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From the incomparable Gordon Skene at our sister site, Newstalgia:

I can't think of a better way to end up the year than with a special, rare, never-heard-before performance of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin (not together unfortunately, but Dino's in fine form) from the Hungarian Relief Fundraiser put on in Los Angeles on November 30, 1956.

For some reason, this recording has never been issued anywhere - the master tapes sitting on a shelf in a garage the better part of forty years before I got the call to "take the junk away".

Dean had just broken up his act with Jerry Lewis and Sinatra was going through a career change that took would take a dramatic upturn as well. If memory serves (but don't hold me to it), this predates the Ratpack by about a year.

In any event, this is a rare recording and you get to hear it first.

From all of us here at C&L, we wish you all a safe and joyous New Year's Eve and hope for the very best for 2010.

September of My Years
	Artist: Frank Sinatra

What music do you listen to when in a sentimental mood?

Strangers In The Night (Expanded)

Y'all have a great holiday weekend! Stay safe out there.

Heaven Just Got Funkier

Earl Palmer, perhaps the most recorded drummer in the history of popular American music, died last Friday at the age of 84. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, the New Orleans native set the beat for an amazing variety of artists, including, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Frank Sinatra, Lou Rawls, Bonnie Raitt, and Sarah Vaughan. In the 70's, I had the privilege of working with Earl for a few years in Maria Muldaur's band. He was a brilliantly inventive, caring, man. In recent years, in addition to continuing to play, he served as an executive officer of the LA Musician's Union, working to ensure that older musicians received credit and royalties they were due. We lost an immortal, one of the founding fathers of Rock & Roll.

When Count Basie first released "Jumpin' At The Woodside" in 1938 John McCain was still learning to ride a burro around his native Panama-- though Basie had already had 5 hits. It was just the beginning for Basie and he and his orchestra went on to defining the entire swing era of jazz. At various times Basie's Big Band had singers (or backed singers) like Billie Holiday, Joe Williams, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. Basie won an astounding 17 Grammy awards and when he died in 1980 he had achieved every milestone of success a musician can aspire to. (Unfortunately for us all, over the decades McCain went from trying to stay on a burro to flying planes-- with disastrous consequences.)

Today is Irving Berlin's birthday; he'd be 120 (except he passed away in 1989). With a repertoire like his, where do you even start? He wrote music and lyrics for thousands of songs, from "God Bless America" and "White Christmas" to "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," "Puttin' on the Ritz," and "How Deep is the Ocean"... and "Blue Skies, a personal fave. But even with "Blue Skies," what direction? Frank Sinatra? Ella Fitzgerald? Willie Nelson? Count Basie? Rod Stewart? Fiona Apple? Dozens of people have covered the Berlin classic. So I decided to go to a version that Berlin didn't write. This was one that BT (Brian Transeau) wrote and then got Tori Amos to do some lyrics for. It came out in 1996 on his Ima album and then on the Party of Five TV soundtrack LP (put together by yours truly). By early 1997 it was the #1 dance song in the U.S.

I suspect many people familiar with Frank Loesser's classic song "Luck Be A Lady," probably know it as a Frank Sinatra standard. (Note: that cover was first released as part of the Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre series in 1963 and while I was working at Reprise I stumbled on the 4 discs and repackaged them for CD boxset in 2000.) But the first singer was Robert Alda (Alan's dad) who sang it in the Broadway show Guys and Dolls. (Marlon Brando sang it in the film in 1955.) This energetic swing version was recorded by the Detroit-based Atomic Fireballs.

You like dancing? Same with me! Before my bar-mitzvah my parents made me take dancing lessons-- as well as Hebrew lessons. I never used either after the great event. But I once won a Junior Cha Cha contest in Miami Beach when I was 12 and visiting my grandma for Pessach. I always associate the cha cha, mambo, samba, rhumba and tango with Jewishness, like pastrami on rye with mustard. And Perry Como. I mean, after Frank Sinatra what could be more Jewish? This one was a hit in 1954 (and here's Como performing it back then); more recently it experienced a bit of a revival because of Ocean's Eleven.

As promised, for Andy K (a repeat of an earlier music thread)

They Can't Take That Away From Me/Stompin' At The Savoy/At Long Last Love

From Frank Sinatra- A Man and His Music