Pantagruel's Full Review: A Swingin' Affair! [Remaster] by Frank Sinatra
A Swingin' Affair! continued Frank Sinatra's effective collaboration with arranger NelsonRiddle on a set of 16 well known songs. Like the studio album that proceeded it, Songs for Swingin' Lovers!, A Swingin' Affair! is a mostly upbeat collection of tunes written by some of the finest American composers. If these songs weren't classics at the time Sinatra recorded them, they certainly were by the time he was finished.
Cole Porter's name appears the most out of all the compositions, and Sinatra seems especially inspired by him. He hits all four of the ColePortersongs ("Night and Day," "At Long Last Love," "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," and "From This Moment On") out of the park. He deftly handles "Night and Day's" key changes and relishes the rhyming questions scattered throughout "At Long Last Love." "Is it an earthquake/Or simply a shock?/Is it the good turtle soup/Or is it merely the mock?"
Another household composer that appears multiple times on the album is George Gershwin. Though Sinatra does not seem like a good fit for George and Ira Gershwin's "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" (it's hard to picture the Rat Packer as a penniless imp singing this Porgy and Bess piece), he is in top form on another Gershwin brothers' tune, "Nice Work if You Can Get It." As much as I cannot easily imagine a Sinatra without money, I can relate to a Sinatra who is looking for love. Relate to and empathize with. Sinatra is such an icon that years after his death his legacy casts an image that is difficult to separate from reality. To me the Sinatra of the 50s represents an emotionally damaged man who is masquerading as a cheerful, swinging playboy.
Which is why he sounds convincing as the ordinary Joe who finds himself in love on "Oh! Look at Me Now." On the loved-'em-and-lost-'em "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plans" and DukeEllington's "I Got it Bad and That Ain't Good" he adds a touch of pathos. Conversely, he brings insouciance to "If I Had You" and Rodgers and Hart's "I Wish I Were in Love Again." He can't wait to get back in the game, but does not want to tip his hand too soon. He also takes this stand on "I Won't Dance," though he would have to be made of stone to not tap along to Riddle's band.
Another Rodgers and Hart composition, "The Lady is a Tramp," is a bonus track on the CD. This song finds Sinatra inserting some hip 50s lingo on the final verse, something he does oh so well.
"No One Ever Tells You," though recorded at a different session than the other tracks on the album, was the song that bumped "The Lady is a Tramp" from the original 1957 album. A slow number, its position in the middle of the album seems more of a tempo changer than anything. Although it's not a bad song, it probably would have been better served on one of Sinatra's sad-bastard albums that he recorded concurrently with his hip, swinging LPs. (I made a similar comment about "We'll Be Together Again" off Songs for Swingin' Lovers! Someone at Capitol Records must have thought these albums were too energetic, I guess, and needed a downer thrown into the mix.)
The songs surrounding "No One Ever Tells You" more than hold their own as slow numbers on the album, albeit with different themes lyrically. "Stars Fell on Alabama" is a pretty love song and "Lonesome Road" sounds downright inspirational with its subtle gospel feel.
Overall, I find A Swingin' Affair! to be a tad less magical than Songs for Swingin' Lovers!. Although Nelson Riddle is on board again, his arrangements here are slightly more extreme than on the earlier album, ranging from light strings to sharp, brass big-band depending on the track. Nevertheless, with Frank Sinatra at the top of his vocal game, A Swingin' Affair! is still an album not to be missed.
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