Album Reviews

I recently drove to Boston to visit three old friends I’d not seen for 30 years. I met them when I was in my mid-twenties and they were even younger. While most of my other friends and I sought shallow “hipness” through aggressively consuming what was new and avidly rejecting what was old, these guys didn’t filter their likes through time. They seemed to be as enthusiastic about Cab Calloway in 1972 as his fans must have been back in 1931 when he sold a million copies of “Minnie the Moocher.”


I recently drove to Boston to visit three old friends I’d not seen for 30 years. I met them when I was in my mid-twenties and they were even younger. While most of my other friends and I sought shallow “hipness” through aggressively consuming what was new and avidly rejecting what was old, these guys didn’t filter their likes through time. They seemed to be as enthusiastic about Cab Calloway in 1972 as his fans must have been back in 1931 when he sold a million copies of “Minnie the Moocher.”

Had it not been for these guys, I wouldn’t have gotten to see Cab live when he was in his 60s and still great, though of course past his entertaining and popularity prime. We were part of a special club of appreciators at his small nightclub appearances. I even played one of Cab’s great old songs “Everybody Eats When They Come to My House” on my radio show and everyone dug it.

Listening to this new Mobile Fidelity reissue of Sinatra’s 1960 classic had me thinking of how a younger generation might react to hearing it in 2009. There’s nothing like this now and don’t tell me it’s Michael Feinstein or Harry Connick, Jr. or Michael Buble, because it ain’t.

Sinatra voice is bigger, bolder and stops time in ways the others can only wish they could. The arrangements by Nelson Riddle and the musicianship of the studio cats all playing live are also difficult to duplicate today as is the intimate, warm sound—as warm and intimate as the live-in-the-studio performances. These were events captured live to tape, not studio creations that live only on tape.

Other than the title tune, Sinatra covers a collection of standards associated with him when he was a teen heart throb: familiar songs like “That Old Feeling,” “ Fools Rush In,” and “Try A Little Tenderness,” better know to a boomer audience as an intense, over the top, passionate Otis Redding cover and perhaps unknown to a younger generation. Sinatra does “I’ve Got A Crush On You,” which many will know from the slightly salacious version found on his later Reprise double LP Sinatra Live at The Sands.”

Nelson Riddle’s spare, yet simultaneously opulent arrangements feature cascading string stings, warm brass and caressing woodwinds surrounding Sinatra’s closely miked voice. As with label mates Nat Cole and Peggy Lee, few singers can survive this kind of dry, close miking. Sinatra’s phrasing and breath control are astonishing—that is if you even take note of it, so well covered are the technique artifacts.

This was two years into the stereo LP era and the orchestral mixes were fairly hard left/right with plenty of room in the middle provided for the vocals. The recording and mixing produced warm, soft, buttery images with the original pressing having an added, unnecessary reverberation, particularly on Sinatra’s voice, that’s wisely been reduced on the reissue. Clearly, the reverb is a mastering artifact and not mixed into the master tape, though I’m open to being proven wrong on this.

I compared a few original pressings with Mobile Fidelity’s ‘80s reissue and this new one. First of all, if you have the early Mo-Fi, you have something that’s bright, hard and jacked up on top and not representative of the classic Capitol sound. Listen to the superb original and you’ll know that all the quiet Japanese “Super Vinyl” in the world can’t make up for wrong-headed equalization.

Tonally, the new Mobile Fidelity mastering is more in the spirit of the original: it’s slightly soft and forgiving, with silky strings and buttery brass. With less reverb applied, Sinatra’s voice is warm and three dimensional, though on my system at least, it’s been made a bit too warm in the lower octaves, which cuts back ever so slightly the clarity, presence and immediacy of the original. There’s a bit of cloudiness heard on this reissue when Frank descends to the lower registers not heard on the original.

There’s no denying one fact though: the reissue features dead-quiet backgrounds no original I’ve gotten a hold of can match. I could make a case for finding a clean original at a garage sale but I can more easily make the case for this superb sounding reissue.

So I’m thinking of a 20 something reading this and all I can write is, “Yes, this is old, dated music that when auditioned in the context of today’s noisy, angular and loud music sounds cobwebbed from another era.

Hopefully sufficient numbers of young analog lovers today are capable of reaching back and appreciating the greatness of a bygone era now as I managed with Cab Calloway all those years ago.

Hopefully they (you) will pick up this superb sounding vinyl reissue and imagine listening in wondrous rapture to “The Voice” back in 1960 when this album was released. It’s a time long gone, but it was magical nonetheless and certainly worth revisiting on vinyl.

Does it matter that a superfluous gatefold that adds coffee shop “retro” graphics along with recording dates, publishing and composing credits and more detailed notes but doesn’t find room for the original’s striking black and white shot of Frank going over some sheet music in a darkened studio replaces the original jacket’s simpler presentation?

Does it matter that a black label sporting a pair of logos: one an understated edition of the famed Capitol dome, and the other a new one for Sinatra featuring a fedora topped microphone, replaces the iconic “rainbow rim” Capitol original?

Not really. It’s more about the music and the mastering. The music needs to introduction and the mastering more than meets expectations and that’s an understatement.

Usually there are reasons for graphic changes on reissues. Sometimes it’s the estate of the late entertainer. In the case of Sinatra that’s easy to imagine. Sometimes it’s the label and sometimes it’s both.

On the other hand, the reissue includes the original’s short annotation to which are added more extensive ones, both of which are credited to the late Pete Welding. Did he write both? Could be but I doubt it.

A superb crowd-pleasing reissue from Mobile Fidelity.