Album The Voice Of Frank Sinatra by Frank Sinatra Review
The Voice of Frank Sinatra was the first Frank Sinatra album recorded as such. Initially issued by Columbia Records on March 4, 1946, as a set of four 78-rpm records (and later reissued as a 10" LP in 1948 and as two 45-rpm EPs in 1952), it was a collection of eight songs recorded at two sessions in 1945. At both sessions, arranger/conductor Axel Stordahl used a string quartet and a rhythm section, plus single added color instruments, a flute here, an oboe there. The songs were all romantic ballads and, in a clear precursor to the Sinatra "concept" albums on Capitol Records in the 1950s, they were all standards of an earlier era. The leadoff track, "You Go to My Head", copyright 1938, was the most recent composition, and the rest all came from earlier in the '30s, except the Gershwin composition "Someone to Watch Over Me", which had been introduced back in the 1926 musical Oh, Kay! Sinatra seemed to be deliberately looking back to, and reinventing, the crooner era of the early '30s on such songs as "(I Don't Stand) A Ghost of a Chance", co-written by his mentor, Bing Crosby, and "Paradise", popularized by Crosby's early rival Russ Columbo, which closed the album. Sinatra was using the vintage material to treat popular music in a more formal and serious way, and Stordahl, with his classical influences, abetted this pursuit. The Voice of Frank Sinatra, which quickly topped the album charts, signaled a new direction for Sinatra that would take him beyond the screams of the bobbysoxers, even though it would be some time before that direction was clearly marked out.Review by allmusic.com
