Gold won't bring you happiness when you're growing old

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

05/11/61 : Sinatra Swings - Frank Sinatra

Our fifth visit with Ol' Blue Eyes and the options so far have been Swingin' or Croonin' Sinatra - and he very much signposts the swingin' variety in the album title, so I think we can probably guess where we are with this one.  It'll all be absolutely fine, but maybe not show the greatest variety across the album.

Yup, that's pretty much where we are.  It's all basically the classic Sinatra swing sound, without any classics on it - in fact I didn't know any of the tracks until we got to the last two.  These are "Have You Met Miss Jones", which obviously I know from the Robbie Williams cover (it's originally from the 1937 Rodgers and Hart musical I'd Rather Be Right) and "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You", which I probably know from the Dean Martin or Sam Cooke covers (the original here was by Russ Morgan from 1944).  There are a LOT of old songs on this album - I'm now intrigued as to how many of his famous tracks were originally by him.

This week we're at #8 in the charts on his third week of an eight week run (which seems quite brief comparing to most of the albums we've seen) and this was as high as it got (for three consecutive weeks).  The top five this week were George (starting an eight week run at the top - Jesus wept!), Elvis, Cliff, The Shadows and South Pacific and we have one new entry for Chris Barber and Acker Bilk (#15).

Wikipedia has remarkably little on the album - the main item of interest is that it was originally titled Swing Along With Me but Capital, his previous record label, suggested that maybe that was a little too close to Come Swing With Me, which he recorded with them.  And if, for any reason, you feel the need to listen to this album I suggest you search for the original title because that's what I had to do.  One other thing it tells us is that the record sleeve advertised this as featuring "twelve of the most uninhibited Sinatra things ever recorded" - and let me assure you that we are waaaay off the mark with that statement!

"Customers also listened to" a very random selection of famous people from the 60s - Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe.  Seriously, who wants to listen to a Marilyn album?!?  However, also seriously, who wants to listen to a Frank album that isn't a best-of?  To be fair, I like listening to them once to see what they're like - but so far, having listened to this one, just the once is quite enough (except maybe "You're Nobody Until Somebody Loves You").

29/10/61 - Yeah, I liked this!
12/11/61 - Way more enjoyable than I expected