Some time ago, we talked about In the Wee Small Hours, which consists of approximately forty-nine minutes of Frank Sinatra crying himself to sleep in the form of several beautifully arranged songs. That dismal darkness would be followed just a year later by a statement of resounding optimism and infatuation. Here we have what is a nearly perfect inversion of the previous record: Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!  On this album one may find many popular Sinatra standards that have never grown dusty in many record collections. It’s so perfectly blissful, love-struck, and optimistic, but also contains interesting nuances and, more importantly, furthers the idea of the “album” as an intentional collection of songs released together. Let’s jump in, shall we?

Frank Sinatra has often had this duality of performance persona, and these last two records show it in exemplary fashion – the duality between soul-crushing heartbreak and transcendental romantic passion. This interplay between the lovestruck and the lovesick reveals this idea of Sinatra creating himself as a vehicle of extreme emotion, a pendulum that swings back and forth, pausing at each side of the swing, rarely stopping anywhere in the middle. Songs for Swingin’ Lovers finds Sinatra at his most blissful, his soaring voice possessing a jaunty, flirty flair as the arrangements complement the Singer with playful themes and motifs. All this is supported by a swinging rhythm section that keeps everything lively and bouncing. In fact, some tracks recorded for the album were cut on account of lacking the sufficient swing necessitated by the concept. Nowhere is this more evident than in the all-time classic song “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. The arrangement rides on a bubbly rhythm section and a flirty, coy, repeated motif in the brass section. Something about this song gives me the inexplicable urge to don a top hat, step out on the town and dance with random strangers. It’s a flawless slice of big-band magic.

The aforementioned qualities apply to every song on this record, and the effect is quite uplifting, even if the songs are little more lyrically diverse than simple lovey-dovey mush. The lyrically melancholy “I Thought About You” becomes a jolly tune when given the swing treatment, but this song starts a lyrical trend that continues through the rest of the album – the emotions never last, and reality always slips in once the dust settles. “We’ll Be Together Again”, the most downtempo track on the record, perhaps grants the listener the most defined break from the heart-pumping action that dominates the rest of the songs, offering a bittersweet alternative. “Makin’ Whoopee”, a song that most certainly about exactly what you think it is about, portrays marriage and relationships as naively blissful at first, and then later on entrapping and unfulfilling. All this goes to show that the tone of the arrangement is everything. Some of these songs, given the stripped-down treatment of In the Wee Small Hours, could come across as absolutely depressing, but with the happy arrangements appearing on this album, even the morose songs are fit for an upbeat round of swing dancing.

Frank Sinatra, since his wildly successful career and later death in 1998, has transcended his time-period and genre to become a piece of American mythology. He stands next to Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole in this regard. However, Sinatra in particular was instrumental in pioneering how popular recorded music was made and thought about very early on. His ideas for using larger records to group songs together and to give those songs a continual theme have helped to build the popular concept of modern music, and we’ll see his influence countless times on our journey, and outside of our journey as well.