[pattisam]

Jeffrey Simmons wrote: 'Blues in the Night' - This is another masterpiece classic blues number that no-one and I mean no-one has ever bettered. >>

This has always seemed like a fun, campy song to me before, but Francis and Nelson changed it forever. Jeffrey said it best. No one has ever bettered. Amen to that!

Why-oh-why was Where or When added to this masterpiece? This is a favorite song, and over two minutes of the piece is gorgeous, but the crescendo (building at 2:07) ruins the ending, for me, and I found myself gritting my teeth, it was so harsh (under headphones)

That being said, I've had this CD a few short days, but already, I'm tossing around the thought to move it ahead of Wee Small Hours, as my new all-time fave Frank album. Hmmmm. I think I'll just call it a draw.

Damn, this is good. Thanks, Frank.

[russkish3]

I have several versions of this album. The late 80s Capitol CD, a vintage domestic Capitol vinyl LP, and a Japanese EMI/Capitol that for some reason was issued in red vinyl. Every one of them is a treasure in its own right. My own favorite track is "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry." But there isn't one weak moment anywhere. If you're dealing with a broken heart, you will definitely find some comfort in this album.

Best regards,

Russell Kishi
Glendale, California

I'm tossing around the thought to move it ahead of Wee Small Hours, as my new all-time fave Frank album

This reminds me of a quote by Bogie in Casablanca: "Oh, he's just like any other man, only more so."

Only the Lonely is like Wee Small Hours, only more so..

Here you go Bob

I mentioned in another thread that I ordered Only The Lonely, Swingin' Affair and Nice n Easy from Amazon last about 10 days ago. Well the day before yesterday, Only The Lonely was the first to arrive.

On first listen my initial reaction is "wow, it's sure mellow". (I must be pretty funny to you long term devotees with my Sinatra ignorance). I knew it was going to be laid back, from what I'd already read about how some of his albums are upbeat swing albums, and others are ballad albums.

After three listens now, I really like it. It's not really driving music (like my other two cds, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, and Come Swing with Me), it's more for getting up, or late at night.

So far my favorites are Angel Eyes, Blues in the Night and One for My Baby (what a great song!).

[pattisam]

Bob, I think that is exactly right. I got hooked onto the swing and tempo of Sinatra songs, in the beginning, and it was only years later -- as I matured, I guess -- I started listening to the more mellow Frank. I love both now, equally.

There is so much to enjoy, it boggles my mind.

So far my favorites are Angel Eyes, Blues in the Night and One for My Baby (what a great song!).

Bob, Angel Eyes has grown to be my favorite song on my favorite album. I think it is because I have seen his live rendition of this song (on TV) and it is fabulous. The emotional despair on this album is unbelievable and unmatched by anything that I have heard. The reason it is hard to listen to the album while you are driving, is because it is hard to see the road through the tears. I have always like his "saloon" albums for listening to at home and I like his swing and mid-tempo albums for the road and work.

[Adam]

This thread has to be bumped up.......

Is this rare slow version of 'Where or When' better than the usual concert version we heard? (Sinatra At The Sands).

Adam

"Where Or When", the slow version, had nothing to do with the original 'Only The Lonely' album, the recording was just put there as a bonus track with some of the CD re-releases of the album.

That said - my opinion is, yes of course, this version of "Where Or When" is in a musical sense by far the best of all Sinatra versions of the song, especially when compared to the later versions.

The introductory lines of the refrain (Sinatra always left out the verse), sung to just piano, as delivered here (in the slow version as included as bonus track on the album CD) by Sinatra amount to some of the very best things he ever put to record - these bars are pure genius, world-class arrangement by Riddle and world-class phrasing by Sinatra. All later recordings, as swingy as they might be, but pale by comparison.

Sinatra had sung "Where Or When" as early as 1942, and since had made almost a dozen studio recordings of it (all waxing for radio) all as a ballad, and after 15 years he put all that 'experience' into this Capitol recording. And it shows.

The mid-tempo 'swingy' version (orchestrated by Billy Byers) would of course make a good inclusion on his harvest-years' shows... right down to his very last performance in February 1995, when he sang the swing version grand.

Bernhard.

If I earlier said "Songs For Swinging Lovers" was his best album, this one runs it a very close second. Myself, I love "Angel Eyes" and "Only Te Lonley" but on this album we've got his best ballad.

"One For My Baby (And One More For the Road)" is performed on this album so solemny and so perfectly. This is his best performance of the song. I recentley heard the facter paced Columbia recording and I felt it was a travessty to the lyrisits, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen. Here, we see it performed corectley, with emotion and gracefulness. The song in question is the ultimate "suicide" song, as Sinatra liked to put it and it remains a favroite, actually below my adored "Night and Day".

***I recentley heard the facter paced Columbia recording and I felt it was a travessty to the lyrisits, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen. Here, we see it performed corectley****

I'm not sure about the terms "travesty" re Columbia and "correctly performed" re Capitol being suitable - while of course I agree that Sinatra was the singer who finally made this song his own to an extent that *today* all other tries somewhat fade.

But, as is seldom mentioned, Arlen & Mercer wrote "One For My Baby" not for Sinatra but for Fred Astaire, who introduced it in "The Sky's The Limit" (1943), and quite successfully so! I would recommend to listen to Astaire's original recording of the song, how it's paced and how he nuances it - after that, you'll see more clearly how Sinatra came to his 1947 Columbia interpretation of the song.

For sure, Sinatra's Columbia reading was outlived by himself later - but it certainly ain't no "travesty", it simply was "the status of the song by 1947" so to speak. Sinatra was adapting a song written for another performer, and of course, also picking up on that other performer's (i.e. Astaire's) popular reading.

His movie "Young At Heart" played an important part, I think, for Sinatra in shaping his approach to "One For My Baby". Listen to his 1954 film version of the song (on the Reprise/Turner "Frank Sinatra in Hollywood" set), and you'll see what I mean. That soundtrack recording was much anticipating the 1958 recordings for "Only The Lonely" already.

Today of course, the piano ballad version Sinatra immortalized as early as 1958 (the recording heard on "The Capitol Years" with just Bill Miller on piano, recorded the day before the album version with full orchestra would be canned) and repeated in ALL of its grandness as late as 1993 (as heard on "Duets", minus the annoying Kenny G sax), reigns supreme as far as this song is concerned.

But - even Sinatra himself sang it as a *Swing* version (a few bars of it) several times, as part of the big closing medley with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé during the "Diamond Jubilee" Tour in 1990/1991.

Bernhard.

[Jake]

This is going a bit off topic...

I recently listened to Nat King Cole's rendition of "Miss Otis Regrets" from his "Sands" album, and it blew me away. I usually heard this song in a swing tempo or as an unemotional piano rendition quickly put aside for other Porter songs.
But when an artist uncovers a part of a song that lies beneath the surface, and makes the song larger than it may be, the song is better for it. Cole did that for "Otis", and Sinatra did that for "Baby". It's hard to describe in words.

I love "Ebb Tide" from the album, incidently!

Originally posted by bvo35
***[i]
His movie "Young At Heart" played an important part, I think, for Sinatra in shaping his approach to "One For My Baby". Listen to his 1954 film version of the song (on the Reprise/Turner "Frank Sinatra in Hollywood" set), and you'll see what I mean. That soundtrack recording was much anticipating the 1958 recordings for "Only The Lonely" already.
Bernhard.

I've heard many tracks from the "Frank Sinatra in Hollywood" set and I agree. It is the first tracable orgin to the "Only The Lonley" album.

However, I still have negative feelings towards the Columbia version but I had no clue it was originally performed at a fast pace. Could you tell me how well it was recived at the time? I'm just curious.

Alot of my favorite songs and ballads I undstand were originally performed at a fast rate. I find it funny how rerecordings tend to outrank the fast original versions of these songs...

Wouldn't call it "fast pace" actually, but the original version by AStaire was indeed more of a "slow swinger" than Sinatra's classy later versions were. The film where Astaire introduced it (The Sky's The Limit) itself got rather favouring reviews, and the song seems to have become popular (at least among performers) quickly, being picked up by other interpreters and orchestras.

If you have the chance to see the original movie scene - the character portrayed by Astaire sings the song when he is rather *aggressively* frustrated, and he smashes up the bar's furniture in his rage afterwards. (Played intensely by Astaire, he even cuts his ankles).

I think that's where FS, from the very beginning (including the Columbia version), made a different accent - the "FS character" when doing the song is also frustrated but *pessimistally/passively* so, he gives in to the sadness, accepting the "one more for the road" as fate, rather than going nuts physically.

On that "road" of interpretation, Sinatra then embarked further through the 1954 soundtrack and the 1958 studio recordings. Result: "The daddy of all saloon songs" (as FS himself called it on stage several times, e.g. at the Detroit Ultimate Event Tour shows in late 1989). And "daddy's" master of course was Sinatra. Incredible how he pulled it off in 1958 and STILL sounded at least equally as great in 1993.

Bernhard.

[Jake]

Sammy Davis Jr. usually introduced "One For My Baby" as a song written for Astaire, hoofing (spelling..) on screen, which was his first love. "Just to see this man walk down the street is worth the price of admission."
Usually Sam proceeded to do impressions with the song as a backdrop, as he did in St. Louis in the Frank Sinatra Spectacular, available on DVD in the "Ultimate Rat Pack Collection", with Johnny Carson as MC.
My question is: is the tempo of "Baby" that Sam used for the show the same tempo from the Astaire movie?
Another question: Did Arlen and Mercer see the song as a faster tempo than the Sinatra versions? And if so, were they pleasantly surprised when they heard it as sung by Frank?
Getting back to "Miss Otis Regrets", I wonder if Cole Porter thought the song a mere parody of a country song, or something deeper, with jazz intonations, like Nat King Cole did at the Sands in his album?
(That might be a great thread subject: how did songwriters think their songs should be sung, and how far did that differ from singer's versions, and were they pleasantly or negatively surprised of the outcome? Anyway, stuff for another thread.)

I took the advise of somebody last night.

I was extremly restless and lonely. I was in a bit of a melencholy state, in fact. I rmebered what a freind had told me, that it was a more fufilling experiance to listen to the albums completly than to just choose selected tracks. I then sat downn my chair in my room and heard this entire album (Minus the Extra tracks). I was truly thunderstruck when I was done. My hands were still shaking and the ice in my glass of Coke was ratling like a little babys toy.

I discovered a great gem. "Blue In THe Night". What an amazing balad. It is alot more agressive and bleak than some of the other songs. Overall, the last track on this album was so fiting and apropriate.

[Jake]

Only The Lonely features, in my opinion, the wind section of clarinets and oboes more significantly than in I believe any other album, and that melancholic sound they produce is riveting.

[Ronald Sarbo]

Tony Bennett does "One For My Baby" uptempo.

The version Sinatra sings in "Young At Heart" is the first time he is singing it to a Nelson Riddle arrangement.

His performance in Seattle also pre-dates the "OTL" version.

Sinatra sang some songs at varying tempos throughout his career.

I would have liked to have heard "One For My Baby" or "Come Rain Or Come Shine" perhaps in a more jazzy, uptempo style.

*** The version Sinatra sings in "Young At Heart" is the first time he is singing it to a Nelson Riddle arrangement.***

Ronald, I think the "Young At heart"-version of "One For My Baby", as heard on the Sinatra-in-Hollywood-Box, is just a duet of Sinatra singing and Bill Miller playing the piano (Chuck's liner notes also list arranging credit to Ray Heindorf, which I assume rather go for the whole bunch of soundtrack recordings).

Also, the Seattle version is a piano-only-duet with Miller as well. So one could say that the Nelson Riddle arrangement debuted through the June 25, 1958 Capitol studio recording made for OTL.

I agree how changing tempo can make 'a new song' out of the same one. My favourite example would be Porter's "I Concentrate On You" (Riddle-swinger Capitol vs Jobim-ballad Reprise).

Maybe Sinatra avoided doing that with "Baby" because the piano ballad was *so* much of a signature song for him. I could imagine that the latter fact also influenced Bennett's decision to record it uptempo.

I seem to recall Sinatra performed "Come Rain Or Come Shine" very uptempo for some time in the early 80s with Falcone & Co. Would indeed have been something for the planned Jazz album.

Bernhard.

[steffen]

somehow "one for my baby" uptempo never made sense to me when listening to bennetts or sammy davis' versions. just doesn't go together, lyric-wise, to me.

"come rain or come shine" is something else. listen to judy garlands uptempo version, it's breathtaking. and makes sense.