[Pedro]

1. L.A. Is My Lady
2. The Best Of Everything
3. How Do You Keep The Music Playing?
4. Teach Me Tonight
5. It's All Right With Me
6. Mack The Knife
7. Until The Real Thing Comes Along
8. Stormy Weather
9. If I Should Love You
10. A Hundred Years From Today
11. After You've Gone

track 1 arranged by Quincy Jones, Dave Matthews, Jerry Hey, Torrie Zito, conducted by Quincy Jones
track 2, 3 arranged by Joe Parnello, conducted by Quincy Jones
track 4 arranged by Torrie Zito, conducted by Quincy Jones
track 5, 7, 9, 10 arranged by Sam Nestico, conducted by Quincy Jones
track 6, 11 arranged by Frank Foster, conducted by Quincy Jones
track 8 arranged by Sam Nestico, conducted by Joe Parnello

Reprise CD

[C.R.E.]

This was the first Sinatra album I ever purchased..on cassette. I still love this album (and now have it on CD).

The Mack the Knife version on cassette (purchased id back in 88 or 89 ) is different than the one on the CDs now...but both are cool arrangements.

Best track: After you've gone or Teach me Tonight

***The Mack the Knife version on cassette (purchased id back in 88 or 89 ) is different than the one on the CDs now...but both are cool arrangements. ***

Actually, the orchestral track is identical. The original LP (and the cassette versions) have the recording Sinatra made for the album during the sessions in April 1984. Strangely enough, this remains unreleased on CD to date.

After having sung it for two years in concert, Sinatra in 1986 decided to do a vocal overdub on the April 1984 orchestral track. This was done in October 1986.

Bernhard.

[Duncan]

I love the cover art it's the best! Makes me think that somewhere in that city there's a crowd queuing up to see Sinatra in concert!

This album is one of my favourites, and the title track is so cool, so easy, breezy, modern, jazzy... so Quincy. I'm gonna go put the CD in now.

"The music she moves to is music that maked me a dancer..."

[C.R.E.]

Ya, that is interesting....I guess FS wasn't that happy with the original vocals and decided to mix it up a bit.

I always liked the faster version anyway...like the one he does on the Frank Liza Sammy Tour in 88.

[C.R.E.]

I can tell you, when I was a kid and that album came out...it made me want to live in California, just because it looked so cool on that cover...and I had this image of the whole area as one slick Sinatra-Styled state..

Then I learned that LA was just the latest place Frank would embrace with song..after chicago and NY. But the first time I flew into LA I had that song playing on my cassette Walkman...man it was the tops....

The album is a refreshing blast. I love it.

[C.R.E.]

By the way, why the Hell didn't Frank ever sing about Pittsburgh...

HAHAHH! Just kidding. Pittsburgh is my lady...HAHAH! It just doesn't seem like that would EVER happen....not in 10, million years.


"MY KIND OF TOWN.......MY KIND OF TOWN......STEEL CITY IS"

[Stranger56]

"There's no way this 69 year old man is swinging like this!!"

I remember thinking that when I heard this LP for the first time. A year before his 70th birthday, and he's wailing on things like After You've Gone, If I Should Lose You, and It's All Right With Me, among others?
Couldn't be.
And what arrangements!!
Mack became an immediate fixture in his live performances, How Do You Keep The Music Playing was haunting, and the title track was just jazzy enough to draw us in for this wonderful ride.
After reaching superstar status with Michael Jackson, Quincy comes back and shows everyone where his roots are.
And, as great as it is, all I keep thinking is....."How great would this have been had they done it in, say, 1965?

Jim

This is one of the only albums of Frank's that I don't partically like. To me it sounds like 80s music. Yes it did come out during the 80s, but its just a cd that does stand against time in my opinion. The only track I kind of like, is Mack The Knife. Even though I perfer the other arrangements I've heard before.

[Rich K]

If this album had been a commercial success, we surely would have enjoyed more Sinatra albums than just the Duets issues.
And I'm not sure why it didn't do better. Frank more than holds his own with a group of great musicians and the audio quality is excellent.

[C.R.E.]

I agree with Rich--I think had this been more of a commercial success it would have lead to new Sinatra recordings in the jazz/pop easy listening style of the day say circa 85-86.

Here is a theory I have on why the commercial success may have been lacking:
1. I think 1984 was a very big year, musically with phenomenans (sp) like MTV and a variety of musicians and bands coming in and out of vogue....It was a crowded market at that point and the country was still coming out of the 1981-1982 Country-Pop music phase, moving into distinct buckets of Rock, Dance (post-disco)and moving into more of the keyboard orchestrated synth pop. Although many artists were cross-genre; I can tell you as a kid at that point, all my freinds and I were amazed to see videos by people like Frank Sinatra, Van Halen, Tina Turner, and Culture Club all in an afternoon rotation on MTV! So it may have been a hard time to have a blockbuster album for "older artists" that weren't recording in the "new sound". This was before "retro-cool" came into vogue in the late 90's.

2. Maybe it had more to do with evolving music tastes of the average aged of the Sinatra buyer/fan at that time. Not sure.

3. The pop radio stations at that time all seemed to segment music into cross-genre programming based on the time of the day...pop rock in the morning, dance at night and easy listening later in the evenings. Maybe there wasn't enough airplay.

I would be interested to hear what others think on the commercial success of LA.

[Rich K]

John Rockwell, a writer for "Rolling Stone" at the time, was an avid Sinatra fan and even wrote a very good book about Frank. But the magazine gave this album a thumbs down (not sure if it was Rockwell or not). Part of the knock against the album seems to be that it was recorded so quickly. The album notes tend to brag about that...and rock fans are used to albums that have taken months to produce. I personally know of a potential buyer who passed on this album because he'd heard that Frank recorded the whole thing in three or four sessions...something he'd been doing all his life.
Quincy Jones was trying to write a singles hit when he came up with the song "L.A. Is My Lady". This was the same year Los Angeles hosted the Olympics and it was an attempt to cash in on that Olympic fever, but it didn't work. While it has great production values, it really isn't much of a song.

[C.R.E.]

That is really interesting, Rich. I am surprised the album wasn't more of a success....I think the songs are really awesome, and L.A. itself is really quite impressive.

"L.A. Is My Lady" was indeed a commercial failure, peaking at #58 on the Billboard album charts. As to why... that is an interesting question. I think part of it is that he was taken for granted. People really did seem to think that he'd go on forever, especially in the '80s when he was in great form. I had the chance to see him a number of times, but didn't get around to it until 1992 because I figured, well, I'll catch him next time. After all, there will always be a next time, right? So "L.A." was just another Sinatra album at the time, not the fabled Final Sinatra Album (solo album, anyway) that it was destined to become.

Personally, I think it's a great album. The arrangements sound like nothing on any other Sinatra album, and while it's dated in places (especially the title track), at its best it's a thrilling, swinging document of Sinatra, 1984 vintage. And that's a very good year indeed....

PJ

[steffen]

this is only one of three sinatra albums in his mature 80s voice, the voice i like most.

the other two are "trilogy" and "she shot me down", and i think he is just as good if not more loose and self assured here.
on trilogy he worked very concentrated, the songs are polished, often with heavy strings and even choir. on shot me down he worked with new songs and unusual orchestrations.

HERE he is in his medium, the good standards and the swing, the beat and the uptempo. he sounds very easy and comfortable. as if he never sang something else, yet these songs were new to him! (many never recorded).

i never really heard that FS was unsatisfied with his effort here; in contrast, seeing him in the studio (on the sessions video), i got the impression he was high spirited about this project.

yes, the cover is spectacular, it would have made a great live cover too.

<<i never really heard that FS was unsatisfied with his effort here>>

I heard him say it in an interview with, I believe, Larry King about six months after the album came out. He complained about the hoopla surrounding the filming of the recording sessions, and that he didn't have enough time or input in the song selection (I think Quincy Jones picked many of the tunes).

In 1983, a year before "L.A." was recorded, he said in another radio interview that he was looking for new material to record, as opposed to standards, but hadn't found enough quality songs for an album. The first few songs on "L.A." (the title track, "The Best Of Everything," "How Do You Keep The Music Playing") are probably what he had in mind originally.

Mr. Sinatra's opinion notwithstanding, I think it's a fine album. There's additional material from the sessions that would be great as bonus tracks on future CD releases -- an early version of "How Do You Keep The Music Playing" with a different arrangement, a run-through of "Body And Soul" which did not make it to the final album, and of course the original, 1984 vocal of "Mack The Knife."

PJ

[C.R.E.]

How Do You Keep the Music Playing is such a beautiful recording. Frank's voice was still good here. It clearly went down a notch after this album (naturally with Age etc) but what a pretty, pretty song.

[Rich K]

While I don't believe he ever said so, I have a hunch Frank didn't record "Body and Soul" because he didn't like the arrangement.
Frank Foster's chart has lots of peaks and valleys and quotes of other songs that perhaps just wasn't what Frank was looking for. He dismissed re-doing this saying he'd already done it (in the late '40's). But then there are a couple of other songs here he also had already done.
While Frank's singing on "How Do You Keep the Music Playing" is superlative, I wish Nelson Riddle had done the arrangement. The chart here sticks to the "band" sound rather than an orchestra with strings, but its voicings sometimes remind me of a high school band. One interesting note on this song: a very brief Brecker (which one?)trumpet solo is not audible on the album but it is on the video. (If you listen very closely to the album, you can hear the trumpet way way back there, just barely audible. I guess Frank or Q didn't care for the solo.

[C.R.E.]

"Yeah...we got the Brecker Brothers...and HAMP bringin' up the rear"

I honestly can't see FS doing a cool version of body and soul at this point--but I really think that song belongs to a female delivery...like Ella. Just my own opinion.

PS..High school band...I am laughing my a$$ off on that one!!!

FRANK'S REPRISE JUKEBOX CONVERSION
(Code digits: 1&2 = Disc, 3&4 = Track)

http://www.sinatrafamily.com/forum/s...&threadid=8119

L.A. IS MY LADY

2009 L.A. Is My Lady
2012 The Best Of Everything
2015 How Do You Keep The Music Playing?
2016 Teach Me Tonight
2013 It's All Right With Me
2019 Mack The Knife
2010 Until The Real Thing Comes Along
2018 Stormy Weather
2017 If I Should Love You
2014 A Hundred Years From Today
2011 After You've Gone