It's short, but intensely lively...

There are only a dozen songs on my edition of this 1962 Reprise effort by Frank, adding up to a half-hour of jazzy uptempo moods. So your happiness with this might depend on the price you pay as well as how big a Sinatra fan you are. I ended up investing exactly fifty cents a song, and for my taste, that's quite a bargain. Shop around the auctions for used copies if you are cheap like me. I really like this one. Perhaps not quite as good as his Capitol albums "Come Swing With Me" and "Songs for Swingin' Lovers" but mighty close. Picking between this one and those two is a matter of personal taste, not of artistry. After all, it is Sinatra, which means near-perfection in the way he lays each word of each song and each breath inbetween onto the master disc. Hefti's band and arrangements here are apparently too prominent for some tastes, but I liked the orchestrations. If Franks sings too fast for you on this one, be sure to buy "In the Wee Small Hours" or "Only the Lonely" or "September of My Years" for the melancholy side of the artist. I don't like EVERYTHING Frank ever did: I can live without "My Way" and lots of other tracks less famous. But the dozen happy tunes here are all good.

Sinatra Swings Along With the Brass

Sinatra in his prime never sounded better. And Neal Hefti's arrangements are superb. In fact, if all you got on this CD was the orchestra, you would get your money's worth. This 1962 session really swings. Remastered stereo recording quality is excellent. Highly recommended.

Note: The last 3 song titles listed above are not on this CD, but you won't miss them.

"swingin' brass"....truth in advertising, yeah!

Disregard the above pans of this recording as the self-appointed critics seem to have missed the point entirely aaaaas the name of the cd IS "Swingin' BRASS" (my emphasis) after all, and yes, it's arranged and conducted by Neal Hefti, after all. Hard-driving, bold and relentlessly "swingin'", fou fou slipper-wearing, shirley temple-swigging effetes have been known to run out of rooms (or alternatively, to desperately peck away at their keyboards to voice their outrage) offended to the core by the lack of subtlety displayed in these tracks, and good riddance. A-a-a-nd contrary to what you've read elsewhere, "everybody's twistin" is a hoot and an irresistable finger-snapper and only those devoid of any sense of fun and irony will find this cut objectionable. To paraphrase a Madison Avenue-coined phrase from a few years back, "BUY it...you'll LIKE it".