Track Listing

1. You Make Me Feel So Young
2. It Happened in Monterey
3. You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me
4. You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me
5. Too Marvelous for Words
6. Old Devil Moon
7. Pennies from Heaven
8. Love Is Here to Stay
9. I've Got You Under My Skin
10. I Thought About You
11. We'll Be Together Again
12. Makin' Whoopee
13. Swingin' Down the Lane
14. Anything Goes
15. How About You?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14232 in Music
• Released on: 1998-09-08
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered

Amazon.com essential recording
Sinatra already had one youthful career behind him by the time he made Songs for Swingin' Lovers! His were no longer the lustrous pipes of the kid crooner from Hoboken--the voice that made bobbysoxers swoon--but from the first notes of the opening track ("You Make Me Feel So Young") he seems to have discovered a musical fountain of youth that fully justifies the exclamation point in the album title. There's a buoyant new spring in his step, accented by Nelson Riddle's lighter-than-air arrangements, that makes the Columbia records of Sinatra's younger days sound stiff and stodgy in comparison. Even chestnuts like "Old Devil Moon," "Pennies from Heaven," "Makin' Whoopee," and "Anything Goes" are rejuvenated by his vibrant touch. Put this alongside his previous Capitol album, In the Wee Small Hours, and you have the definitive statements by both sides of Sinatra's mature musical personality: the lonely "saloon singer" and the swaggering, sophisticated swinger. Sinatra's carefree confidence achieves its supreme expression in "I've Got You Under My Skin," a performance that builds steadily to an ecstatic climax. Cole Porter may have hated his lyrical embellishments, but by the time the singer jauntily breaks the "fourth wall" on "Anything Goes" ("...may I say before this records spins to a close..."), you can't deny he's taken the title to heart. --Jim Emerson

Customer Reviews

Class Never Goes Out of Style
These recordings are now nearly fifty years old, but they contain an excitement that doesn't diminish with time. Following quickly on the heels of his success with IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS, a 40-year-old Frank Sinatra teamed up once again with arranger/conducter Nelson Riddle and created what is arguably his best album of a stellar career. Sinatra is one of those artists that each generation rediscovers for itself. As an aging Baby Boomer, I hope that audiences will continue to listen to the Beatles a hundred years from now; but I KNOW they will be listening to Sinatra--class simply never goes out of style! If you own only one Sinatra album, this is it. ESSENTIAL

Capitol, drat you.
This is one of the greatest albums ever made. It also sounds like snot. My Shortwave radio sounds better than this remastering job! I don't know if they were asleep at the mastering studios, or what, but it really is awful. Everything sounds like it's under a fog - Frank may as well have a gag in, it's so muffled. Besides that, there's too much bass. I kept thinking I had the treble on my reciever down or something.

Case and point : BUY THIS ALBUM, BUT BUY THE OLDER COPY. Easy way to spot it : the newer, often-bad remasters have "Voice Of the Century" printed on the clear side of the jewel case. The first issues from back in the late 80's do not. The Songs For Young Lovers/Swing Easy reissue suffers from the same problem. Sheesh, what a mess.

Sinatra's Best
This was my introduction to Sinatra, thanks to the rave reviews it received from Downbeat critics and readers upon its release in the fifties. It still holds up as Sinatra's best-balanced, most polished swing album, the standard by which his later versions of the same songs can be compared. This is not to say that the interpretations he gives here are the definitive ones: some listeners may prefer later, looser versions of "I've Got You Under My Skin" or "Pennies from Heaven." But without this album it's pointless to judge the later versions--by Sinatra or anyone else. With this album Sinatra, more than any other male vocalist, showed what distinguishes a jazz singer from a pop crooner.