FEBRUARY 17

                FRANK SINATRA
          In the Wee Small Hours
   
                February 8, 1955
                    Glad To Be Unhappy
                    Can't We Be Friends?
                    I'll Be Around
         
                February 16, 1955
                    Ill Wind  
                    Mood Indigo      
                    I See Your Face Before Me
                    What Is This Thing Called Love
         

February 17, 1955
    In The Wee Small Hours
    I Get Along Without You Very Well
    When Your Lover Has Gone
    This Love Of Mine  

March 1, 1954
    Last Night When We Were Young 

February 24, 1955
    Deep In A Dream
    I'll Never Be The Same  

March 4, 1955   
    It Never Entered My Mind  


LINK Retired


Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Expanding on the concept of Songs for Young Lovers!, In the Wee Small Hours was a collection of ballads arranged by Nelson Riddle. The first 12" album recorded by Sinatra, Wee Small Hours was more focused and concentrated than his two earlier concept records. It's a blue, melancholy album, built around a spare rhythm section featuring a rhythm guitar, celesta, and Bill Miller's piano, with gently aching strings added every once and a while. Within that melancholy mood is one of Sinatra's most jazz-oriented performances — he restructures the melody and Miller's playing is bold throughout the record. Where Songs for Young Lovers! emphasized the romantic aspects of the songs, Sinatra sounds like a lonely, broken man on In the Wee Small Hours. Beginning with the newly written title song, the singer goes through a series of standards that are lonely and desolate. In many ways, the album is a personal reflection of the heartbreak of his doomed love affair with actress Ava Gardner, and the standards that he sings form their own story when collected together. Sinatra's voice had deepened and worn to the point where his delivery seems ravished and heartfelt, as if he were living the songs.

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