Frank Sinatra With The Red Norvo Quintet live In Australia, 1959

Blue Note Records (1996)

FS With The Red Norvo Quintet Live In Australia

  1. The Lady Is A Tramp
  2. (Sinatra Speaks)
  3. Angel Eyes
  4. Come Fly With Me
  5. All The Way
  6. Dancing In The Dark
  7. One For My Baby
  8. All Of Me
  9. On The Road To Mandalay
  10. Night And Day
  1. Perdido (instrumental)
  2. Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea (instrumental)
  3. I Could Have Danced All Night
  4. Just One Of Those Things
  5. I Get A Kick Out Of You
  6. At Long Last Love
  7. Willow Weep For Me
  8. I've Got You Under My Skin
  9. Moonlight In Vermont

A wonderful, free and unfettered performance that existed as a much-sought-after bootleg for years before Capitol Records finally obtained the rights to release the concert on its Blue Note label. This is certainly one of Sinatra's most jazz-influenced performances. He seems right at home with the all-star Bill Miller quintet and feeds off the energy of the obviously thrilled crowd as he turns in some of the most ebullient performances of his career. Sinatra had wanted to record with Red Norvo for years and this, sadly, is the closest he got. Although a studio album never materialized, this concert is not a disappointment.

This is the one live performance to buy if it's necessary to choose among the handful of live Sinatra performances available. Others must concur as this CD hit the Billboard Jazz chart's Top 5 list over 38 years after the concert was recorded. If you'd like to hear more of this small combo style of jazz-infused performances, you can always get Sinatra and Sextet: Live in Paris, 1962, but a better choice would be the performance only six days earlier in London (on June 1). That rare performance is Live at Royal Festival Hall and is not to be confused with the 1971 concert introduced by Grace Kelly and may still be available from Clef Records somewhere. The CD—along with the terrific video of the concert shown on BBC television—is definitely worth hunting down.

If your tastes run more towards the polished studio performances (as mine does, if truth be told), another concert performance worth finding is December Down Under. Recorded in December 1960 at The Stadium in Sydney, Australia, Sinatra performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra using the same arrangements heard in his studio sessions. The sonic quality is not very good, but the performances are stellar.

Recorded in concert April 1, 1959.

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