One Of Frank's Most Satisfying Efforts.
Anthony Nasti | Staten Island, New York United States | 11/24/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"After the runaway success of "Come Fly With Me", it was only inevitable that Frank Sinatra and Billy May would join forces again sooner or later. The reteaming happened sooner than later, as in early 1958 the duo reteamed for the exhuberant concept album "Come Dance With Me", featuring 12 songs tailor made for the ballroom.
"Come Dance With Me" is only rivaled by the later "Ring-A-Ding Ding" as Ol' Blue Eyes' best straight-ahead swing album. The songs on here are fast, furious and fantastic. Billy May's arrangements are wild, free and full of life, and Frank's voice is in mint condition.
The songs, as mentioned previously, are excellent. The Cahn-Vahn Huesen penned title track that opens is a certified Frank crowd pleaser with charming, playful lyrics wonderfully interpretted by The Master Of The American Music.
The rest of the album maintains that aura of charm and sophisitication. Among the highlights are a supercharged, definitive reading of Johnny Mercer's "Something's Gotta Give", a charming rendering of the old standby "Dancing In The Dark", the absolute best version of "I Could've Danced All Night" and a jovial cover of Fred Astaire's legendary "Cheek To Cheek". The rest of the tracks, including the four bonus tracks, are equally great and worth hearing.
This 1998 remaster boasts great sound, great artwork, and great liner notes, and is a must for all Frank fans."
Four stars as a Sinatra release...five of them compared to a
William E. Adams | Midland, Texas USA | 11/20/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This is just a tiny degree below Frank's all-time best recordings, which, due to his lengthy career, is a fairly long-list anyway, perhaps topped by "Songs for Swingin' Lovers" and "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" representing the pinnacle of his uptempo and melancholy extremes. The duets with Keely Smith, added to the CD as a bonus, are not half-bad, but they do make this something a little different than a "normal" Sinatra "hat album." The hipsters used to say that if the LP cover had Frank in a hat, the songs were lively. Bare-headed, they were sad. That is not really accurate, since a couple of his broken-hearted releases showed him in a hat, and a couple of his swinging records featured him bare-headed. Anyway, it is all good here, and four-star Frankie is still miles ahead of most of the other male vocalists of his time. As with all well-regarded Sinatra records, the songs are chosen well, arranged beautifully, and the supporting instrumentalists are super. We will NEVER see a career such as his again, and while his personality apparently had many serious flaws, his performances set a standard no one else has ever approached. Perhaps Tony Bennett is a close second for longevity and quality and variety. Frank himself once called Tony "My favorite singer." However, for phrasing, timing, "acting out" the lyric without "over-acting" there is no one like Frank."