The Rat Pack - Eee-O Eleven - The Best of the Rat Pack (2001)

This is one of two albums released by Capitol Records in anticipation of the December 2001 release of the remake of Ocean's Eleven, the 1960 Las Vegas caper film that utilized the talents of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack of entertainers. The original film had no formal soundtrack album, but there was music in the picture and, of course, Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. (along with comedian Joey Bishop and actor Peter Lawford) performed on-stage during the making of the movie. This compilation of studio recordings made in the 1950s and '60s draws not only from the Capitol archives but also from Reprise, for which all three singers began to record starting in the early '60s. It presents versions of the songs heard in the film (Sinatra's "I'm Gonna Live Till I Die," Martin's "Ain't That a Kick in the Head," and Davis' "Eee-O Eleven") plus a couple of duets that appeared originally on a 1962 Reprise single ("Me and My Shadow" by Sinatra and Davis and "Sam's Song" by Martin and Davis, both with special lyrics probably penned by Sammy Cahn) and a bunch of other songs that the three were known to perform during their joint shows, or that are appropriate to the jaunty, jocular tone for which the Rat Pack was known. This is a well-assembled collection that rescues some worthy songs from obscurity (Sinatra's "Mr. Success," Davis' "A Lot of Livin' to Do") and maintains the swinging mood set by Sinatra, Martin, and Davis in their Rat Pack mode.~Eee-O-11: The Best of the Rat Pack Review by William Ruhlmann