Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim

*NOTE: On side 1, there is a mark that plays lightly for approx. 90 seconds at the start of track 2, "Dindi." There is also a bubble in the vinyl that plays as 3 light thuds about 1/8" (appox. 40 seconds) into the same track. On side 2, there is a mark that plays 5 times loudly about 1/8" (approx. 40 seconds) into track 2, "How Insensitive (Insensatez)."

*NOTE: This record was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.

This is, in our opinion, one of the two best-sounding Sinatra albums on Reprise (the other being September of My Years from 1965). The recording is so rich, sweet, and Tubey Magical you would think it was prime Capitol period Sinatra -- but it's not, obviously; it just sounds that way.

If you like romantic music, you will be hard-pressed to find a better album than this one. The song "Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars" perfectly encapsulates the mood of this album. My favorite track here is "Dindi." Sinatra is the king of lost loves, and the song "Dindi" offers him another opportunity for regret. Nobody does it better than Frank. It's a cliche to say he wears his heart on his sleeve, but the man made a career out of it. If the cliche fits...

Tubey Magic Is Key

This 60s LP has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings rarely begin to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing any sign of coming back.

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much in the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate a solid, palpable, living, breathing Frank Sinatra singing live in your listening room. The best copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of older recordings (this one is now 57 years old), I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we've played can serve as a guide.

What The Best Sides Of Francis A. Sinatra and Antonio C. Jobim Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1967
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren't veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record! We know, we've heard them all.

Top end extension is critical to the sound of the best copies. Lots of old records (and new ones) have no real top end; consequently, the studio or stage will be missing much of its natural air and space, and instruments will lack their full complement of harmonic information.

Tube smear is common to most vintage pressings. The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich.

What We're Listening For On Francis A. Sinatra and Antonio C. Jobim

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight note-like bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Our Favorite Sinatra Engineer

One of the top guys at Reprise, Lee Herschberg engineered a great many albums for Sinatra as shown below.

The titles in bold have the best music with the highest quality sound in our experience. We have been doing shootouts for all of them for years. You will have a very hard time finding better sound on any Sinatra record than the four bold titles you see below.

The titles with an asterisk are the weakest of this group. 

• Sinatra at the Sands (1966)
• Strangers in the Night (1966)
• That's Life (1966)
• Francis A. Sinatra & Antonio C. Jobim (1967)
• Cycles* (1968)
• Francis A. & Edward K. (1968)
• My Way (1969)
• Some Nice Things I've Missed (1974)
• Trilogy* (1980)
• She Shot Me Down (1981)

You'll also find Lee Herschberg's name in the credits of many of the best Ry Cooder, Doobie Brothers and Gordon Lightfoot albums, titles we know to have excellent sound on the best copies -- not to mention an album most audiophiles know well, Rickie Lee Jones' debut. His pop and rock engineering credits run for pages. Won the Grammy for Strangers in the Night even.

The most amazing jazz piano trio recording we know of is on the list as well: The Three (Shelly Manne, Ray Brown and Joe Sample), along with most of the other Direct to Disc recordings released on Eastwind.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

A Must Own Vocal Album

This Demo Disc Quality recording should be part of any serious Male and Female Vocal Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Side One

• Girl from Ipanema
• Dindi
• Change Partners
• Corcovado
• Meditation (Meditação)

Side Two

• If You Never Come to Me
• How Insensitive (Insensatez)
• I Concentrate on You
• Baubles, Bangles and Beads
• Once I Loved (O Amor en Paz)

AMG 4 1/2 Star Review

By 1967, Bossa Nova had become quite popular within jazz and traditional pop audiences, yet Frank Sinatra hadn't attempted any Brazil-influenced material. Sinatra decided to record a full-fledged bossa nova album with the genre's leading composer, Antonio Carlos Jobim. Arranged by Claus Ogerman and featuring Jobim on guitar and backing vocals, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim concentrated on Jobim's originals, adding three American classics — "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," "Change Partners," and "I Concentrate on You" — that were rearranged to suit Bossa Nova conventions.

The result was a subdued, quiet album that used the Latin rhythms as a foundation, not as a focal point. Supported by a relaxed, sympathetic arrangement of muted brass, simmering percussion, soft strings, and Jobim's lilting guitar, Sinatra turns in an especially noteworthy performance; he has never sounded so subtle, underplaying every line he delivers and showcasing vocal techniques that he never had displayed before.

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim doesn't reveal its pleasures immediately; the album is too textured and understated to be fully appreciated within one listen. After a few plays, the album begins to slowly work its way underneath a listener's skin, and it emerges as one of his most rewarding albums of the 60s.