Search - Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington :: Francis a & Edward K

Boring!

G. Schneider | VA United States | 02/07/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Once again I fly in the face of the majority of customers. I bought this album on LP years ago and then again on CD when it was still available. I just listened to it again this morning.



And entire album of dreary, slow tempos (and some even slower) just doesn't make it. When Frank got into a "concept" mood, sometimes the similarity of the tracks became tedious, as in ONLY THE LONELY. This is another case in point. The only up-tempo number in here is "Come Back to Me," which wails...until it collapses at the end with Frank screaming the last notes. Painful. (The syllable "me" should never be on a high note. No singer can cope with that vowel sound way up there.)



The Billy May charts are tailor-made for the Ellington sound (even though, as I recall reading somewhere, some "ringers" had to be brought in and added to the band to cut the charts), and Sinatra's singing is good for this period in his career. But the tempos, one after another, are stultifying. Just when you think you've heard enough slow material, along comes a song that's even slower!



In all, the albums with Basie are much, much more entertaining. That's my opinion and I'm sticking with it!"

Frank & Duke's meeting a disappointment

Dennis W. Wong | 02/25/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"In the many books about Frank Sinatra, he had long expressed a desire to record with the greatest band in the world, in his opinion, the Duke Ellington band. However this long awaited duo is a disappointment. First off, the band sounds tired and Frank's voice itself lacks any enthusiasm which was in abundant supply in the Basie recordings. Also Billy May's arrangements are mediocre at best and just serviceable. Perhaps it was just a bad day for both artists but if you're an admirer of both Frank and Duke, I recommend you get the colloborations with Count Basie and "Blues in Orbit" as better examples of these 2 artists works."