Music » Broadway & Vocalist Box Set Music

Release Date: 2001-02-06, Audio CD, Decca Broadway

Including Sinatra's finest recordings from the most consistently accomplished era of his career, The Capitol Years includes three discs and 75 songs worth of swinging standards and bittersweet saloon pop, the music Sinatra made after his career and personal life had crashed and singing was all he had left. His masterful baritone and remarkable phrasing here work in perfect combination with arrangements that swing and swell to the heartbeat of loves lost and found. It is these performances for which Sinatra will be forever remembered, for surely, no one has ever created music more beautiful than this. --David Cantwell

This five-CD box set soundtrack to filmmaker Ken Burns's 10-part, 19-hour documentary Jazz spans nearly a century of jazz styles, from the martial rhythms of James Reese Europe to the soul-jazz of Grover Washington Jr. It includes time-tested classics like Benny Goodman's 1938 classic, "Sing, Sing, Sing"; John Coltrane's chanting 1965 immortal track, "A Love Supreme"; Billie Holiday's blue-ember ballad, "God Bless the Child"; and Ella Fitzgerald peeling off "A-Tisket A-Tasket." Bebop is represented by Charlie Parker's orchestral bop version of "Just Friends"; Thelonious Monk's nocturnal calling card, "'Round Midnight"; and Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" and "Groovin' High." The jazz-instrumentalist-as-singer comes to life on Coleman Hawkins's "Body and Soul" and Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers' "Doodlin'." Clifford Brown and Max Roach's "I Get a Kick out of You" epitomizes the hard-bop era, while Miles Davis's "So What" stands as the modal masterpiece. The cool school is in session with Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan dishing out "Walkin' Shoes," and the Modern Jazz Quartet's soulful elegy "Django" straddles all the above musical orbits. As for Django Reinhardt, he's featured on "Shine" with the justly famed Le Quartet du Hot Club de France. Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" and "Potato Head Blues" and Duke Ellington's rousing rendition of Billy Strayhorn's anthem, "Take the A Train," and his moody "Solitude" show why they are the Olympian masters of this art form--and the most frequently featured artists in the series. Although Ken Burns tries bringing the music up-to-date with Wynton Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, and two jazz-hip-hop-influenced tracks--Herbie Hancock's robotic "Rockit" and the French-language "Un Aige en Danger" by MC Solaar and bass legend Ron Carter--there are significant holes here. After Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, the avant-garde period from the late 1960s to the 1980s is lacking. And aside from the bossa nova hit "Desafinado," Latin jazz is also missing. It's a tough task summarizing jazz in five CDs, and Burns has given us a vibrant and vivid multicolored aural portrait of the music. --Eugene Holley Jr.

Release Date: 2001-08-21, Audio CD, Sony Cmg Mkt Group

16 CD limited edition box set release to commerorate her 75th birthday.

Each song on this 96-cut collection is wonderful. And the Capitol years were when Sinatra's fullest voice was used on material by the best (Arlen, Porter, Van Heusen, Cahn, Styne). But a purist will miss the narrative that was so special in the original albums. Records such as This is Sinatra, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, and Only the Lonely were among the first concept albums in pop music. If you're used to hearing "Three Coins in the Fountain" after "I've Got the World on a String," this relatively random cornucopia--though full of great music--will not leave you feeling as satisfied as the old LPs. This is a fine primer for newcomers, but you should't miss the tracks that never became singles, including such classics as "Pennies From Heaven" and "Old Devil Moon." --Karen Croft

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Release Date: 1999-03-23, Audio CD, Polygram Records

Contains 6 CDs with cinematic performances, promos and interviews 'The Voice' sang in nearly 50 different films, newsreels and radio/TV spots released by Paramount, RKO, MGM, Columbia, Hearst, Warner Bros., Universal, United Artists, UA/Capitol and Goldwyn from 1940 to 1964. Virtually every track available on CD for the first time. Rarities include a 1948 radio interview for MGM's The Kissing Bandit and Take Me Out To The Ballgame and a 1951 promo spot for Universal's Meet Danny Wilson. Packaged in a beautiful fabric-lined 5 1/2 w x 11 5/8 h x 1 7/8 box, contains a 120 page perfect bound deluxe book with a preface by Leonard Matlin, and liner notes by Sinatra historians and musician Michael Feinstein. Features reproductions of film stills, behind-the-scenes photos, movie posters and other memorabilia. 2002.