Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality and General Discussion: Songs for Swingin' Lovers - Released 1956*

Yes, and (IIRC) wet.

 

Using very, very broad strokes, my thoughts are:
•Frank wanted more subtlety, not less, on Songs for Swingin' Lovers, which was all about color, restraint, and shimmer, with only very brief "release the hounds" moments (arguably only one such moment). That big trumpet buildup on the session linked above was too "standard issue" to fit, so was redone (and, IMO, improved upon).
•For Come Dance with Me, I think it was just the opposite: Billy wrote some arrangements with all the "fun stuff," i.e., tuba, bells, marimbas, timpani, elastic tempi, dynamic fits and starts, and the usual heavy dose of sly, understated Billy May humor, and Frank said, "Screw that subtle stuff; I want a stripped-to-basics big band that's going to swing like a mother." "Vocals that Dance" -- indeed! The "drive" on that album is incessant and undeniable, while the September session produced tracks that were kind of a Billy May take on SFSL.

By and large, I think these were probably the right things to do. That said, I love the September CDWM songs, and wonder how great -- albeit immeasurably different -- an album of similar arrangements could have been. As much as I like the album that resulted, I wonder if the album that did not materialize may have been even better, despite not being hyped up on overdrive. It definitely would have lost some of its urgency, but may have picked up some needed color, variety, etc.

 

Re: The Come Dance with Me sessions:

??????
Not on the actual album tracks from December.

 

From January, 2016:

^^^^^^^^^Regarding all my blather (especially the first couple of paragraphs) from nearly a year ago: It falls in line very well with a recently-shared interview with Sean R. Britton at MFSL regarding SFSL:
<<The splices had dried out -- the adhesive on the splicing tape -- so each splice had to be reconstructed….In the case of the Sinatra it added weeks onto the total project to do those, and sometimes just accessing those tapes, finding them…in that case it took years to find those phonoreels, then assemble a master from those takes, and because when you cut a record it's from a contiguous groove from the outer to the inner edge of the record, they had to be spliced together accordingly, and then, at the end of the project, Capitol Records requested that we put the tapes back in their original condition* rather than keeping them as full production masters so that they could use them in the future. They wanted them put back, restored to their original condition*, which, to me, was a huge waste of -- it had to all be put back the way it was, but, of course, in better condition because I replaced all the splices on those tapes.>>
(Interview conducted by George McClure of ListenUp TV, uploaded May 28, 2015.)

*I think that by "condition" (in the two instances marked with * above) he means "status" in reference to physical location on particular reels, not whether or not the tapes had been damaged. Likewise, when discussing splices, he says "it added weeks to the project to do those," I don't think he means that it literally took weeks just to make splices. Rather, I suspect that it took weeks to get everything in order to create a usable master, i.e., waiting for tapes to arrive, evaluating tapes, splicing tapes, sequencing tapes, then un-splicing sequenced tapes, removing songs from the temporarily-assembled master reel, returning songs to the reels where they were found, etc.

(Thanks to @MMM who shared the interview via private message last night and has now posted the interview above.)

 

I've said before that I'm pretty sure that the excellent UMe LP is sourced from the excellent MFSL hybrid CD or files related to the creation of said CD. If, during the process of creating the MFSL version, masters for individual songs were gathered together from assorted reels, spliced together to create some sort of "running master," then DIS-assembled upon return to Capitol, then there is, once again, no set of "contiguous running masters" for side one and side two, so unless Capitol once again went to the trouble of gathering up those tapes and creating a new pair of masters (side one, side two), then it seems like a no-brainer that the new LP is just cut from the beautifully made digital files that resulted from the MFSL project. Works for me! It sounds great!

 

My take, from the website:

Lots of clips at that link, so you can do some comparing for yourself. To my ears, the 2016 LP is the best the album has ever sounded on LP.