Crosby had been lost to time. Surely.
One man was prepared to give Sinatra another chance - Alan Livingston, the vice president of A&R at Capitol Records, and a major Sinatra fan. He offered Sinatra a 7-album deal, which the man himself gladly snapped up. One problem - Capitol had a roster filled with irrelevant, anachronistic 40s stars. What was to stop Sinatra blending in and becoming just another faded star?
Obviously, history has taught us that Sinatra was a special case in just about every way imaginable. Livingston and his Capitol cohorts, meanwhile, had a masterplan that would exploit that to maximum potential. That masterplan involved a young composer and arranger named Nelson Riddle.
Sinatra was resistant to Riddle's involvement at first, yet the reason he'd left Columbia a few years previous was their insistence on using gimmicks to sell records. It wasn't hard to know that Riddle was exactly the kind of person Sinatra needed to make the kind of music Columbia wouldn't let him.
Forward to 1955. Sinatra had already released two records with Riddle - Swing Easy and Songs For Young Lovers - and had established a pattern for his career of a dance album followed by a melancholy album, followed by a dance album, and so on. This schedule now called for Sinatra to deliver a melancholy album. Not that he'd want to do anything else - his relationship with Eva Gardner had fallen apart spectacularly.
That's why In The Wee Small Hours is often referred to as the first ever concept album. This was Sinatra dealing with how lost and alone he felt when Gardner left him. In an era where albums effectively did not exist - the 12-inch disc was not invented until shortly after the release of in The Wee Small Hours, and when it was invented, this was the album that came to define the medium - In The Wee Small Hours was a revelation. It was the first recording that sustained a mood - any mood - for its entire length. It was the first recording specifically designed to flow the way we now expect albums to. And it was the first recording intended to be listened to one sitting, rather than broken up and digested on a song-to-song level.
So this, right here, can legitimately not just be called the first concept album ever, but could even be called the first genuine album ever. Scary thought, huh? That fact makes In The Wee Small Hours a serious contender for the most influential musical work of the 20th century.
History remembers Sinatra as an arrogant, swaggering man, full of life and full of bravado. "My Way". "New York, New York". Even "Love & Marriage", later adopted as the theme for TV series Married With Children. In The Wee Small Hours destroys that notion. This is the sound of a man descending into depression, a man alone. His legendary voice is now underpinned not by masculinity, but by longing and sadness. His reading of Hoagy Carmichael's "I Get Along Without You Very Well" is heartbreaking (the emotion invested into the opening couplet is stunning); opener "In The Wee Small Hours of The Morning", written specifically for the album, even more so. The real high watermark, though, is the album's centerpoint. Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love?" sees him crying, wounded.
"You gave me days of sunshine
You gave me nights of cheer
You made my life an enchanted dream
til somebody else came near
Somebody else came near you
I felt the winters chill
And now I sit and wonder night and day
Why I love you still?"
So, the album's concept is a night spent longing for a lost love. Simple, yes, but devastatingly effective. After all, compare it to later concept albums. How often does a person spent a night alone and lonely, compared to how often they go blind, deaf, and dumb, and win some kind of pinball thingy?
Riddle's arrangements throughout are brilliant. They don't jump off the page at all, but they're sympathetic and imaginative - the instrumental sections on "Ill Wind" being a highlight, along with the intro to "I'll Never Be The Same". In fact, oddly enough, Riddle appears to grow into the project as the album goes along - his music gets better and better towards the second half of the record, although there's something magical about the distant, distracted piano intro to "In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning". Make no mistake, though - this is Sinatra's show, and Riddle understands that.
This album spurred him on to a string of equally great albums (Songs For Swinging Lovers! and Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely being of particular note, the latter feeling like a direct follow-up to this). More importantly, it sealed his place in history like nothing he did before or after. It not only restored him to the level of fame he'd enjoyed in the 40s, it also won him an entirely new audience. Sinatra was now a bigger star than he'd ever been.
In truth, In The Wee Small Hours may seem slightly dated to a new listener - the influences here stem clearly from vocal jazz and film scores, and Sinatra himself quoted Billie Holiday as a major influence on proceedings. (Curiously, and ironically, Holiday's 1958 album Lady In Satin was directly influenced by this album, and includes versions of "Glad To Be Unhappy", "I Get Along Without You Very Well", and "I'll Be Around".) There is, it must be said, not a guitar in sight, which alone may put some off. But repeated listens reveal a rich, textured, warm album that creates a world any listener can immerse themselves in, should they so wish. It's just a quality album - and quality never goes out of fashion.
Rating this album reveals a slight flaw in the Spuntik rating system - there are better albums than this, albums I enjoy more, that I would only rate 4.5. Yet, when one of the options is 'Classic', there's absolutely no other way to rate this album. It's a classic in every sense of the word.
Serious fans of music can be split into two camps - those who own this album, and those who have a big fat gap in their collections.
Within The Genre - 5/5
Outside The Genre - 4.5/5
Recommended Songs
In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning
Glad To Be Unhappy
I Get Along Very Well Without You
Deep In A Dream
What Is This Thing Called Love?
Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:14 pm
Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:18 pm
elvisjock wrote:Ever see the movie Tin Men? The song was put to great use on the soundtrack.
Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:42 pm
Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:53 pm
Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:57 pm
Wed Sep 07, 2011 12:16 am
Wed Sep 07, 2011 2:08 am
greystoke wrote: More haunting and bleak than any album I've ever heard, is Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely -- and this may be the pinnacle of Sinatra and Riddle's collaborations at either Capitol or Reprise. An imaginative, bold, multi-layered and technically exceptional work of the highest standards -- Only the Lonely found Sinatra and Riddle investing a grand emotional sweep via a huge ensemble of stellar musicians, who were able to employ a range of the richest emotional resonance that absorbed facets of jazz and orchestral symphonies via shades of Chopin, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Ellington and Vaughan Williams, conducted under the baton of Felix Slatkin. And here, Saloon songs, as Sinatra liked to call them, blended with haunting pop tunes steeped in blues and elegies to lost love that's more than just melancholy -- it's bleak, and the tone never shifts; there's no light at the end of the tunnel or hints at brighter days ahead.
Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen's titular opening track sets the tone and delivers the mood via long and unconventional melodies that Sinatra eats up. Yet this is a diffiuclt, achingly slow song with nods to Chopin on the piano and a range only the most versatile of singers could cope with -- and few have, as this song has not been oft covered. Angel Eyes boasts a similarly daunting range, and is crushing in its effect . . . Gone With the Wind, What's New and Spring is Here range from the brilliant to the sublime -- each performance given time to breath, every song treated to beautiful, extended arrangements that are allowed to seep into the listener's conciousness and remain long after . . . Sinatra's sensational emulating of a train whistle in Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's Blues in the Night chills to the bone in a superlative piece of jazz-cut rhythm and blues. And no better song could have been chosen to close the album that Arlen/Mercer's seminal One for My Baby (And One More for the Road) . . . Perhaps the ultimate torch song, and a paean to self-pity and loneliness that packs an emotional wallop.
Wed Sep 07, 2011 2:08 am
greystoke wrote:
Wed Sep 07, 2011 2:50 am
Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:45 am
Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:25 pm
poormadpeter wrote:I would also recommend a couple of albums that Greystoke didn't list, which is the album with Duke Ellington. Just eight tracks, although all are between 4 and 5 minutes. It may not be the best work either men did, but Sinatra is having a ball and a couple of tracks are classics and the slowed down, rather sexy version of the then-hit Sunny is also a stunner.
Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:57 pm
Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:42 pm
Sat Sep 10, 2011 11:53 am
Sat Sep 10, 2011 12:27 pm
likethebike wrote:Nice review Greystoke.
In The Wee Small Hours is about neck and neck with Only the Lonely as my favorite Sinatra although it's followed very closely by Songs for Swingin' Lovers for me "You Make Me Feel So Young" is the best thing he ever did, so full of the affirmation of life. I must say though that I enjoy the first Jobim set as much as any of them, although I know in my heart it's not as good as that '50s series, a little more monotonous I guess and fewer standout moments, but still I find the high points exhilarating including the brilliant reclamation of "Girl From Ipanema." I would think his most underrated LP would be Watertown because it never gets discussed and it is actually quite moving. As I am a huge Four Seasons fan and this is a Bob Gaudio production, this probably has an extra soft spot for me. Continuing on the underrated path, I would also like to add the absolutely splendid version he did of "Goody Goody" on the Live And Swinging collection released a few years back and recorded in 1962. He completely reinvents the song with his phrasing, pausing on the title words, basically speaking them, and capturing a lot of the snarl that a lot of other singers miss.
I think in the Capitol days he was a better singer, but in the Columbia days his voice was much more beautiful, even if i never felt it in sheer sonic beauty it matched Crosby or Martin or Cole or some of my other favorite singers in the pop tradition. My favorites from then are "Someone to Watch Over Me" and his mesmerizing "Time After Time."
I have a big soft spot for a lot of his late '60s work because of the way he directly confronted aging. This is something that was largely confined to the blues and country margins at that time if you heard it at all.
I don't mind the bonus tracks on the classic albums as long as they are on the end. There's no necessity to listen to those two last tracks in the same sitting as the classic album (although I admit I'm a song person first, as opposed to albums) and it helps avoid the collector's nightmare of trying to track down songs that never appeared on albums, yet often miss greatest hits or are one greatest hits and not another.
I think a key to Sinatra's later greatness was the fact that he was significantly humbled in the early 1950s. Losing his deal and being on the outskirts of the culture kind of set him on fire inside driving him to take complete control of his career and set to his liking. When he got that second chance at the ring he was determined not to let it go and to do it on his own terms. If you watch his early films there's none of that cock of the walk glory you would see in the later movies and the great man's TV appearances.
Peggy Lee's Black Coffee also has a good claim to being the first concept album. Like rock n' roll it may have been an idea whose time had just come.
Good time Charlie- I kind of discovered Sinatra in the same manner as well. For years I only had a Capitol era greatest hits, then I bought this very album under discussion here and within a year I had about 30 CDs.
It's appropos of nothing I suppose but I don't think I would have ever warmed to Sinatra had it not been for Bobby Darin. I remember I bought a greatest hits of Darin's career in the mid-1990s to get "Dream Lover" which I had on 45 but wanted on CD and the song Elvis remade "I'll Be There" which a local oldies station played all the time. I went mad for that CD and eventually found myself getting into Bobby's mainstream pop. The songs, and melody and orchestration on those was what built my taste gradually for old school pop. And just as I used Darin to find a way into Sinatra and Martin, I used Sinatra as guide into Clooney, Bennett, Crosby, Dick Haymes etc.
That's the sad thing about the way Lennon's Elvis comment has been misinterpreted. There was actually quite a bit of good stuff before Elvis not only in classic pop, but in blues, country, gospel and jazz.
Sat Sep 10, 2011 4:43 pm
likethebike wrote:Nice review Greystoke.
In The Wee Small Hours is about neck and neck with Only the Lonely as my favorite Sinatra although it's followed very closely by Songs for Swingin' Lovers for me "You Make Me Feel So Young" is the best thing he ever did, so full of the affirmation of life. I must say though that I enjoy the first Jobim set as much as any of them, although I know in my heart it's not as good as that '50s series, a little more monotonous I guess and fewer standout moments, but still I find the high points exhilarating including the brilliant reclamation of "Girl From Ipanema." I would think his most underrated LP would be Watertown because it never gets discussed and it is actually quite moving. As I am a huge Four Seasons fan and this is a Bob Gaudio production, this probably has an extra soft spot for me. Continuing on the underrated path, I would also like to add the absolutely splendid version he did of "Goody Goody" on the Live And Swinging collection released a few years back and recorded in 1962. He completely reinvents the song with his phrasing, pausing on the title words, basically speaking them, and capturing a lot of the snarl that a lot of other singers miss.
I think in the Capitol days he was a better singer, but in the Columbia days his voice was much more beautiful, even if i never felt it in sheer sonic beauty it matched Crosby or Martin or Cole or some of my other favorite singers in the pop tradition. My favorites from then are "Someone to Watch Over Me" and his mesmerizing "Time After Time."
I have a big soft spot for a lot of his late '60s work because of the way he directly confronted aging. This is something that was largely confined to the blues and country margins at that time if you heard it at all.
I don't mind the bonus tracks on the classic albums as long as they are on the end. There's no necessity to listen to those two last tracks in the same sitting as the classic album (although I admit I'm a song person first, as opposed to albums) and it helps avoid the collector's nightmare of trying to track down songs that never appeared on albums, yet often miss greatest hits or are one greatest hits and not another.
I think a key to Sinatra's later greatness was the fact that he was significantly humbled in the early 1950s. Losing his deal and being on the outskirts of the culture kind of set him on fire inside driving him to take complete control of his career and set to his liking. When he got that second chance at the ring he was determined not to let it go and to do it on his own terms. If you watch his early films there's none of that cock of the walk glory you would see in the later movies and the great man's TV appearances.
Peggy Lee's Black Coffee also has a good claim to being the first concept album. Like rock n' roll it may have been an idea whose time had just come.
Good time Charlie- I kind of discovered Sinatra in the same manner as well. For years I only had a Capitol era greatest hits, then I bought this very album under discussion here and within a year I had about 30 CDs.
It's appropos of nothing I suppose but I don't think I would have ever warmed to Sinatra had it not been for Bobby Darin. I remember I bought a greatest hits of Darin's career in the mid-1990s to get "Dream Lover" which I had on 45 but wanted on CD and the song Elvis remade "I'll Be There" which a local oldies station played all the time. I went mad for that CD and eventually found myself getting into Bobby's mainstream pop. The songs, and melody and orchestration on those was what built my taste gradually for old school pop. And just as I used Darin to find a way into Sinatra and Martin, I used Sinatra as guide into Clooney, Bennett, Crosby, Dick Haymes etc.
That's the sad thing about the way Lennon's Elvis comment has been misinterpreted. There was actually quite a bit of good stuff before Elvis not only in classic pop, but in blues, country, gospel and jazz.
Sun Sep 11, 2011 9:20 am
Sun Sep 11, 2011 12:28 pm
likethebike wrote:I really love "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" from that album. I do agree about Sinatra's singing. It's like he's on a tightrope and he's kind of balancing himself trying not disrupt the gentle sway of the music. It really has an ethereal quality.
I was very disappointed that the second time out, they only managed half an LP.
It's a shame the Watertown TV show didn't work out. Its failure commercially is kind of stunning as its chart position was worse than any non-compilation album in Frank's lifetime. Maybe Frank's usual audience thought it was too weird. Or maybe Frank had simply not adjusted to the new commercial rules yet. This was his third new release in a year with a compilation mixed in for a fourth. 1969/1970 kind of marked the period where artists started to do one instead of three plus albums per year.
I'll have to check out that Sammy album.
Poormadpeter- Haymes is kind of example of the need for reasonable PD laws. While you can find him on an occasional multi-artist comp, you really have to search to find anything else at retail, even in collector's stores, and when you do it's usually a PD comp. I wish there was a little more respect for some of the crooners in the market today. Haymes deserves a listen in my opinion as he had a gorgeous instrument.
Sat Jan 04, 2014 9:25 am
Sat Jan 04, 2014 8:38 pm
Sun Jan 05, 2014 7:13 am
Richard--W wrote:What a lovely thread about my favorite album. I could be wrong, but wans't In the Wee Small Hours originally released on 78 rpm? There were several 78's gathered together in a gatefold book and that was the "album." Later long-playing 33 1/3 enabled all 16 songs to be pressed in one LP. I started my Sinatra collection the right way, with the British box-set, and listened to the albums in chronological order of release. I thought I'd be most receptive to the swing albums, but those ballad albums got hold of me, and changed the way I listen to music forever. I recognized the first album, Songs For Swinging Lovers, like an old friend I hadn't seen in years. It felt familiar. I'd heard these songs, but never paid much attention to them, and now I could get to know them. The album won me over in the first minute. Then came Swing Easy; another revelation. I had discovered the perfect vocalist, a singer who could sing at a conversational level with a depth of feeling to match his mathematical phrasing. But the next album, In the Wee Small Hours, prompted an emotional upheaval. The music may have been recorded 45 years earlier, but the feelings Sinatra was expressing were contemporary and universal; they don't get old. Every male has these experiences, these thoughts, this way of expressing himself about his relationships with women, and every male knows these songs in his bones. The mood of that album was the mood of my life at the time. And so it went, listening to one album after the other in the British box.
Listening to the Capitol albums started me thinking about my late father. He was not one to listen to records, but when I was growing up he always had radio stations on that play Sinatra. He would turn the sound up whenever Sinatra came on. When a Sinatra film was playing, he'd tell me I could come along if I wanted. I'll never forget seeing The Detective (1968) when it was new and I was too little to understand what was going on, but I realize now that the film draws on the "saloon songs" for its dramaturgy and imagery. Once I felt as if my father was in the room with me, listening to In the Wee Small Hours.
I've listened to other editions of In the Wee Small Hours and to other editions of his Capitol records, but none have the clarity and presence of the British box-set. I've been hoping for a half-speed master or a SACD like Nice 'N Easy, but so far, no dice.
Sun Jan 05, 2014 8:20 am
Sun Jan 05, 2014 4:37 pm
Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:37 pm
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