Sinatra: 25 Years On

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Remarkably, it's 25 years ago today since we lost arguably the greatest vocalist of the 20th Century. I remember that day - and the tears - all too well, learning the news through Ceefax before leaving for work. I wouldn't have wanted to have been working in my office with me that day. What's remarkable is that Sinatra's star has never really dimmed in that quarter of a century. If anything, the respect for his artistry I think has increased now that the Duets albums of the early 1990s are now, for most, a distant, unfortunate memory. There's been no flood of posthumous albums, emptying the vaults of alternate takes. Just a select few from the studio, and a handful of boxed sets of live recordings - some better than others, but nothing that remotely tarnishes his name.

It was wonderful to see him trending on Twitter a few weeks ago in the UK, with many watching the 1967 Tv show with Ella & Jobim on BBC2 for the first time. Oh, to have THAT first time experience again. My first time with that show was in 1997, on a 4 VHS set containing, I think, 13 shows in total. I'd bought them on a trip to Ipswich (why I was in Ipswich, I have no idea), and I devoured the set while being off work for a couple of weeks due to being really quite ill. The dozen or so shows are still the backbone of Sinatra on DVD, augmented by about a dozen others. They are remarkable documents still, and demonstrate all too well just what we lost 25 when Sinatra left us twenty-five years ago.