Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0821797179263
Label: Mobile Fidelity Koch
Manufacturer: Mobile Fidelity Koch
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Mobile Fidelity Koch
Release Date: 2008-09-16
Studio: Mobile Fidelity Koch
MPN: 792

24 karat gold pressing. New Mini-LP-Style Packaging! For The First Time Ever!, The Superior Mono Mixes available on CD Five Stars, All Music Guide. One of Frank's personal top two favorite recordings of his career. Charted at No. 1 on Billboard's Pop Music chart in 1958.Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely is one of five melancholy collections recorded for Capitol consisting of saloon songs and bluesy ballads, lamenting lost love and heartache. Recorded over three days in Capitol's Studio B, it features sumptuous arrangements all around by Nelson Riddle, who also co-conducts with Sinatra's resident concertmaster Felix Slatkin. Tour de force versions of What's New, Blues In The Night, Spring Is Here, One For My Baby, Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry and Good-Bye all became Sinatra's personal property for the ages.

Customer Rating:
Summary: The greatest of the Frank Sinatra saloon song albums
Comment: In the 1950s Frank Sinatra worked with two great arrangers, Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins. "Only the Lonely" was supposed to be recorded with Jenkins, who had arranged Sinatra's previous collection of ballads, "Where Are You." But Jenkins was busy on something else and Sinatra ended up using Riddle. The result was this 1958 album that is arguably his greatest collection of saloon songs. Certainly "Only the Lonely" is the bleakest of the bunch, with a dozen brooding songs of desperation and despair. Sinatra was great at a lot of different types of singing, but for me he was clearly at his best in this genre of self-pity.

It is totally fitting, therefore, that "Only the Lonely" has his best saloon song, "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)," by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. The unforgettable opening line establishes the melancholy mood ("It's quarter to three, There's no one in the place except you and me") as Sinatra sings to the bartender his tale of woe. Someone described this song as being the one that Humphrey Bogart would have been singing if "Casablanca" had been made into a musical the way Sintara was in "High Society," the musical based on "The Philadelphia Story," while he drowns his sorrows. The other great torch song on the album is "Angle Eyes," with superb vocals offset by subdued orchestration. The title song, specifically written for Sinatra, starts off the album and establishes the perfect mood, and "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" completes the quartet of four classic songs on this album.

The remastered CD offers up two more songs from this period, "Sleep Warm" and "Where or When," but this was already an essential Sinatra album without those additions and I have to offer a minor complaint that with the addition of that pair of tracks the album does not end as it should, with "One For My Baby." It might not be his greatest album, but it absolutely has to be on the first hand you use when you start naming what should be on that list. "Only the Lonely" is the ultimate late night Sinatra album, to be listened to with the lights down low as you wallow in the depths of despair.

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