Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely - Deluxe Edition - October 19, 2018*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Bob F, Jun 4, 2018.

  1. AJH

    AJH Senior Member

    Location:
    PA Northern Tier
    Exactly! As you know, I honestly am a huge fan of the material Larry produced at the time you indicated. However, since the time he started with the Concord Sinatra reissues and going forward, I don't think there is anything I really like, or can even listen to with reference to his Sinatra work- it just doesn't sound anything like the work he did back then. It really does makes me sad to have these recent reissues sound the way they do.
     
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  2. NorthNY Mark

    NorthNY Mark Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canton, NY, USA
    Wow--I've read various expressions of this perspective many times, but I've just never experienced it as bleak or harrowing. For me, it's about loneliness, but within an atmosphere of romantic nostalgia (like a Hopper painting). I guess for me, stuff about addicts dying in the streets, or stuff about extreme rural poverty, would be more likely to elicit reactions like "bleak" or "harrowing." But we all experience these things differently--cheers!
     
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  3. Pants Party

    Pants Party MOSTLY PEACEFUL

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Yeah. "No One Cares" has a sense of desperation about it that was actually quite scary (I guess is the word I'll use to describe it). It was sort of suffocating -- suicidal, as Frank would put it. I played it during a certain low-point and I decided to shelve it for a few years. Now, I love the album. I actually enjoy playing 'No One Cares' when the moment's not right. In lieu of an up-beat swinger, I'll put this one on low and let it simmer after a few beverages. Such as over dinner or something. I've really been into this one lately.

    Next is probably "Where Are You?" in my estimation. Again, a Gordon Jenkins record. Him and Frank were like an atom bomb together.

    "Only the Lonely," if done with Jenkins, could have taken the title. Riddle gives it a certain sense of... I don't know... hope? Air? The contrast is nice, because the songs and Frank's delivery are locked-in and low-down. And while Riddle rides shotgun with him into despair, I feel like he still gives you an option. Like there's both an Angel and a Devil on the shoulders, as opposed to just the devil. You can choose a bit more.
     
  4. aoxomoxoa

    aoxomoxoa I'm an ear sitting in the sky

    Location:
    USA
    Rephrasing my earlier question....


    Does anyone know if the 2 LP has been confirmed to be 45 rpm ?
     
  5. Please check the thread. It's been confirmed here many times now that it's 33 rpm.
     
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  6. aoxomoxoa

    aoxomoxoa I'm an ear sitting in the sky

    Location:
    USA
    Really? How did I miss that?
     
  7. Evan L

    Evan L Beatologist

    Location:
    Vermont
    Larry Walsh=Excellent!
     
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  8. aoxomoxoa

    aoxomoxoa I'm an ear sitting in the sky

    Location:
    USA
    Not always, but he has mastered some fine titles.

    Wow they are really doing this at 33 1/3 on two slabs? :rolleyes:

    Guess I’ll hang my tears out to dry...
     
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  9. Well, to be almost precise, about 33 times! ;)
     
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  10. aoxomoxoa

    aoxomoxoa I'm an ear sitting in the sky

    Location:
    USA
    Somehow I must have missed that part of the convo.

    I may just sit this out until the reviews come in.
     
    CBackley likes this.
  11. If the mix is good the CD should sound great. I'm not buying the LP. I've pre-ordered the 2CD and that's good enough for me.
     
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  12. AxeD

    AxeD Forum Resident

    Although I'm a bit disappointed tha we'll not get the original stereo mix, I'm still
    looking forward to this release.
    And whatever comes out of it with respect to the new stereo version - I expect a reasonably
    good sounding (and affordable) digital version of the mono mix.
     
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  13. Yes indeed. I have the MFSL mono LP but not the CD so the new 2CD is great for an affordable version. Also the new stereo mix on CD should be a welcome and interesting companion disc to Walsh's 87 CD, which I like. I'm hoping for less NR but I think that ship might have sailed.
     
  14. Pants Party

    Pants Party MOSTLY PEACEFUL

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    I can't decide if I need this. I have the MFSL mono CD. And various copies of the stereo. So this would just be for the remix. Maybe I'll wait to see if they do a hi-res download.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2018
    MarkusGermany likes this.
  15. crooner

    crooner Tube Marantzed

    Yes, that would a reasonable thing to expect given that there are High Res downloads available of "In the Wee Small Hours" and "Come Fly With me"...
     
  16. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    UMe stopped doing Hi-Res downloads of Sinatra albums since those were released. I don’t think we’ll see one of this.
     
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  17. crooner

    crooner Tube Marantzed

    That's a shame. However, a well mastered CD can certainly be musically satisfying. Let's hope for the best then, for this release...

    By the way, I'm listening to the SACD of "No One Cares" as I type this. This is as good as it gets sonically. Gorgeous sounding remaster. Sinatra is alive, fleshed out in my listening room!
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2018
  18. RogerB

    RogerB Forum Resident

    Location:
    Alabama
    Agree 100%!!! All the sacd’s sound like magic to my ears. Still pissed the sacd run wasn’t allowed to continue.
     
  19. Nick Dunning

    Nick Dunning Forum Resident

    I had a similar experience with it some years ago, it's not a record I choose to listen to lightly.

    'Where Are You' is heartbroken, but pretty and there's hope.

    'Only The Lonely' is urban, lonely and desolate, but there's still a hint of bravado.

    'No One Cares' is well beyond that, it's beyond hope, and helpless.
     
  20. roda12

    roda12 WATERTOWN FOREVER

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    The big difference between OTL and NOC or between Nelson and Gordy is that Nelson and OTL are much more subtle. Gordy and NOC is too "eye-catching" for my taste. There is much more subtlety in the arrangements and choice of songs on OTL.
    NOC suffers from songs like "Just friends" or "I'll never smile again". Or a song like "I can't get started" is full of humor.(Sinatra did that one much better in concert with the small group. Fits the song much nicer).These songs are much too "obvious" to make me sad. And Gordy's arrangements compared to Nelson's are much too intendently tragical.
    And another point why I much prefer OTL is that it's real jazz. Although symphonic as well, there's still a jazzy Miles Davis feel to it.With Gordy there's no jazz and always a little on the border to being "kitschy". If you know what I mean...
    To make a long story short, OTL is a much more artistical achvievement.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2018
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  21. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    Over a piano-only underscore of the song “Only the Lonely,” Frank Jr. talks about the album, before his rendition of “Spring Is Here”…

    Frank Sinatra Jr.: “Oh yes, then there was this record. Beginning at the time that my father was a young man, he always had a special love for that sad song, that ballad song—love lost, love never realized, love imagined, love dying. ‘Saloon songs’ he was to call them in later years. Recording that kind of story in the confines of a single-song record was at best a limited notion. But in the early 1950’s, with the appearance of the long playing record album, a new vista suddenly became possible. Now, just like a motion picture, a whole mood could be set with a string of sad stories tied together in one record album.

    First, in the early fifties was a wonderful record called In the Wee Small Hours. With his friend Nelson Riddle and a small orchestra, they made a great painting of a lonely man. But by the late 1950’s, both Sinatra and Riddle were a half-decade older. I can only assume it was an important decade for each of them, because emotionally each of them had gained a lot. In the end of that decade—with that infamous black-covered record album that years later Nelson Riddle was to say was the finest vocal album he had ever written—vocally and musically, the album of the sad clown reached the greatest heights of any album of that kind.”

    [​IMG]
     
  22. roda12

    roda12 WATERTOWN FOREVER

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Always loved that term "the album of the sad clown". Beautiful!
     
  23. teag

    teag Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colorado
    No One Cares and Where Are You are both masterpieces. Gordon Jenkins did a tremendous job on both.
     
  24. roda12

    roda12 WATERTOWN FOREVER

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    No doubt about it! Love them both and appreciate them very much as masterpieces in their own right. What I have written was "compared to OTL".
     
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  25. DABarrios

    DABarrios Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York, New York
    I think Gordon Jenkins' arrangements have a stateliness to them that makes them sort of monolithic, almost oppressively sad. But I don't feel like he wrote, for instance, great parts for soloists and I feel like those sax or trombone or trumpet solos or the intricate basslines on tunes in Only the Lonely add a deeper psychological counterpoint overall. Jenkins' arrangements are despairing, but Riddle's arrangements for OTL are more than just despair.

    They're longing, they're sort of sexy on occasion (think of how Blues in the Night slinks with the bass and that muted trumpet), and wildly/tragically romantic (Ebb Tide). Only the Lonely is sort of like going through the five steps of acceptance, except that that last step means stepping out of a darkened bar at 3am into the unknown.

    Jenkins serves as a perfect platform for Sinatra singing up front but listening to Only the Lonely, the extended length of the arrangements made me feel as if Sinatra were also one of the instrumentalists. Which is what makes it the more interesting album to return to.
     

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