I have been extremely impressed with the reissues I’ve heard from Impex Records, including Patricia Barber’s Nightclub and more recently, Companion; the absolutely astonishing 1STEP Getz/Gilberto 45 RPM 2-LP release, and their 2020 reissue of Sing and Dance With Frank Sinatra. Now, Impex has reissued the Frank Sinatra title in their top-of-the-line 1STEP 45-RPM LP series.
Impex 1STEP vinyl, as the name implies, eliminates the usual three-step father/mother/stamper record pressing process in favor of a one-step method, where the lacquer disc off the cutting lathe is plated, and this plated disc is used as the stamper. The 1STEP process is aimed at creating a record that is closer to the sound of the original master tape.
The production of the Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra 1STEP is deluxe in every respect. It’s all-analog, remastered from the original monophonic analog mixdown tapes by Chris Bellman and Andreas Meyer at Bernie Grundman Mastering and Swan Studios respectively. Since the records are cut at 45 RPM, it’s a 2-LP set, to accommodate the faster speed compared to standard 33 RPM. The discs are pressed on the company’s 180-gram VR900-Supreme vinyl. According to Impex, “the tapes and discs we mastered from have rarely been used, even by Columbia Records. This allowed us to deliver a sound that is closer to the original recording sessions than releases whose tapes have been heavily played (and audibly degraded).” Impex adds, “The…1STEP process requires short, tightly-controlled runs that necessitate the creation of a new lacquer after each 500 discs are pressed.”
Sing and Dance With Frank Sinatra, album cover.
Originally released in 1950 on Columbia Records, Sing and Dance With Frank Sinatra was his first big-band jazz album to appear on a long-playing record. The reissue includes the entire original Columbia 10-inch LP, the extra tracks included on IMPEX’s 33-RPM reissue, plus two new bonus tracks. The set also offers an extended recording of the session for “It All Depends on You” that includes Sinatra giving instructions to the musicians in order to adjust the sound and the arrangements. It’s a fascinating insight into just how astute Sinatra was as a singer and musician, and how much care he took into getting his recordings the way he wanted them to sound, from instructing the engineer to put a piece of carpet in the bass drum to asking the guitarist, bassist and reed players to move back slightly to get a better instrumental balance.
The packaging is sumptuous. A hard, textured slipcase contains the album, which features a remarkably detailed and authoritative 36-page booklet with liner notes by archivist and historian Charles L. Granata. As he notes, “while most people assume [Sinatra] didn’t flirt with the jazz idiom until the mid-1950s (when he began recording at Capitol with Nelson Riddle), this extended program offered the first full-fledged inkling that Sinatra could swing! As such, the album is a revelatory masterpiece documenting the singer’s growth…most of all, it resoundingly signals Frank Sinatra’s transition from sweet, romantic crooner to cool swinging sophisticate.”
The reissue was produced by Granata and Andreas Meyer, with Abey Fonn and Robert Bantz (executive producers) and Martin M. Melucci and Bob Donnelly (associate producers). The album was plated and pressed at Record Technology, Inc. by Dorin Sauerbier, Adam Webb, and Bryce Wilson. The booklet goes into extraordinary additional detail about how Sing and Dance With Frank Sinatra was originally recorded (and how the recording’s music and sound coincided with both Sinatra’s career arc and the then-new technological advancements of the time), and how it was remastered. Everything from discovering long-lost alternate takes to every piece of equipment in the remastering chain is documented.
So how does it sound? The short version…it’s superb.
But before I go into more detail: at AXPONA 2024 I attended a seminar given by Charles Granata and Abey Fonn about the history and production of both the original album and the 1STEP reissue. Charles has 30 years of experience at Sony supervising Sinatra’s music. Here are excerpts from his talk, combined with some of his comments in the reissue booklet:
Our reissue of the album marks the first time the original mono, analog tape master was used in 70 years! This album was an example of an early use of magnetic tape and 33-RPM “long playing” vinyl. It’s also one of the first major examples of vocal overdubbing on record – there was a session where he couldn’t sing because of a vocal hemorrhage.
In 1950 Sinatra’s career was declining. His record company, Capitol, was actually going to drop him. Then Mitch Miller at Columbia attempted to boost Sinatra’s career, and recorded Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra, an uptempo album that straddles the line between pop and jazz.
A big part of Sinatra’s artistry is his enunciation. He was also meticulous about song selection. He understood that a recording of a song is forever. It’s been said that Sinatra was impatient and would do songs in one take. That’s total bullsh*t. On average, he would achieve a “master take” after five to seven attempts. But, there were times he’d do 30 or more takes and then say, “I’m not feeling it,” and come back to do it again another night.
He was his own producer. Just listen to his voice on “Lover”…wow! Few could emote in the recording studio more convincingly than Sinatra. He “played” the microphone (moving in close for emphasis when he went sotto voce, backing away for big finishes) like a violinist plays a Stradivarius. Listen to the recordings he did here with Harry James with a ribbon mic. Incredible.
The sound is revelatory, to use Granata’s word – I certainly can’t think of a better one. For those expecting a tinny-sounding, flat, “old-timey” recording, you’re going to be surprised at the clarity and the richness and presence of Sinatra’s voice. The “time machine” effect of being in the Man’s presence is downright spooky. The orchestra recedes into the background when he’s singing and swells to the forefront when playing instrumental passages…I don’t know how they did it. As Granata explains, “Much of this effect is the result of simple, clean (yet superb) recording procedures. Columbia’s highly-skilled engineers understood microphone selection and placement, used the studio and its sonic characteristics to their fullest capabilities, and deftly balanced not just the orchestra, but the vocal against the instrumental backgrounds.
Although the recording is monophonic, there’s a perceptible depth to it – it has a dimensionality that almost transcends a stereo soundstage. This quality is remarkable, given the relative simplicity of the tools available in the studio at that time. Sensitive and judicious use of compression, EQ and tape saturation all combined to produce this early (but quite appealing) high-fidelity sound – on both the tape and disc masters.” Don’t expect wideband sound with subterranean bass and far-reaching highs – but the sense of reality, of capturing the essence of the music as it happened – is very powerful.
The orchestra is less up-front compared to Sinatra’s voice, but this is not a broad-brush effect – at times, instruments leap to the forefront with body and tangibility, like the lead sax on “My Blue Heaven” and the very cool baritone sax intro to “You Do Something to Me” (and this song swings hard enough to break your back). Dig the bass and guitar locking in on songs like “American Beauty Rose.”
I’m a child of the 1960s (well, born in 1955 to be exact), so Sinatra to me was an old-timer, an uncool anti-rocker (though “Strangers in the Night” and “Something Stupid” with daughter Nancy were smash hits that everyone liked). So, I didn’t “get” all the fuss about how accomplished and emotive a vocalist he was until later in life.
Well, just listen to Sing and Dance With Frank Sinatra and you’ll get it. The way he phrases, sometimes behind and sometimes ahead of the beat; the way he emphasizes certain words and even syllables, and the incredible dynamic control of his voice are just fantastic here. The way he pronounces the word “love” right before the modulation in the alternate take of “Paper Moon” alone is mind blowing, worth the price of admission. And his riding along with the modulation on “Should I” can only be called masterful. Sinatra, along with the band, swings like there’s no tomorrow, which, considering the personal and professional circumstances he was in at the time, might have in fact been how he was feeling. The band is tight, and the way Sinatra locks in with the female background vocalists on the bonus track “Meet Me at the Copa” is simply breathtaking. This neatly dispels the notion that he was vocally “washed up” at the time.
Since this is a 1950 recording (excepting 1949’s “It All Depends on You” and some outtakes from 1949 and 1951), don’t expect pristine sound. There isn’t a “blacker than black” background on some of the all-analog tracks, and some of the additional material had to be de-noised and digitally processed. (The sonic consistency between the all-analog and the digitized tracks in the mastering is admirable – I don’t know if these old ears could distinguish between them in a blind test.) As the liner notes point out, there’s “barely-perceptible” high-end “distortion” that’s actually tape saturation. These were very early magnetic tape sessions, and the engineers sought to maximize every decibel they could squeeze onto the tape. And of course, this is a mono recording so there’s no stereo separation, though you do get a sense of depth, from the variations in volume between Sinatra and the various instruments, and from the subtle room reverb: as Granata notes, a perfect example of the wonders of Columbia’s massive 30th Street studio.
In fact, listening to this recording prompted me to write in my notes, “honestly, if stereo was never invented, it wouldn’t have been the saddest loss in the world.” (It also made me wonder what the album would sound like through a dedicated mono playback setup with a monophonic phono cartridge and single speaker.)
But as so many audiophiles and aficionados know, there’s more to the illusion of hearing depth than just spatial localization and the placement of instruments in the stereo (or multichannel) image, and on this recording I hear a most definite depth, and presence, and tangibility.
Ultimately, though, this Impex reissue of Sing And Dance With Frank Sinatra, as gratifying as it is, transcends technical and sonic considerations. I doubt that you’ll be thinking about any of that as you bask in the incredible, dazzling, swinging music, the music of an artist at an emotional and interpretive height. In a word, fantastic.
For more information, please visit Impex Records at: www.impexrecords.com
Sing and Dance With Frank Sinatra can be ordered from Elusive Disc at www.elusivedisc.com
