Frank Sinatra - Sings the Songbooks (2018)

The American singer and actor Francis Albert Sinatra (1915-1998) was one of the most successful pop artists of the 20th century. Even as a teenager he was an ambitious singer and after hearing Bing Crosby, he knew what his dream job would be. As early as 1939, the popular swing trumpeter Harry James brought him to his newly founded big band. The first records found only few buyers, but his move to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra began the meteoric rise of 25-year-old Sinatra in the Forties. "Polka Dots and Moon Beams" was his first hit in April 1940. Once he was able to get out of an extremely unfavorable contract with Dorsey, he finally established himself as a solo artist in 1943.

Sinatra's repertoire consisted of songs that are now considered classics in the 40s and 50s, immortalized as part of the "Great American Song Book". Sinatra never took up the idea of "songbook albums" out of respect for Ella Fitzgerald, who celebrated her greatest successes with albums dedicated to individual songwriters in the 1950s, from Cole Porter to the Gershwins. Still, Sinatra was a perfect interpreter of these songs, as this 10 CD-set of newly compiled albums with the work of composers and lyricists gathered here shows. It presents Sinatra's versions of the greatest songs by Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Sammy Cahn, James Van Heusen and Jerome Kern. "Ol' Blue Eyes" always had the best orchestras and arrangers at his side and you will enjoy the work of Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Axel Stordahl, Alec Wilder, Percy Faith, Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Gordon Jenkins and André Previn on this documentation.