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| Sinatra at The Sands — all pictures (except record covers) by John Dominis/Getty Images |
“It was probably the most exciting engagement I have ever done in my life, since I started performing.”
Frank Sinatra about playing with Basie at the Sands in January 1966
Last December we celebrated the centennial of Frank Sinatra. I won’t go into why he was important as a crucial part of that moment when American popular music equaled top musicianship, not only from the interpreters, but also from the composers and songwriters; let’s just say that if you love music, you should have at least two or three of his albums at home.
Among his very prolific output, one of the most popular — not necessarily the “best”, however you gauge that — is Sinatra at the Sands, recorded in the last week of a month-long stay at the Copa Room in the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, which ended on Thursday, February 1, 1966, fifty years ago, today.
“The Basie orchestra was a like juggernaut. When they came at you, after the downbeat and the orchestra started to play, you knew that you had to be part of that or you got lost […] We did things that were really jumping […] I tried to stay in the realm of what the orchestra was playing. I hang back just a little bit, in a sense.”
Frank Sinatra about playing with Basie at the Sands
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| Back row: Quincy Jones, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Grover Mitchell, Marshal Royal, Bobby Plater. Front row: Teddy Reig, Al Grey, Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, Freddie Green, Bill Hughes, Sonny Payne, Eric Dixon, Charlie Fowlkes, Al Aarons, Henderson Chambers, Sonny Cohn, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Leon Thomas. |
