"For a long time now, this excellent chamber orchestra from Uppsala has been presenting its own arrangements of Zappa's music. On this CD they are better than ever. Zappa's boundary-breaking music combines elements of jazz, Latin, rock & western art music with humor, irony & a wealth of imagination. And sometimes with total beauty of harmony & melody. Omnibus, combining complicated arrangements with virtuoso elegance, is able to put all the pieces together in a very attractive manner. This recording, with its perfect sound picture, should create opportunities for a wider international launch than any of the group's earlier records have had. Zappa himself would probably have been very impressed with these interpretations." (Hifi & Musik)
From the beginning, Frank Zappa cultivated a role as voice of the freaks - imaginative outsiders who didn't fit comfortably into any group. We're Only in It for the Money is the ultimate expression of that sensibility, a satirical masterpiece that simultaneously skewered the hippies and the straights as prisoners of the same narrow-minded, superficial phoniness. Zappa's barbs were vicious and perceptive, and not just humorously so: his seemingly paranoid vision of authoritarian violence against the counterculture was borne out two years later by the Kent State killings.
The long-awaited first collaboration between two icons, Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, did something unique for the reputations of both. For Basie, the Sinatra connection inaugurated a period in the '60s where his band was more popular and better-known than it ever was, even in the big-band era. For Sinatra, Basie meant liberation, producing perhaps the loosest, rhythmically free singing of his career. Propelled by the irresistible drums of Sonny Payne, Sinatra careens up to and around the tunes, reacting jauntily to the beat and encouraging Payne to swing even harder, which was exactly the way to interact with the Basie rhythm machine - using his exquisite timing flawlessly…
15 complete original Sinatra albums and 43 bonus tracks on a limited edition 9CD box set. Legendary records from Frank Sinatra's golden age as a popular sophisticated vocalist released on Capitol with three on the singer's own label Reprise - with accompaniment from orchestras conducted by Nelson Riddle, Billy May and Johnny Mandel. Digitally remastered. Includes detailed booklet.
Released in early 1961, Sinatra's Swingin' Session!!! is one of the last albums the Chairman of the Board made for Capitol before leaving for Reprise. Like most of Sinatra's Capitol recordings, this one shows the singer at the peak of his vocal and interpretive abilities. Nelson Riddle's hard-swinging arrangements of standards like Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Moon," Irving Berlin's "Always," and Cole Porter's "You Do Something to Me" would leave most vocalists in the dust, but Sinatra masters them without ever seeming to break a sweat.
Sometimes it’s okay to judge a book by its cover. Depicting a down-and-out Frank Sinatra entrenched in his own private world while glamorous couples dance and swirl around him, oblivious to his presence and condition, the artwork to the aptly titled No One Cares testifies on behalf of the music and moods within the record’s grooves. One of the crooner’s top-flight ballads efforts, the 1959 Capitol effort again finds him pairing with sympathetic arranger Gordon Jenkins and inhabiting each note of every song…
Where Are You? is perfect in every sense. Recorded when Frank Sinatra was 42, the torch album finds him in impeccable voice and spirit. The dozen tracks fit together as a unified whole; it’s difficult to imagine one song missing, or another added. Arranger Gordon Jenkins reads Sinatra’s mind, affording him with lush arrangements that break hearts and underscore deliberation. Topping it off, Sinatra’s interpretive skills utterly astonish. Genres aside, this 1957 Capitol classic is inarguably one of the ten-best vocal pop efforts made in the 1950s…