A smile that makes my temperature rise, like a summer with a thousand Julys

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

16/07/61 : Nice N' Easy - Frank Sinatra

Well, it's been over two months since we last saw either Elvis or Frank, so it was probably about time one of them popped up.  Frank's back for his third appearance of the year (plus one best-of that I gave a swerve) - from the title I'm expecting this to be croonin' Frank rather than swingin' Frank, but let's see.

It's all perfectly fine (which is damning it with faint praise because it's way better than a lot of stuff we've heard this year), but there are no classic Frank numbers on here so it all just drifts by pleasantly rather than sticking in there.  And in a year of much Frank, he needs to do a bit more to stand out from his own crowd, I'm afraid.

We're at #16 in the chart this week on his final week of a 27 week run, with it having peaked at #4 in the charts (for four weeks).  The top five this week were South Pacific, George, Elvis, TSOM and the Barber/Bilk best of and there are a couple of new entries in the chart this week - Bye Bye Birdie (#18) and Beyond The Fringe (#19).  I actually listened to Bye Bye Birdie by mistake because I just got too confused by all the Frank albums - it was entertaining enough if a little dated but I was tickled to instantly recognise Dick Van Dyke's voice and fell into a very pleasant Wikipedia rabbit hole on the man.  Did you know he was in last year's season of the US Masked Singer at the tender age of 97?  The man's looking very good on it, you'd have to say...

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album - it's his eighteenth, the arrangements were by Nelson Riddle (who we've met a couple of times beforehand) and it did rather better in the US than it did here, spending nine weeks at #1.  And that's your lot!

"Customers also listened to" - could it possibly be "more Frank Sinatra"?  Why yes, it is!  Nobody expected that now, did they?  But more is not always better and whilst everything Frank has done this year has been absolutely fine, very little of it has stuck in the memory.

09/07/61 - Very twangy
23/07/61 - A very fine album indeed

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