Product Description

Recorded in 1955, this superbly arranged and sung set of slow ballads can lay claim to being the world's first "conceptalbum". Of course, in classical music, song cycles had beenaround since Schubert, but a whole set of pop tunes arranged around a central theme or mood was something new in popular music. With the advent of the LP in 1953, commercial pop music was beginning to take itself seriously. As to be expected, Frank Sinatra did it first and best.
Sinatra is in utter command of this material--vocally relaxed yet focused onconveying what these hand-picked "torch" songs still have to say to the modern listener. Throughout he projects his signature manly vulnerability without seeming maudlin or even sentimental. The singer is helped immeasurably in this task by Nelson Riddle's deftly scored chamber arrangements which include brilliant use of celeste and guitar on several tracks(cf. Alec Wilder's "I'll Be Around", Kay Swift's "Can't We Be Friends".) A must for any listener even remotely interested in the Great American Songbook.

Track Listing

1. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning
2. Glad To Be Unhappy
3. I Get Along Without You Very Well
4. Deep In A Dream
5. I See Your Face Before Me
6. Can't We Be Friends
7. When Your Lover Has Gone
8. What Is This Thing Called Love
9. I'll Be Around
10. Ill Wind
11. It Never Entered My Mind
12. I'll Never Be The Same
13. This Love Of Mine
14. Last Night When We Were Young
15. Dancing On The Ceiling

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1246 in Music
• Released on: 1992-11-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered

Amazon.co.uk Review
The first of many artistic milestones in the long and illustrious collaboration of Frank Sinatra and arranger Nelson Riddle that began at Capitol Records, In the Wee Small Hours is a first in other notable ways as well: it was the pair's first 12-inch LP; their first album devoted entirely to ballads; the first "concept album", a programme of songs designed to be heard in a particular sequence that sustains a mood and suggests a story; the introduction of Sinatra's definitive "saloon singer" persona; and the first flowering of Sinatra's mature artistic sensibility. Oh, and it's a masterpiece, too. The cover portrait suggests the mood of late-night desolation almost as effectively as the music, with Sinatra in the corner, smoking a solitary cigarette on deserted street illuminated only by the a foggy, blue-green glow of lamplight. Loneliness, thy name is Frank! (They say that memories of Ava Gardner caused him to break down after finishing this aching version of "When Your Lover Has Gone".) Riddle's clarinet theme for "What Is This Thing Called Love?" is as haunting as Cole Porter's melody itself. And if there's a more devastating evocation of solitude than "It Never Entered My Mind", well, it must be on Only the Lonely. With songs like "I'll Be Around" and "Dancing on the Ceiling" to suggest at least the hope of hope, Wee Small Hours may flirt with despair but never succumbs to it. It's the kind of comforting company that misery likes best. --Jim Emerson

Customer Reviews

dim the lights, pour a drink and sit back and relax
When you are looking for something you can sit and listen to with lights dimmed and drink at hand, then this is surely it. Sinatra's voice is at its expressive best, so much so, if you close your eyes you could be on the next bar stool.

A superb colection of saloon songs that ranks among Sinatra's best.

Heart-aching and brilliant
As a young man on a mission, I found myself faced with the prospect of having to buy this album without knowing much about Sinatra except that which had been told to me by my Grandfather, an avowed Sinatra fanatic. In all honesty, I thought this album would challenge me, and doubted that it would be my cup of tea.

This is not Sinatra as many of my age would understand him. Not the bombast of "My Way" nor the high kicking of "New York, New York." This is a man in agony, torn apart by a failed relationship. Sinatra's pain is translated into his singing, without ever turning itself into pathos.

There's no doubt that the arrangements are fabulous, but Nelson Riddle had surely realised that the best instrument at his disposal for this recording was Sinatra's voice. By not over-complicating the music,Riddle lets Sinatra life the weight off his mind and just sing. And sing he does, fantastically well. The sense one gets is of a man who sings rather than talking to a psychologist. Whilst not quite baring his soul, Sinatra is at least trying to make sense in his own head of what has happened to him. Asking questions of himself and his former lover, he perhaps helps in our own search for answers to similar questions.

It was a great place for me to start, and opened my ears to a true legend of music. A great album to listen to at any time, you should own this.

Some things never change
I never thought I'd review a recording I first heard 52 years ago and first brought (when I finally had some money)42 years ago, but here goes.
Wee Small Hours is , as has been mentioned by previous reviewers the pinnacle of Sinatra's recorded work. His performing of what were mostly old songs in 1955, was entirely different to the treatment they had had before, and supremely better to what the same songs have had since. These are so heartbreakingly beautifully sung, and are so believable for those who have had their heart stomped on, that, half a century on they are painfully fresh.Still. Some things never change.