UNIKAT!
By 1966, Sinatra had conquered the world. His tenure as a teen idol and maturing crooner behind him, he was confident, assured, focused, and quite simply, untouchable. Music’s top arrangers and composers came to him, knowing the magic that he’d bring to their labors of love. It’s for these reasons that Count Basie and his orchestra backs Sinatra here, and why Jones, in demand by everyone, chooses instead to lend his arrangement insights onstage at the Sands. Indeed, Sinatra at the Sands harkens back to the day’s when concerts were a true event, and the album is nothing short that promise. This is a happening you won’t want to miss.
Containing many of Sinatra’s most well-known and celebrated performances--“I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)” among them--Sinatra at the Sands finds the entertainer in immaculate voice. He improvises lines with effortless and ease, casually adorns lyrics with hidden rhythms, stretches notes to instill meaning and emotion, and utilizes his impeccable knack for phrasing to turn a line and beget instrumental responses that complement each song’s mood. Meanwhile, Basie and Co. swing on uptempo numbers and lay back on melancholy tunes that still bring a tear to the eye.
Warner Bros. executive Stan Cornyn, writing about these very shows, observed that, doing more than sing, “Sinatra turns actor. The man whose broad’s left him with some other guy and all of the loot…And there is silence about, for this audience is watching a man become that last lucked-out guy at the bar, the last one, with no where to go but sympathy city.” And so it goes, Sinatra proving it’s the singer and the song, demonstrating a seemingly unlimited range as he transports you to saloons, romantic parks, lonely streets, and bustling cities. Everything—the pacing, structure, passion, interpretation—is perfect.
Mobile Fidelity has half-speed mastered this exquisite analog set from the original analog master tapes, originally recorded by engineer Lowell Frank. Clear, big, and sumptuous, Sinatra at the Sands now resonates with previously unheard details, transparency, imaging, projection, smoothness, and dimensionality.