New "Ultimate Sinatra" collections coming April 21, 2015

Better to come? Are you joking? They (record company) have proven here they couldn;t care less. The best is yet to come, hey? I think not! This is about as good as we can expect.

I have only played discs 2 and 3 so far and 2 in the car only. Disc 3 starts incredibly well to my ears with the mono Only The Lonely tracks sounding as good (or better?) than the MFSL versions. The next few songs also sound quite dynamic and uncompressed BUT then something happens. Through 'phones I found myself turning it down as it got uncomfortable for my ears. Sharp screechy brass and all. I am no expert on all these recordings as quite a few I am hearing for the first time but unless the Reprise material was all very sub-standard to start with, someone has made it all sound consistently terrible. The compression spoils it for me.

I think it's a mixed bag. There's no consistency of sound quality across the discs I've heard. Maybe this is because it's a compilation? I doubt that.

 

So on the day of release, Amazon.com screws all its pre-order customers by dropping the price to $33.35. Way to go, Amazon! I'm so glad I canceled my pre-order. I think I'm going to revise my standard advice in the future.

 

Matt , further to your comments it maybe of interest to know that I've put my 4 disc set into iTunes to rip it and some very interesting info comes up along side the track names.
For example All or Nothing States 78 rpm version as does You'll Never Know ,Nancy, Birth of the Blues , Saturday Night , I'm a Fool & Why try to Change Me.
Other tracks are showing the remastered year from 96 to 2009 and some have no details that's just disc one.

 

I've seen that too. I'm waiting for the new download releases of the albums. No more compilations (ok, the bonus tracks are nice)!

 

So there is little new remastering and this is just a compilation of old (and often inferior) masters? That's shabby for a 100th Anniversary release. Can we send it back?

 

The very thought of you remastered 2011
Disc 4 if noted most are 2008 It had to be you 2011

 

I got my track titles for this boxed set fvia iTunes, and the tracks came with remaster years in the track names. Not sure what the source was for this information (it is not in the booklet that comes with the set), but if the newly remastered songs are the ones that don't have a stated remaster date then that looks like about 39 tracks (or two-fifths) of the entire set are freshly remastered. From what people are saying, they don't appear to have been freshly remastered particularly well, but two CDs of freshly remastered Sinatra is not, in itself, a bad deal for a budget collection.

What worries me more is that if this is Universal's gambit in April, it's hard to believe that they have a coherent project in mind for later in the year: if they had remastered the entire catalogue, then this entire compilation would have been remastered. If they've just remastered part of the catalogue, badly, then what release would they have that would interest the Sinatrologists here at SHF?

If you look as this set on priming the pump for a bigger release, you can pretty much count me out now on what that release might be.

 

The Life of a Sinatra Enthusiast is a Life of repeated and seemingly endless frustrations that cause a strange psychological phenomenon whereby said Enthusiast keeps allowing Hope to triumph over Experience.

This is known, colloquially, as 'The Best Is Yet To Come And, Babe, It's Gonna Be Fine Syndrome'.

 

Universal Music describes the bonus tracks: uDiscover —> Ultimate Sinatra – The Rarities

​

To celebrate this year’s centenary of Frank Sinatra there is a superb new set of releases under the name, Ultimate Sinatra that presents key recordings spanning the Chairman of the Board s recordings for Columbia, Capitol and Reprise, together for the first time.

Ultimate Sinatra opens with ‘All Or Nothing At All,’ recorded with Harry James and his Orchestra on August 31, 1939 during Sinatra’s first studio session. Ultimate Sinatra’s 4CD edition boasts 100 tracks celebrating 100 years (including a never before released bonus track). The deluxe edition also features an 80-page booklet with a new essay by Sinatra historian and author Charles Pignone, as well as rare photos and quotes from Frank Sinatra and his children, Nancy, Tina and Frank Jr., as well as from Nelson Riddle, Billy May and Quincy Jones.

Aside from the unreleased track included on the 4CD set there are some other previously unreleased songs included as bonus tracks that we’ve explored to put them into some kind of context.

​

It was on Wednesday 18 July 1979 that Frank was at Western Recorders studio in Hollywood with Billy May conducting the orchestra for the third of three consecutive evening sessions. Sinatra and May were there to record tracks for the Trilogy, Past, Present and Future album project. These particular sessions, which were for the ‘Past’ section of Trilogy, were appropriately the first sessions for the recording of what became a triple album.

Billy May’s long association made him an ideal candidate for recording this section of the project; Billy’s arrangements on each of the tracks that ended up on ‘Past’ are wonderful. Frank even found some very good standards that he hadn’t recorded before that included – ‘But Not For Me’, ‘I Had the Craziest Dream’, ‘More Than You Know’, ‘They All Laughed’, ‘It Had To Be You’ and ‘All of You’ (the latter two tracks are included on the deluxe Ultimate Sinatra).

The unreleased rehearsal of ‘The Surrey With The Fringe On Top’ recorded with Billy May was originally from the 1943 Rogers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma. It is one that Frank had recorded before, the first time way back in 1945, two weeks after World war 2 finally finished in the Pacific. The earlier version was done with Frank’s arranger for much of the 1940s, Axel Stordahl, along with the Pied Pipers, Tommy Dorsey’s singing group from when Frank was a member of Dorsey’s organization.

Cole Porter’s ‘What is This Thing Called Love?’ was written for the 1930 musical Wake Me Up And Dream. It was recorded at Capitol’s Melrose Avenue Studio in Los Angeles on the evening of Wednesday 16 February 1955 and was the first song tackled that evening, shortly after 8 pm.

This was the first time in his career that Sinatra had recorded this beautiful ballad and it was destined for In The Wee Small Hours. The version included with Ultimate Sinatra is take 1 and differs from the one that was eventually used on the record (take 12) in that it features a clarinet solo.

Sinatra had first recorded Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn’s, ‘Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry’ with Axel Stordahl in July 1946. It had originally been written for the flop musical, Glad To See You and performed by Jane Withers. Frank tackled it a second time at a session with Nelson Riddle at the Capitol Tower on Monday 5 May 1958. This first take from this session is the version that is included in Ultimate Sinatra. It was not felt to be quite right and so three weeks later it was recorded again, with Felix Slatkin conducting the orchestra; by the 4th take it was perfect and this is what was included on the beautiful Only The Lonely LP

At 9:30 pm on Tuesday 30 September 1958 Frank was in the Capitol Tower starting work with Bill May on a new long playing record that was to be called Come Dance With Me. The first song they worked on that evening is ‘Just In Time’ another Jule Styne composition although this time it’s with lyricists, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The song was just two years old having been first heard in the musical, Bells Are Ringing. This version was not the one used on the album, instead it was one that was recorded a little over two months later.

Frank Sinatra’s 1966 album, ‘That’s Life’ did really well on the Billboard album chart spending over a year on the best seller list and peaked at No.6in 1967. Its success was helped in no small measure by the title track that was released ahead of the album as a 45 and made No.4 on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘That’s Life’, arranged by Ernie Freeman, was recorded on 18 October 1966 at a session conducted by Donnie Lanier and it features a great Hammond organ solo Michael Melvoin.

Where you can find the bonus material…

4CD Deluxe set includes:
‘The Surrey With The Fringe On Top’ (Rehearsal) – previously unreleased

There’s a voucher to download a 4-track EP of:
‘What is This Thing Called Love?’ (Alternate Version) – previously unreleased
‘Just In Time’ (Alternate Version) – previously unreleased
‘Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry’ (Alternate Version) – previously unreleased
‘That’s Life’ (Alternate Orchestral Version) – previously unreleased

The single CD includes
‘Just In Time’ (Alternate Version) – previously unreleased

The double LP includes a voucher code to download
‘Just In Time’ (Alternate Version) – previously unreleased

 

You may, of course, be right, but it's odd for someone to have typed in all the track names and then added, with no basis at all in fact, remaster track years at random. I'm not taking it as Gospel, just throwing it out there as a possible source of better track info. It's certainly equally credible (and to me more credible) than the boxed set's 'suggestion by omission' that the entire set is remastered.

 

No, those are the official song titles supplied by UMe (metadata within the MP3 files). Take a look at the track listing at —> Amazon.com.

 

I've just received three emails and an SMS message to my phone informing me about the £1 refund I'm now due from Amazon. LOL. How much is it costing Amazon to be honest with its price matching policy?

 

Presumably the tracks that are simply annexed with the word "remastered" are the ones which have been remastered in 2015?

 

Amazon's price guarantee ends on the release day. Anyone who ordered before today will be charged the $33.35 price (or get a refund if they were charged more). They often screw their customers, but didn't screw their pre-order customer's with this price change.

 

No. It's simply an identifier. They could have been remastered in 2008, as many were for the unfortunate Nothing but the Best Reprise compilation.

 

So I'm guessing that the best scenario for us vinyl folks is that it'll be pressed from the 24 bit 44.1 files. Great.

 

My apologies. I thought the offer ended the day before release, but I see now where the exact wording is:

"Pre-order Price Guarantee: Order now and if the Amazon.com price decreases between your order time and the end of the day of the release date, you'll receive the lowest price."​

Still, if they hadn't waited until the very last day, they might have saved some pre-order cancellations. (Like mine.)

 

Well, I restrained from ordering this and looks like I made the right call.

Today, Im listening to this, which I'll give up when they pry it from my cold, dead hands:

 

Both the CD and LP versions of this are most enjoyable. I actually saw a "long box" used copy of the CD set at Amoeba for $20.00 last week.

 

I'm on Target. Next stop Barnes and Noble.

 

Bob, I picked up the 4-CD set at a local retail, indie shop -- it did not contain the download coupons.

Any idea why this is the case? And will there be another option to access these tracks without splurging for the Japan set?