page_title: Frank Sinatra's recorded legacy
section_title: Songs and albums
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Sinatra's recorded legacy / Songs and albums
caption_attribution_description: Postcard photo of the handprint ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre for Frank Sinatra.
context_page_description: Frank Sinatra's musical career began in the swing era in 1935, and ended in 1995, although he did briefly retire in 1971, before returning to music in 1973. Sinatra is one of the most influential music artists of the 20th century, and has sold 150 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all-time. Rock critic Robert Christgau called Sinatra "the greatest singer of the 20th century". In addition to his music career, Sinatra was also a successful film actor, having won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Private Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity.
context_section_description: Sinatra left a vast legacy of recordings, from his very first sides with the Harry James orchestra in 1939, the vast catalogs at Columbia in the 1940s, Capitol in the 1950s, and Reprise from the 1960s onwards, up to his 1994 album Duets II.
  Some of his best known recorded songs include:
  Great American Songbook entries such as "Night and Day", "I've Got You Under My Skin", and "Fly Me To The Moon"
  Comic numbers such as "Love and Marriage" (used as the theme for American television comedy Married... with Children)
  Torch songs such as "One for My Baby", "Angel Eyes", and "Drinking Again"
  "It Was a Very Good Year" and "Summer Wind", which capture his mid-1960s persona of sentimental nostalgia
  "That's Life", "My Way", and "New York, New York", which convey his late-stage attitude of bombastic defiance.
  Three of his songs made #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after the advent of the rock and roll era: "Learnin' the Blues" (1955), "Strangers in the Night" (1966), and "Somethin' Stupid" (1967), the last a duet with daughter Nancy.
  Of all his many albums, Sinatra at the Sands, recorded live in Las Vegas in 1966, with Sinatra in his prime, backed by Count Basie's big band, remains his most popular and is still a big seller. Whether in nightclubs, casinos, arenas, or stadiums, Sinatra was one of the most mesmeric entertainers of the twentieth century, capable of turning the largest venue into a simulacrum of an intimate club. There are, however, few recordings or videos of his concerts. In addition to the Sands performance with Basie, three performances of Sinatra at the very peak of his career were captured: With Red Norvo Quintet: Live In Australia, 1959, Sinatra '57 in Concert, a performance in Seattle with an orchestra conducted by Nelson Riddle and Sinatra & Sextet: Live in Paris, recorded in June 1962.
  Sinatra is also credited with putting out perhaps the first concept album. 1955's In the Wee Small Hours is the prime example: a set of songs specifically recorded for the album, using only ballads, organized around a central mood of late-night isolation and aching lost love (supposedly due to his separation from Ava Gardner), with a now-classic album cover reflecting the theme. Rolling Stone magazine later named In the Wee Small Hours as #100 on its list of the 500 best albums of all time, an impressive showing given that its rankings reflect the outlook of the rock generation.
  The following year's Songs For Swingin' Lovers took an alternate tack, recording existing pop standards in a hipper, jazzier fashion, revealing an overall exuberance; Rolling Stone placed it #306 on the above list.
  It was the advent of the long-playing record that opened the door to these famous concept albums of the 1950s, but Sinatra's first efforts in this direction go back to the Columbia years and The Voice, when the 78 rpm disc made "album" less of a metaphor than it would become with the single-disc LPs of the 1950s. The Voice of Frank Sinatra was released on March 4, 1946 — it was re-issued as a 10" record in 1958. Four more albums would follow over the next five years, as would a Christmas album and a project in which Sinatra conducted the songs of Alec Wilder.
  Other notable Sinatra albums include Where Are You? from 1957, which was his first stereo album and his first album recorded with Gordon Jenkins, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958), a bleak, introspective album, which Sinatra later claimed was his finest work.
  The lavish The Concert Sinatra (1963) offered re-recordings of "Ol' Man River" and "You'll Never Walk Alone", backed by a 73-piece orchestra. 1965's September of My Years, according to critic Stephen Holden "summed up the punchy sentimentality of a whole generation of American men". Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967) was a late foray into bossa nova, with Antonio Carlos Jobim.
  1973's comeback album Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back was Sinatra's first album after being away from recording for three years; 1980's Trilogy: Past Present Future was an ambitious triple album using three arrangers that attempted to portray t
caption: Sinatra at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1965
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