DCC Archive Sinatra advice, anyone?

Got married in Las Vegas last month. It must have been the atmosphere, but I was inspired to pick up a copy of "The Summit" cd when I was down there, even though I've never listened to Sinatra before. Since then I've also grabbed the Sinatra '57 and Robin and the 7 Hoods discs, and now I'm interested in hearing some other stuff. My question: aside from the DCC/Artanis stuff that's available, what are the best-mastered Sinatra CDs out there? What would anyone recommend as far as the best-mastered greatest hits albums?

 

Well a lot of the Capitol stuff WAS mastered quite well, but right now, even my favorite Sinatra on Columbia, Capitol and Reprise sounds great, but isn't perfect. Sinatra suffers form a lot of mastering deafness, minus what you might be able to get on DCC.

However, if you have fond memories of Vegas and want to keep in the spirit as WELL as a great performance CD, I'd recommend the "Sinatra At The Sands" with Count Basie directed by Quincy Jones, Reprise. It's a 2Lps on 1 CD on Warners (I still have the 2Lp set) Grab a hat rack and dance!

Neatest thing is when Sinatra has Dialogue between sets and mentions that Dean Martin WAS a drunk, and that after seeing Sammy Davis' TV special, Sinatra saw he made a book called "Yes I can". He wrote back to Sammy and said "NO YOU CAN'T!"

It's true; as much as Sammy and Frank had disagreements as well as good times, Sammy's network show was all gooey, and lasted only 4 months.

Sinatra is in great form on the record, and Basie "JUMPS" high. You might like that record so much, you'll go out and buy (Verve) "Basie In Paris", one of his classics.

 

I heard the 1998 Reprise remasters are good, or at least better than the old Reprise CD's. In that case, I'd get "September Of My Years" and the famous Reprise Sinatra-Basie album.

The Columbia material has been redone a lot. The most popular one is the 4 CD box set (I think it's called "The Best of Frank Sinatra"). These were 78 rpm's, just so you know. The mastering could probably be better, but for the most part it's not bad.

The Capitol years are his best work, my absolute favorite, but the CD's are a mess. You're better off with early vinyl pressings, preferably the mono ones. If you don't want to know more details about this, don't read ahead...

Steve has talked about this at length. Frederic Einstein said the new Concepts box is supposed to be the best (with the exception of "Songs For Swingin' Lovers), but I've heard others say that it doesn't sound good. Much hype has been made over the EMI box set, "The Capitol Years," and while it's better than the individual 1998 remasters and possibly the new Concepts box, I have it, and there are problems with various discs. Some, like "Nice N' Easy," are drenched in reverb.

The original 1987-1991 CD's supervised by Pete Welding used the correct masters, but with digital reverb added. When Welding passed away, every Capitol CD made afterwards used the wrong tapes (when Sinatra left Capitol, safeties were made of all the masters, but with bad EQ and sometimes echo was added, and these were labeled "master" as well). Excessive noise reduction was often used as well.

It's not always the mastering either. Steve mentioned that "Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely" was recorded in mono and three-track; the mono was better recorded. The three-track was later poorly mixed with excessive EQ and echo added (add that to the short list of things Steve wouldn't mind remixing in stereo).

 

Hi,

most of the Reprise stuff is O.K., except perhaps Sinatra/Jobim. Avoid Capitol's "Entertainer Of The Century" series. The new "Rat Pack At The Sands" CD is good, however.

Arne

 

If you're able to afford it, the 2000 edition Capitol box set "Concepts" collects all of Sinatra's original 'theme' albums from 1953-62 in 20-bit or 24-bit remasters. The remastering engineer is Bob Norberg, but he seems to have gone much easier on the No-Noise control on these recordings as you can still hear a sliver of tape hiss. As a result, you can hear more of the sonic character of the full track mono and 3-track stereo masters that were used. This was Sinatra at his musical prime, when he and Elvis Presley, the other '50s icon, could do no wrong musically. Paul Seydor gives this collection his 2001 "Golden Ears Music Award" in the Dec. 2001 - Jan. 2002 issue of "The Absolute Sound".