Frank Sinatra - Frank Sinatra Christmas Collection
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Frank SinatraBrand: SINATRA,FRANK
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-10-26
Music Label: Reprise
Soundtracks:
- I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm
- The Christmas Waltz
- Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
- The Little Drummer Boy
- We Wish You the Merriest
- Have Yourself a Merry Christmas
- Go Tell It On The Mountain
- The Christmas Song
- I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
- I Wouldn't Trade Christmas
- Christmas Memories
- The Twelve Days of Christmas
- Bells of Christmas
- An Old Fashioned Christmas
- A Baby Just Like You
- Whatever Happened to Christmas
- White Christmas
- Silent Night
Free Music Notes for Frank Sinatra Christmas Collection
Free Music Review: Christmas Feast With Some New Goodies!
Hit: 5 Stars
My four-year-old granddaughter Emily still doesn't realize it . . . but her favorite lyricist is Johnny Mercer. We've been singing songs like "I Remember You" and "I Thought About You" each night after prayers since she was only two. Now, thanks to this (her new, favorite Christmas CD) Emily will be singing Irving Berlin's seasonal classics (both of them included here).
Last night I took Emily and her seven-year-old brother Thomas to see "The Polar Express." On the way home, in the darkness of her father's car, and with the first blizzard of the season bearing down on the "world's 'coldest major city" (according to the U.S. Consular service) the little lady treated us to a-chorus-or-ten of "Feliz Navidad" (or as she has re-Christened Jose's Yuletide treasure: "Feliz nanny-mah.")
Later, in between her sips of hot chocolate-with-floating-pink-marshmallows, (and while grandpa cursed his way around the front window with the last string of colored lights) my little, blue-eyed angel added or adjusted the last of our Christmas tree ornaments -- while listening to Frank Sinatra sing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Emily immediately recognized Frank's singing on this CD as the very same singer she'd heard only an hour before at "The Polar Express." In the movie Frank's rendition of the song is given pride-of-place, underscoring the very climax of the film -- the arrival of Santa to a thunderous welcome from the elves. Emily was entranced!
And so here we are, on the eve of the anniversary of Frank Sinatra's birth. There is the requisite roaring fire sheltering us against the snow (that just turned to freezing rain); and, with genuine French champagne in our veins, we are luxuriating in the sounds of this, the best ever Frank Sinatra Christmas compilation.
To borrow a line from the opening track of Irving Berlin's `other' Christmas classic [both are here, including a duet with Bing, on Crosby's all-time (secular) Christmas best seller]
"I can't remember a worse December, just watch those icicles form
What do I care if icicles form? I've got my love to keep me warm . . ."
----
I acquired this CD only yesterday. I'd been walking out the door of a big department store and suddenly pulled up - unable to believe my ears: A `new' Sinatra song! Even hearing it through a tinny little ceiling speaker, I could appreciate its rare beauty. I knew in an instant this song, obviously titled "Christmas Memories" had been arranged by the late Don Costa (who in my book is second only to Robert Farnon as the "greatest string arranger" of the previous century).
So there I stood in the doorway at Sears as if transfixed - being slip-streamed by other shoppers, while I savored every note of this `new song' "Christmas Memories" -- before heading right back into the store to find this album which contained this precious gift to Sinatra fans. Someday, if she cares about such things, I'll tell Emily that this one was actually composed, not simply arranged, by Don Costa - and that the lyric was penned by multiple Academy Award nominees and `Best Song' Oscar-winners "The Bergmans" (Marilyn and Alan - who wrote so many magnificent songs with Michel Legrand and other composers).
They were specially commissioned to compose the words for this Sinatra `single,' released in November of 1975 (and not recorded by any other singer for almost 20 years). Included incidentally later on this CD is the song that made the flip side of this single, recorded October 24, 1975 titled "A Baby Just Like You" (words and music by John Denver and Joe Henry). The liner notes imply that the singer - then a new Grandpa --- personalized the lyrics, (otherwise devoted to the true sanctity of Christmas celebration) -with words of greeting to his granddaughter Angela. It's a more pedestrian tune, elevated (as usual) by a perfectly fitting Don Costa arrangement -- and with words that would tear at the heartstrings of any Grandpa:
"A Savior King was born that day,
A baby just like you . . .
And as the Magi came with gifts,
I've come with my gift too . . .
That you may know the warmth of love
And wrap it all around you . . .
Merry Christmas little Angela
Merry Christmas everyone!"
The CD's next track, "Whatever Happened to Christmas?" by Jimmy Webb -- another delightfully evocative arrangement by Don Costa -- was (according to the informative liner notes by James Ritz) first heard on the "Sinatra Family Christmas" album of 1969.
Frank sings the next track "White Christmas" as a duet with Bing Crosby. This "previously unreleased" rendition was first seen on a "Frank Sinatra Show" televised the night of December 20, 1957. Sinatra's favorite arranger Nelson Riddle conducts the orchestra; from the days of live television, it's apparent the two old friends hadn't really rehearsed the song; The two are out of sync more than once, and never stray from strict unison singing--- as if each performer felt the other should take on the harmony line - so neither did!
The last track on this CD - the previously unreleased "Silent Night" - will be profoundly emotional for all of us who've watched our father grow more old and frail. Daughter Nancy recalls that, on the afternoon of the recording (August 21, 1991) "It was an emotional (time) because he was doing it for the children" (intended as a fund-raiser for one of Nancy's charities). "He was," she says "not feeling good that day and it was difficult for him to record. I hear the weakness and the frailty in his voice, and it is so sweet and tender that it is just heart-wrenching."
The emotional effect is deeply magnified by a new Johnny Mandel arrangement, commissioned especially for this 2004 release by producer Charles Pignone. The latter assembled some of Sinatra's favorite musicians as the orchestra's core, including Sinatra's pianist since the 50s Bill Miller (on celeste), as well as guitarist Al Viola and percussionist Larry Bunker (whose credits on drums included a stint with Bill Evans).
Longtime Sinatra associate Terry Woodson is given the `last word' in the perfect liner notes: "Right before it started" (this year's recording of the orchestral supplement to the `Silent Night' recording of 1991) "I said to Al Schmitt" (a legendary figure among the great recording engineers of Hollywood) "that there is so much tension in (this) room, you'd expect `The Old Man' to walk in."
In a very real way Frank Sinatra has done just that: walked back into the lives of his fans . . . with a little posthumous help from those who knew and loved him best-- bestowing on us a lasting Yuletide gift -- that's certain to be a perennial, Christmas favorite for young and old.
Emily will be presented with her very own copy -- to help deck the halls of Christmas's-yet-to-come . . . inscribed by the funny old man she used to call `Grumpa.' And perhaps she'll think of him when she hears the closing words of the song that was his favorite here:
" . . . I close my eyes and see . . .
Shiny faces, of all the children
Who now have children of their own . . .
Funny, but comes December
And I remember
Every Christmas
I've Known."
Frank Sinatra Christmas Collection Poster
It's starting to sound a lot like an Ol' Blue Eyes Christmas with this hearth and heart-warming TV-marketed collection of Yuletide favorites. On traditional carols and holiday favorites from the American popular soundtrack, no one can deliver a vocal like Sinantra!Talk about your gifts of Christmas past, The Christmas Collection is a must-have for any Sinatra-phile, right down to its family photos and one priceless shot of Sinatra swinging a golf club next to the tree wearing a Santa suit! Complete with four previously unreleased tracks (some from live TV specials) -- including two with Bing Crosby ("The Christmas Song" and "White Christmas"), the 18-song collection surveys Sinatra's holiday output and its effects are often chilling. Listening to him glide soulfully through Jimmy Webb's melancholy but romantic "What Ever Happened to Christmas?" or hearing him do his immaculate phrasing on "Silent Night" when he was visibly frail and aging in 1991 are close encounters of a Sinatra kind that are rarely captured on one album. There's also a delightful "The Twelve Days of Christmas" sung with his kids Nancy and Frank, Jr., from their 1969 record The Sinatra Family Wish You A Merry Christmas and insightful and intimate liner notes by James Ritz, not to mention those magical orchestral arrangements. Here's a five-star package to remind us that it's still Frank's world--we just rent a stable in it. Highly recommended. --Martin Keller
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