Sinatra at the Sands, at 50

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

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.

Best wishes for 2013

Not very good video, not very good audio, and the same old jokes. Still, it's Dean, Sammy, Frank, at the Copa Room of the Sands Hotel, 50 years ago. Over an hour of it.

May you, MAY you!, have a good year.

Sinatra's world tour, 1962

Today Frank Sinatra would have been 97. I've been checking out videos here and there, and have found the one below from his 1962 tour, which he did accompanied by a sextet, based on Red Norvo's, with whom he had toured previously (Norvo was unavailable for this one), which gives a lighter, jazzier feel to the music.

But first, a couple of excerpts from Will Friedwald's indispensable tome The Song is You (Da Capo, New York, 1997).

Sinatra live in 1961

I've just come across some footage of a Frank Sinatra concert in Sydney (Australia) from 1961. That was a time when Sinatra was at the top of his game, the end of his glorious years with Capitol, before his problems with the Kennedys, before the Rat Pack, years before "Strangers in the Night".