Originally Posted by shicorp

In my mind, 'special' and 'abridged' is a contradiction...

You noticed that?

It was not a budget issue. This was among the first group of four Sinatra compact discs to be issued by Capitol, January 23, 1987. My guess is they didn't have the remastered track ready, so they decided to downplay the omission by calling it "special."

Bob, it's very funny because in the thread about twofers I've just described my ideal Sinatra box, a fantasy involving small scale replicas on CD of the original albums... and here you are telling us that the Japanese once released such beauties? Wow! Great minds, as they say... Wonder if they used the original back cover and liner notes, though.

Steph, Answered in the thread for the 14-disc set, Capitol Records Concept Albums, which is similar to your ideal box. The Japanese released only four such miniature LP-style CDs—individually, not in a box set. (See this post.)

This album has always held a special place for me.When I was a boy growing up in the '60's & '70's in Howard Beach NY one of my favorite rainy day passtimes was searching through my parents HI-FI console(Electrophonic w/a Gerrard turntable) and looking at all those mysterious grown up LP covers-Sarah Vaughn, Ella ,Miles,Sammy, etc. - the one cover that always fascinated me the most was In The Wee Small Hours. The noirish colors - all blue and green,the streetlamp...and "that man".His expression,the hat cocked back,the cigarette and that forelorn look on his face.I just HAD to hear what the music on the inside sounded like.When I was old enough to operate the turntable I listened.And listened.It began my lifelong listening to the music of "that man".

[Mark]

This CD kicked off the day for me... So many beautiful songs... Evoking a very relaxed, easy-going mood... I just love the violins that open most of the songs, setting the overall mood of the tunes... 'Deep In A Dream'... just perfect.

[Gary]

What I love so much about this album is that it changes with my moods. If on any particular day I'm feeling down from work and I play it, it brings my spirits back up again because it makes me feel that I'm not the only poor guy on this planet who feels crappy. If on the other hand I'm high on life I like to play it to help bring balance to the force. I certainly dont mean it brings me down just that it has a calming influence. I find that in those moments I'm listening to Frank that his voice melts into the music and the two become as one and it is difficult to tell where the music ends and the voice begins.
There are many key moments in recording history and for mine I think this stands as Franks contribution to a history defining moment.

I just got this album a few days ago, the one with 16 songs (#1 on my list). I've played it several times, and of course I will again. Put it on, have a drink, listen, and think about those old flames. Or just listen without a drink and don't think about anything at all. Either way, it's great Sinatra!

[SinatraFan]

I just listened to this album last night. It's my favorite ballad/saloon song album from Frank.

Beautiful album. I love how he sings "glad to be unhappy" ,"dancing on the ceiling" and "can't we be friends" the best on this album. The first time I listened to "glad to be unhappy" it moved me so much I cried.

[mlutthans]

Originally Posted by Nick in Toronto

(snip)

It remains a happy memory for me as it heralded in the full UK Capitol collection with the exception of This is Sinatra Vol 2 , which for some reason only appeared in the 18 Disc Box.

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(This is my first post in this group, so please forgive me if something doesn't follow protocol. I've been lurking in the shadows for a couple of weeks and am happy to become an actual contributor to these most enjoyable discussions!)

Hmmmm.....I bought the Alan Dell edition of This is Sinatra, Volume 2, at Tower Records in Seattle in 1986, so I think that (at least for a time) it was available separately. (One of several Dell editions I bought new as imports, most of which were very well done, IMHO.)

Regarding Wee Small Hours (the subject of this thread), here's how frustrating I found Capitol's reissues of this great music:

1. Growing up, I just about wore out my dad's copy of the original 10" LP. Sadly, dad only had the first disc, so I knew this as a splendid 8 song album. (My all time favorite recording by anyone, anywhere, BTW.)

2. When I was older, I tried to find the 2nd 10"LP in the used bins, to no avail. I finally gave in and bought a new copy of the then-current 10-song (!) Capitol monophonic reissue. This allowed me to make a 13-song cassette, 3 songs a little scratchy off the original disc, 10 scratch-free off the new vinyl, with varying amounts of reverb from song to song.

3. In college, I was delighted to finally find the 16-song, gray label original on a Canadian Capitol LP, albeit in only fair-to-good condition. I now could compile a tape with all 16 songs sourced from 3 different discs in varying conditions and with varying degrees of reverb (but no duophonic, thank goodness).

4. In 1987, I asked a friend of mine who worked at Magnolia Hi-Fi in Seattle if he knew where I could still get a copy of the Mobile Fidelity box set. He said that he actually had one sitting in a store room at their Roosevelt store in Seattle. $125 and it's mine. There was a small tear on one of the hinged doors, but otherwise it looked unplayed. My initial playback verified that....except for the Wee Small Hours album, which had some definite (albeit slight) surface noise. Curses! -- but now I could make a mostly-good sounding tape of all 16 songs!

5. Right around this time, I heard that a CD was coming out. I purchased it, and couldn't believe that it only had 15 tracks! Another tape resulted, from two different sources.

6. Finally, a few years later, the 16-song CD version came out, and my long national nightmare was over. :-) There is still that bit of extra reverb on there, but I think it's relatively tastefully done by Larry Walsh, and I can live with it. The sound is different than on that 10" LP that I loved so much, but still very warm and pleasant, IMO.

Great music, finally very well (albeit not perfectly) served by Larry Walsh after years of blatant mistreatment. (Still waiting for that perfect, purely mono, non-reverbed disc to be issued.)

By the way, I feel that this album flows much better when played as 4 separate 4-song suites (as in the double 10" release) than as two 8-song suites (as in the 12" release). The ebb and flow, to my ears, just works better, and I've often wondered if Voyle Gilmore and FS conceived this more as a double 10-inch or single 12-inch disc. (I think it was released simultaneously in both formats.) The instrumental tag or coda at the end of "I Get Along Without You Very Well" sounds very final to me, and the start of "Deep in a Dream" sounds very much like a recommencing, as is actually the case when it starts side 2 on the 10" sets.

My highlights?
1. The opening bars -- I love that celeste!
2. The closing bars of "I Get Along Without You Very Well."
3. The string descent and Frank's landing on "Myyyyyyyyy cigarette burns me, I wake with a start" and that little burst that follows, all in "Deep in a Dream."
4. The utter resignation in his voice on that final "...can't we be juuuust friends?" (If the guys from the "Just for Men" hair/beard coloring commercial ever listen to FS, I envision them both shouting their tag line of "REEEE-Jected!" right at that point.)
5. That clarinet that starts off the 2nd half of the album!
6. FS closing off his greatest album by singing words that he himself wrote. It's very convincing and solidifies that unique mood of "She's gone and I miss her and I'm going to go on missing her, and I'm okay with that" without ever crossing over into that more-common "dark night of the soul" territory.

'Nuff said -- I LOVE IT! Thank you, Frank!

Matt Lutthans
Marysville, WA

Hey well for a first post you did pretty well

great post and welcome!

[mlutthans]

Originally Posted by Bob

You noticed that?

It was not a budget issue. This was among the first group of four Sinatra compact discs to be issued by Capitol, January 23, 1987. My guess is they didn't have the remastered track ready, so they decided to downplay the omission by calling it "special."

My recollection is that the original bunch of Sinatra CDs on Capitol consisted of four titles:

1. In the Wee Small Hours
2. Songs for Swingin Lovers
3. Close to You
4. Sinatra's Swingin' Session

All four CD releases had exactly 15 songs. Maybe Nancy Sinatra can she some light on this, but I seem to recall reading in ICE that the CDs all had 15 songs due to contractual agreement. I assume this meant contractual agreement with FS, but maybe something else was in play at that time? I know this sort of thing also affected the Mosaic "Complete Nat King Cole Trio" box set, which had no more than 18 tracks on any single disc, and playing times of about 60-65 minutes each, causing the set to swell to 18 discs when it could have been something more like 14. This was due to a contractual agreement in effect with the Cole estate at the time.

By the time SFYL/SE and Point of No Return and others were released, we were getting 16-song releases, and Small Hours was bumped up to a full 16-song release, as well.

Matt Lutthans
Marysville, WA

[SinatraFan]

Nice posts, Matt.

Welcome to the SFF.

[George Lyons]

Yeah, you're a player, Matt! Nice to meet you.

[lorraine]

Hi Matt and welcome to the SFF and thanks for talking about my favourite CD of all time

Welcome, Matt!

Originally Posted by mlutthans

I bought the Alan Dell edition of This is Sinatra, Volume 2, at Tower Records in Seattle in 1986, so I think that (at least for a time) it was available separately. (One of several Dell editions I bought new as imports, most of which were very well done, IMHO.)

All but one of the CDs in the 21-disc "London" box, The Capitol Years, were originally available as LPs produced by Alan Dell—both individually and in a 20-LP box set—in the mid-1980's. The same digital masters were used for the CD set. (The "bonus" disc, The Rare Sinatra, is an expanded version of a 1978 LP.)

I'm surprised you didn't discover the Alan Dell edition in your quest for a 16-song LP version of In The Wee Small Hours. The sound is arguably the best of all, including the Larry Walsh CD.

I feel that this album flows much better when played as 4 separate 4-song suites (as in the double 10" release) than as two 8-song suites (as in the 12" release).

My first exposure to Wee Small was the original 12-inch LP, so I never noticed this myself. Since that was Frank Sinatra's FIRST LP released in 12" format, it may very well be that the song organization was intentionally designed for the (to that date) more common 10" record size. You are correct that both the 12" and double-10" versions of the album were issued simultaneously (in April 1955). The 12" LP size proved to be overwhelmingly popular with the buying public, and this album also marked the end of the 10" LP for Sinatra's Capitol records.

Originally Posted by mlutthans

My recollection is that the original bunch of Sinatra CDs on Capitol consisted of four titles:

All four were released simultaneously on January 23, 1987, and they have consecutive catalog numbers. I always thought it was coincidental that they all had 15 tracks. In the case of In The Wee Small Hours, the missing track was "Last Night When We Were Young," which was recorded a full year before the other tracks on the album. I've surmised there must have been a problem with locating the source tape and/or matching the sound to the other remastered tracks. The complete 16-track version did not appear until 1991.

Note also that, in the early days of compact discs, the manufacturing process was not as well refined. Data at the outer edge of the discs was more vulnerable to pressing errors, and so the full 74-80 minute capacity of CDs was not yet utilized.

[Edwin]

Great post, Matt. Thank you and welcome.

Your line, "Still waiting for that perfect, purely mono, non-reverbed disc to be issued." Why must these producers, engineers or whatever, mess with perfection? I no longer have a workable turntable, but recall that most of my albums sounded more real, warmer, better on LP than on CD.

Originally Posted by Bob

I've always felt there must have been a problem with locating the source tape and/or matching the sound to the other remastered tracks.

Bob,

I have a letter in one of my scrapbooks from when I wrote back then to complain about them deleting "Last Night..." The letter I received back from Capitol was from a woman who did not have a CLUE as to what I was complaining about and told me that Capitol made no error. She even stated that she went back and compared the CD to the original LP and found them to match correctly track-by-track!!!

What were they smokin' @ the Tower in '87?????

Originally Posted by paulmock

She even stated that she went back and compared the CD to the original LP and found them to match correctly track-by-track!!!

Someone at Capitol knew they'd omitted something, as evidenced by the banner "SPECIAL ABRIDGED COMPACT DISC VERSION OF THE ALBUM" seen in the image above.