Personnel includes: Frank Sinatra (vocals); Gordon Jenkins, Nelson Riddle (arranger, conductor).

Recorded between 1953 and 1959. Includes liner notes by Pete Welding.

This is part of Capitol Records "Entertainer Of The Century" series.

This 1959 recording stands with ONLY THE LONELY and IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS as one of Sinatra's premier albums of "saloon songs"--those songs in which he takes the role of the jilted lover drowning his sorrows in drink and telling his sad story to anyone who'll listen (most likely the bartender, as in ONLY THE LONELY's "One For My Baby"). When it comes to elegant displays of heartsick despair, latter-day crooners like Chris Isaak can't hold a candle to the old master. Sinatra inhabits these songs so convincingly it's hard to believe his real life was the lurid, Hefneresque tale that it actually was.

On chestnuts like "Stormy Weather" and "I'll Never Smile Again," his is the voice of a man bereft of love and unable to vanquish his obsessions. On the gorgeous ballad "I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance With You," he doesn't even get that far; his character can't even escape the wall of self-doubt that renders his romantic aspirations futile. Gordon Jenkins's orchestrations complement Sinatra's brokenhearted plaints perfectly throughout the proceedings.

Mojo (Publisher) (2/01, p.105) - "...The songs are mainly the love-gone-wrong genre....Gordon Jenkins' strings provide an almost cathedral-like quality, oddly both cold and warm, the highlight being a blues-tinged 'Stormy Weather'."