....but I have a particular soft spot for "There Used To Be A Ballpark".

... (21 CDs) is awesome, but you are right, there is some great music on the Reprise Label - not least, September Of My Years. Can recommend Will Frieldwald's book "The Song Is You (A Singer's Art)" for comprehensive analysis of all Sinatra's music.

Monday Morning Quarterback.

But I really love him doing Send In the Clowns.

Never mind the Genius of Sinatra, what about the Genius of Gaudio & Crewe? My new favourite pop fact is that The Four Seasons put out 26 singles in three years. And most of them were ace. There's a big hit musical (awful probably but..) of their stuff in London and Broadway. And yet in all my years of reading music magazines I don't remember ever reading any interviews with/ big pieces about them.
Which might explain why I never knew that Bob Gaudio had made an album with Frank Sinatra. I shall hunt it down.
People can be sniffy about that post Capitol/Nelson Riddle Sinatra stuff but what's not to like about Strangers In The Night? Or Love's Been Good To Me? I like this, written by Paul Ryan (off of Paul & Barry Ryan) whose mum and dad were friends of Sinatra. It's very Frank. Dissing deadbeat hippies and stubbornly sticking to the world he knows and understands. (Historical context: Mia Farrow stuck to water and ran off to Rishikesh to meditate with Ringo et al.)

...hear how they jing jing-a ling-a; baubles, bangles and beads."

From this masterpiece:

By the way, this is the tune Pussy sticks on the boat hi-fi just before he gets whacked in The Sopranos.

Pretty much anything with Jobim's name on is a winner.

But special praise must be reserved for a couple of the more downbeat Capitol albums - Only the Lonely, and In the Wee Small Hours. Heartbreaking stuff in places. Yon Nelson Riddle sure could arrange a big band.

I've also got a soft spot for It Was a Very Good Year, and That's Life. The latter is always sure to bring me out in a huge grin and have me singing along with it.

...in No-one Cares.

A favourite of mine that NEVER gets played is Empty Tables, done with just him and his piano player.

And one bit that gets me every time when he sings in Didn't We, 'This time we almost made that lonng, hard, cliiiiimb,' where the orchestra soars but his voice dips.

A Man Alone, featuring the songs of Rod McKuen, is another conceptual piece about, er, a man being alone.

Frank recites poetry! Frank sings! Frank melts your heart...again:

Nice jumper Frank

I particularly like Night from that album

Also love Cycles which is more syrupy but has great tunes. Tried to find Rain in my heart which has fantastic production - to find the only version is as a sample in a Tupac tune - not sure what the Chairman would have made of that. Did find this though

Smoking again..I was lucky to see him in one of his last live performances at The Desert Inn in 1993. It was spellbinding but the goosebumps went through the roof when the lights went down and he sat up at the piano, lit a cigarette and sang '..Its a quarter to three, theres noone in the place...'

but find it too unbearably sad to listen to much. A little like Paddy McAloon's extraordinary masterpiece I Trawl the Megahertz

Perfect in every way.

nobody's mentioned this one tet..

with Mr Hepworth re. 'Ballpark' - it is lovely.

If you really are looking beyond the obvious (and by the 'obvious' we mean, let's be clear, some of the greatest art, of any kind, of the last century - so, you know, get that first) seek out 'She Shot Me Down' (Reprise, 1981); this is late, so the voice is, by his own standard, pretty shot; but it's an album of saloon songs, and the last thing on it, a medley of 'The Gal That Got Away' and 'It Never Entered My Mind', the first made famous by Judy Garland, who Sinatra could not save, and the second recorded 26 years earlier on 'Wee Small Hours', is - quite something x

I think that's my favourite Reprise era track.

Got it off i-tunes and have fallen head over heels in love with it.
Offset the £7.99 by passing it off as a Valentines present to the GLW.
Perhaps an album about a woman abandoning her husband and children, leaving him bereft, confused and distraught, is playing with fire when it comes to Valentines gifts.
But, what the hell, it's great and she'll love it.
Some thoughts about this wonderful record:
* Makes you listen to the Richard Harris/ Jim Webb "A Tramp Shining" collaboration in a new light. You wish Sinatra was singing it.
* Sinatra got a lot of stick for making a 'soft rock' album, but the musical style fits him like a glove.
* Don't you just wish that, though he's as urban as it gets, FS had sung country'n'western songs. He would have been the best.
* I think we can safely presume that Richard Hawley has heard this album.
* Resequence the 'bonus' track 11 as track 2 (it explains her side of the story).

Thank you, tim tunes, for the tip-off

Agree with the Richard Harris