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Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording
Featuring 100 photographs of Frank Sinatra working with orchestras and arrangers, listening to playbacks, and, of course, singing, this book tells the whole story of how he created the Sinatra sound and translated the most intense personal emotions into richly worked-out songs of unrivalled expressiveness. One of the thrills of listening to Sinatra is wondering how he did it—and this book explains it all, bringing the dedicated fan and the casual music lover alike into the recording studio to witness the fascinating working methods he introduced and mastered in his quest for recorded perfection. Revealed is how, in addition to introducing and perfecting a unique vocal style, Sinatra was also his own in-studio producer—personally supervising every aspect of his recordings, from choosing the songs and arrangers to making minute adjustments in microphone placement.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 5, 2017
If you're looking for a book about how "Ole Blue Eyes" honed his craft, including immaculately researched information about the evolution of the recording process, this is your book. Granata is a wonderful writer, who made even the most technical passages immensely "readable". This made me listen to old Sinatra recordings with new ears, and the anecdotal material is fascinating as well. Good stuff!
November 5, 2011
Not in the traditional way but a really good book. A look into the creative mind and all the help it takes to frame it. Not rich on details of his personal life, which I appreciated. Find myself listening to the music in two different ways: the voice and the orchestration. A little over my head at times, it'd help to be a music engineer, still fascinating. Overall, a keeper in my music library.
February 16, 2016
I've been fascinated by Sinatra's voice & music for several years now, but am not terribly interested in hearing all the gory details about his personal life (the well-known highlights are impressive enough.) I really wanted to know more about how he evolved as a singer and performer during his long career, and this book fit the bill perfectly. On top of giving the reader a real feeling for how Sinatra the artist arrived, trained, and grew in talent and social stature, the author does a fabulous job describing the recording technology that Sinatra had to work work with thru the years, starting in the late 30's, and uses this as a welcome (to me) excuse to go on tangents about various technological innovations involving microphones and lacquer disc pressings. I found all of this information delightful! Because of this, the early chapters were my favorites, tho I also really enjoyed the in-depth analysis of the orchestrations of some of his Capitol and Reprise sessions. At any rate, this book was very engaging, and strongly recommended to anyone who is either a fan of Sinatra, or wants to have fun learning a bit about early and mid-century recording technology.
October 27, 2020
Wonderfully written, a must for any Sinatra fan, or anyone with an interest in music and recording. Full of great anecdotes of his life and what it must have been like in the studios during recordings. Spans 3 generations of sound recording technology and innovations. I recommend it.
May 17, 2022
Over the past year or so before I read this book, I had been exploring Sinatra's discography and enjoying quite a bit of what I was hearing. I was curious about learning more about his recording career, but I had little interest in a more general biography of him. This book really fit the bill. It covers many of his albums, some in more detail than others, along with the arrangers that he worked with. A small amount of what was going on in Sinatra's personal life gets weaved in for necessary context, but the focus is really on the work in the studio. With the proliferation of online streaming killing album liner notes, I found this book a great way to learn more about his albums and his progression as a recording artist. I did find the book a bit tedious in some small spots where the author attempts to put session outtakes found on the master tapes into words; I would recommend finding and listening to those instead.
August 16, 2021
The writing of this author is so horrible... so full of unnecessary words (adjectives, adverbs, definitives), so full of contradictory statements (illustrations that go the opposite of what the author had just written), so full of ignorant descriptions regarding the recording process, so full of displaced verbotem quotes that the author doesn't bother to translate so that the reader understands what was being said... that it is almost painful for me to search out some examples to prove my point.
January 24, 2018
Covers Franks entire career.
January 22, 2015
Sessions with Sinatra by Charles Granata is one of the best books on music, and recording, that I have ever read.
Mr. Granata has a rich vein to mine in his subject, which is Frank Sinatra in the recording studio. The author’s deft writing and deep research make it great fun to hang with one of the world’s greatest recording artists as he created his timeless works.
Sinatra was considered by virtually everyone he worked with – writers, arrangers, musicians, engineers, and producers - to be a consummate artist and craftsman. He was respected for his impeccable taste, his profound musicality, his adventurousness, and his immovable integrity. Granata, a true fan, conveys a sense of awe as he elucidates this brilliance. His sensitive prose brings us right up close to the microphone. The reader feels as if he is on the podium, conducting the orchestra, with Frank singing inches away.
In many ways, Sinatra defined modern singing. He was not only the world’s greatest interpreter of the great American Songbook, but he utilized the recording studio in unprecedented ways to optimal effect. Granata shows us just how he did this with increasing sophistication as he matured and grew as an artist alongside the development of the recording medium.
The author perfectly balances technical detail with human story. He writes about technique and gear with enough authority to interest the connoisseur, without alienating the lay person. At the same time, he never loses site of the essential plot, which is the human quest for artistic expression. Sinatra represented one thing above all else to everyone he worked with – the pursuit, and realization, of excellence. In a world all too inundated with mediocrity, it was having had that experience of creating something truly great that made Sinatra beloved to all those who were fortunate enough to work with him. That is the compelling center of Granata’s book.
Granata lives up to the Sinatra standard in the writing of this book. His writing is like Sinatra’s singing. His technique is transparent. He makes the hardest things look easy. He is smooth, clear, approachable, and direct. Though writing on an ostensibly arcane subject, his writing is full of feeling. His phrasing is deeply musical.
To top it off, Mr. Granata provided me with the great joy of learning an incredible amount about an inspiring subject. Due to the miracle of streaming, I listened to the albums that Sinatra created as Granata describes them. The author not only reveals the process of recording these masterworks, but captures their artistic meaning, and how they reflected the development of Sinatra as an artist. His writing about Sinatra’s recorded music is penetrating. Like all great art appreciation, the analysis of the works deepened my understanding of them, and intensified my hearing of them.
Granata does Sinatra proud, reaching for excellence as his subject did. For anyone who is interested in good writing on how great art gets made, Granata’s book is a must read.
Mr. Granata has a rich vein to mine in his subject, which is Frank Sinatra in the recording studio. The author’s deft writing and deep research make it great fun to hang with one of the world’s greatest recording artists as he created his timeless works.
Sinatra was considered by virtually everyone he worked with – writers, arrangers, musicians, engineers, and producers - to be a consummate artist and craftsman. He was respected for his impeccable taste, his profound musicality, his adventurousness, and his immovable integrity. Granata, a true fan, conveys a sense of awe as he elucidates this brilliance. His sensitive prose brings us right up close to the microphone. The reader feels as if he is on the podium, conducting the orchestra, with Frank singing inches away.
In many ways, Sinatra defined modern singing. He was not only the world’s greatest interpreter of the great American Songbook, but he utilized the recording studio in unprecedented ways to optimal effect. Granata shows us just how he did this with increasing sophistication as he matured and grew as an artist alongside the development of the recording medium.
The author perfectly balances technical detail with human story. He writes about technique and gear with enough authority to interest the connoisseur, without alienating the lay person. At the same time, he never loses site of the essential plot, which is the human quest for artistic expression. Sinatra represented one thing above all else to everyone he worked with – the pursuit, and realization, of excellence. In a world all too inundated with mediocrity, it was having had that experience of creating something truly great that made Sinatra beloved to all those who were fortunate enough to work with him. That is the compelling center of Granata’s book.
Granata lives up to the Sinatra standard in the writing of this book. His writing is like Sinatra’s singing. His technique is transparent. He makes the hardest things look easy. He is smooth, clear, approachable, and direct. Though writing on an ostensibly arcane subject, his writing is full of feeling. His phrasing is deeply musical.
To top it off, Mr. Granata provided me with the great joy of learning an incredible amount about an inspiring subject. Due to the miracle of streaming, I listened to the albums that Sinatra created as Granata describes them. The author not only reveals the process of recording these masterworks, but captures their artistic meaning, and how they reflected the development of Sinatra as an artist. His writing about Sinatra’s recorded music is penetrating. Like all great art appreciation, the analysis of the works deepened my understanding of them, and intensified my hearing of them.
Granata does Sinatra proud, reaching for excellence as his subject did. For anyone who is interested in good writing on how great art gets made, Granata’s book is a must read.
February 23, 2014
Toward the end of this marvelous book, its author suggests that to fully appreciate the importance of the recording experience, the technology, the contributions of Frank Sinatra to the canon of musical literature embodied in the Great American Songbook, and the musical genius with which he was endowed, the reader stop from time to time and listen to certain recordings. Why he didn’t state this first is a mystery, but my instincts already had led me to do just that. I would put the book down, search YouTube for videos of recording sessions and certain pieces, and simply sit there in awe of the combination of this man’s enormous talent and that of the brilliant arrangers, engineers, studio musicians and producers, all of whom combined to create such works. This isn’t a book for everyone as it contains quite a bit of technical detail both in terms of music and the way it’s recorded. That being said, you really don’t have to be a musician to appreciate it either. What you will understand is the utter professionalism of the man, why Frank Sinatra’s recordings are timeless and why they are classics. The forward was touchingly written by Phil Ramone and the afterward lovingly inscribed by Frank’s daughter Nancy.
May 9, 2008
It's true what you can read on the cover of this book: "If yu can buy only one Sinatra book... this is one to have" (Kirkus Reviews). It talks only about the music of Frank Sinatra, and one of the rare books that don't speak about Sinatra and mafia, Sinatra and women, Sinatra and politics. You can find a lot of first-hand material from the sessions, and you have, once, the illusion you're going to enter in the recording boot with Frankie and Nelson Riddle... That's incredible, that's great!
June 5, 2013
I've been a fairly obsessive Sinatra fan since the early 1990s (when I was in high school), but I learned a lot of new things from this book. It's all about the music, which makes it far better than any of the sensationalistic biographies.
April 5, 2014
A must read for musicians, singers, lovers of song, and fans of Mr S
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews