When my Sinatra obsession began, in earnest, back in 1997, I was determined to get all of the Capitol and Reprise recordings he'd done. After he died, in May of 1998, that became
much easier. But still, albums such as
Sinatra Sings Great Songs from Great Britain,
Watertown,
Sinatra & Company, or
All Alone were more elusive. I ended up having to order my copy of
All Alone from a rare music importer, and it came, complete with stickers proclaiming "Made in: GERMANY." That's all different now, and I think his entire catalog is readily available at Amazon (or probably iTunes) today (I could absolutely be wrong about that though). How things have changed in just ten years. Anyway,
All Alone is one of those "joker cards" in the Sinatra recordings deck. And that's what this post is about, I think. If not that, it's about the "missing" title track.
From the
Wikipedia:
All Alone is an album by Frank Sinatra, released in 1962.
Originally, All Alone was going to be called Come Waltz with Me. Although the title and the accompanying specially written title song were dropped before the album's release, the record remained a stately collection of waltzes, arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins.
All of the tracks on the album are torch songs, hence the lonely name of the album. Almost half of the tracks are written by Irving Berlin.
The cover is a trimmed portion of painting that hung in Sinatra's Palm Springs home.
So, I love the idea that
All Alone started off as a concept album, along the lines of those classic 1950s Capitol albums,
Come Fly with Me,
Come Dance with Me!, and
Come Swing with Me!. Still, it's not one of Sinatra's best works, probably the reason why it's relatively unknown.
Will Friedwald puts it this way:
"In analyzing Sinatra's career in hindsight, like a team of Monday morning quarterbacks, we can be fairly accurately reconstruct his decisions to do certain records...In a million years, however, we'll never be able to figure out--and the Old Man himself has doubtless forgotten--how he conceived of
Come Waltz with Me album, which was released as
All Alone, a set of archaic ballads, primarily from the teens and twenties, rendered in waltz time." (
Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer's Art, p. 343)
Friedwald theorizes Sinatra may have feared "legal entanglements" with Capitol Records, and felt pressure to change the title from
Come Waltz with Me to
All Alone. This would have happened even after he'd commissioned
Sammy Cahn and
Jimmy Van Heusen to write the title track (as they'd done for the singer on
Come Fly with Me and
Come Dance with Me!). The author also proposes that "Come Waltz with Me" had comparatively too "bright" of an intro and slightly faster tempo than the other album selections. So, it was dropped from the album. Thirty years later, the 1992 CD of
All Alone restored the missing track. Ironically, other than the "new" title track, "All Alone," or the classic "The Girl Next Door," it is my favorite song on the whole album. I just love it, with its haunting melodic twists:
"Come Waltz with Me"
Announcing the completion and publication of the 2nd (and hopefully final) edition of Diedrich Rulfs: Master Architect of Nacogdoches. This 130-page book (previous version was 112) includes all of the photographs I used in my posts devoted to the architecture of Diedrich Rulfs, and several I didn't. Two copies of this book are available at the University of Houston library. You can get a free taste at my Rulfs Flickr set.
The '40s and '50s were a classic period in New York City nightlife, when the saloonkeeper was king and regular folks could drink with celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason. In this documentary, Kristi Jacobson profiles her grandfather, the king of kings: Toots Shor of the eponymous restaurant and saloon, which was once the place to be seen in Manhattan.
And what group is more perfect for one of these games than the Fabs? I've never played any of the Rock Band or Guitar Hero games, but I assume the player has to master certain levels to get further into the game. So, the way in which the Beatles rose to higher and higher levels of success (Hamburg to the Cavern, to conquering the U.K., then Europe, America, etc.) must have made it really easy to design the game. Also, what other rock band in the history of popular music had the musical development of the Beatles?? This too will make for a really interesting game -- i.e., you can't play "Ticket to Ride" until you've mastered "Twist and Shout," etc. The Beatles: Rock Band comes out on 9/9/09...
One can watch actual gameplay here, or even better, the trailer. It is a thing of beauty, even if there wasn't a game to promote. Although they got the chronology of the music wrong in some places, it still has the same kind of coolness the mashups done for last year's Love had in some places. It's a neat, mini-history of the group, minus all the petty squabbling and growing-up-and-apart issues (let's leave all that for an awesome film someday):
Cracked has a humorous take on "The Coolest House in the Neighborhood, Perhaps, the Galaxy." Majel Barrett would need to provide the computer voice to truly make it the coolest house for me!
When my Sinatra obsession began, in earnest, back in 1997, I was determined to get all of the Capitol and Reprise recordings he'd done. After he died, in May of 1998, that became much easier. But still, albums such as Sinatra Sings Great Songs from Great Britain, Watertown, Sinatra & Company, or All Alone were more elusive. I ended up having to order my copy of All Alone from a rare music importer, and it came, complete with stickers proclaiming "Made in: GERMANY." That's all different now, and I think his entire catalog is readily available at Amazon (or probably iTunes) today (I could absolutely be wrong about that though). How things have changed in just ten years. Anyway, All Alone is one of those "joker cards" in the Sinatra recordings deck. And that's what this post is about, I think. If not that, it's about the "missing" title track.
So, I love the idea that All Alone started off as a concept album, along the lines of those classic 1950s Capitol albums, Come Fly with Me, Come Dance with Me!, and Come Swing with Me!. Still, it's not one of Sinatra's best works, probably the reason why it's relatively unknown. Will Friedwald puts it this way:
