Don't Miss This One

This album is another example of why Sinatra and Riddle worked so well together. You might think you that this is just a warmed over collection of show tunes but you would be wrong. This is a collection that shows how the exceptional can make even the familiar special. Frank is strong and clear and Nelson has the Band playing in a creative style throughout. Enjoy!

Frank Sinatra sings a bunch of Oscar winning songs

This 1964 collection of Oscar-winning songs made it to #10 on the Billboard charts, but "Frank Sinatra Sings Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River & Other Academy Award Winners" is not one of the classic Sinatra collaborations with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle. I think the problem is mostly on my end, because these are all songs we heard other people sing in their respective movies, and I tend to think of Frank Sinatra making songs his own when he sings them. I know there are plenty of exceptions to this rule and do not ask me to defend the ultimate logical consistency of this position, but this ends up being an average Sinatra offering despite the presence of a few great tracks, first and foremost of which would be "The Way You Look Tonight" (from "Swing Time," 1936) but then you also throw "All the Way" ("The Joker is Wild," 1957) and "Three Coins in the Fountain" (film of the same name, 1954) in as well. The results end up being a bit uneven and for every song that you like you will find one you can live without (e.g., "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing," 1955). Ultimately, I just think the sort of songs that were winning Oscars in the 1950s and 1960s do not play to the strengths of Frank Sinatra as a vocalist. This particular "genre" may just constitute some weird little musical gap that falls in between the cracks of the Sinatra who sang great saloon songs and the Sinatra would be swing with the best of them. The bottom line would be that "Frank Sinatra Sings Days of Wine and Roses..." is a worthwhile addition to your music library, but not a necessary one.

Better than the movies.

This collection, released as "Academy Award Winners" as well as "Days of Wine and Roses," is valued by most Sinatra fans for one reason only: Sinatra's singularly swinging treatment of "Just the Way You Look Tonight." As satisfying as that performance is, the other interpretations, despite what some critics have said, are practically on a level with the Jerome Kern classic. Sinatra's the only singer I can think of who sensed, as do practically all jazz instrumentalists, that the best way to do "Days of Wine and Roses" is up-tempo. And to compare his version of "Moon River" to Andy Williams' hit version, or of a popular period piece like "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" to the hit record by The Four Aces, is to come closer to the secret of Sinatra's greatness. Neither version is simply a soaring melody transporting us to some never never land. Sinatra finds the moments of poetry and drama in the material, bringing it to life in a way that is authentically personal and unmistakably real.

The only misjudgement, and a minor one, is the ballad-like treatment of "Secret Love." Granted, the song works fine that way when addressed to the heavens by the innocent voice of Doris Day. But here's where Sinatra and Riddle should again have followed the lead of jazz instrumentalists and gone with a straightahead swinging arrangement. Had they done so, there would have been not one but at least two singularly swinging reasons for owning this album.