In The Wee Small Hours

Capitol Records (1955)

In The Wee Small Hours
Number 100 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

  1. What Is This Thing Called Love?
  2. Last Night When We Were Young
  3. I'll Be Around
  4. Ill Wind
  5. It Never Entered My Mind
  6. Dancing On The Ceiling
  7. I'll Never Be The Same
  8. This Love Of Mine
  1. In The Wee Small Hours
  2. Mood Indigo
  3. Glad To Be Unhappy
  4. I Get Along Without You Very Well
  5. Deep In A Dream
  6. I See Your Face Before Me
  7. Can't We Be Friends?
  8. When Your Lover Has Gone

One of the crowning achievements of the Sinatra-Riddle collaboration, and arguably the first concept album, Small Hours was initially released as two 10-inch EPs or four 7-inch 45s, but was quickly re-released as a 12-inch LP. This set of recordings began the pattern of alternating between swinging, jazz-influenced albums and albums of brooding introspection. In this collection, Riddle's spare arrangements and judicious use of strings and a celesta create a mood of wistful melancholy that is the perfect complement to Sinatra's amazing, vulnerable vocal performances. Even the cover art—awash in shades of turquoise—gives a hint at the early morning blue mood conveyed by the performances on this album.

The frail and somewhat thin, boyish sound that characterized Sinatra's recordings in the forties had evolved into a coarser tone Riddle likened to the woody timbre of the viola (the result of a vocal chord hemorrhage) and one that was perfectly suited to convey a knowing, world-weary understanding of the treacheries of adult love.

I remember walking into a record store 20 years ago and seeing a black-and-white poster of a Sinatra—instantly familiar, but clearly from an earlier era—standing behind a microphone, hat tipped back with his hands buried deep in his pockets. I didn't know it at the time, but the photo was from the back of In the Wee Small Hours. I purchased my first Sinatra album that day (Songs for Swingin' Lovers!) and was hooked. I knew there was more to the man than My Way and New York, New York, but just how much was suddenly made crystalline. I returned within a couple of days and purchased In the Wee Small Hours. Over the next couple of years the extremely knowledgeable staff of Real Records and CDs in Iowa City hunted down every Sinatra reissue in existence for me. Since then I've collected a number of different original copies of "Small Hours" in every format and from several countries.

While I still regard Swingin' Lovers as my favorite album, and the one I always return to, the beauty of In the Wee Small Hours continues to unfold the older I become. Perhaps youth can't fully comprehend the complexity and contradictions expressed in these interpretations. Indeed, most accomplished artists can't find subtleties that the mature Voice discovers in these songs. Only after having loved and lost a few times; after discovering that genuine tragedy comes not with conflict between Right and Wrong, but between two Rights; and that it's possible to be completely vulnerable and masculine at the same time, does this album's truth become clear.

Sinatra is often depicted as the avatar of the swinging 1950s adult lifestyle, but friends and relatives have described both Sinatra and Riddle as two of the loneliest men they have ever known. Perhaps this album brings listeners closer to the truth behind the public facades.

Recorded February 8, 16, 17, and March 4, 1955, except for Last Night When We Were Young (recorded on March 1, 1954).

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