Songs for Swingin Lovers (mono)

Having endured a traumatic breakup and recorded his first “saloon style” concept album the year prior, Frank Sinatra returned with vivacious gusto on the aptly titled Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, a light-on-its-feet set bursting with joyousness, pop, vitality, optimism, and finger-snapping promise. Indisputably one of the greatest swing efforts ever undertaken, it contains highlight-reel renditions of now-standards such as “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “You Make Me Feel So Young,” and “Pennies From Heaven.” The equivalent of a musical fountain of youth, the fluid material mirrors Sinatra’s confidence and enthusiasm, which nearly burst off the page.

Mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered limited-edition hybrid SACD presents in mono this jubilant affair, eviscerating in transparency that rendered by the previous remasters.

There’s every reason any music lover would yearn to be as close to the music on this record as possible. And in rendering the scope, scale, thrust, and peaks-and-valleys dynamics of the orchestra, not to mention the timbral richness and full extension of Sinatra’s impeccable singing, this pressing gives you a front-and-center chair to the sessions at the Hollywood studios.

Rare is the album replete with the superb combination of contagious pitch-perfect singing, swaying tempos, life-affirming emotions, and breezy string arrangements exemplified here. Nelson Riddle’s scales climb to unforeseen heights, the rushing crescendos and twirling comedowns surging with power, persuasion, and pleasantry. At times, the strings and rhythm section threaten to overwhelm Ol’ Blue Eyes. Yet Sinatra, lighthearted and in great humor, is in such brilliant form, he matches the splendor and seems to invite Riddle to bring all he’s got.

Songs For Swingin’ Lovers! finds both icons at their peak, each having loads of fun and delighting in the songs’ captivating faculties. Tenderness, swagger, affection, spring-like bloom, romance, danceability, smoothness, sentimentality—all present in spades, coursing through the arrangements and Sinatra’s phrasing. A vocal pop masterpiece, and immediate mood-lifter, conceptual records don’t come any better.