YOU'RE GETTING TO BE A HABIT WITH ME

With the sun shining briefly on this grey island of ours this Bank Holiday Monday, I thought I’d match it with some music that always brings the sunshine, no matter the weather.

What amazes me about Frank Sinatra’s 1956 classic Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! is just how fresh the entire album sounds. Whether it’s the subtle variations in the swinging orchestrations by arranger Nelson Riddle, which manage to maintain a consistent sound and mood across all 15 tracks, or Sinatra’s relaxed tone in perfect balance with the orchestra, this is a record that feels timeless in a way that’s almost miraculous.

In the same way that Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane created a perfect sound with their masterpiece John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman on Impulse!, where Hartman’s vocals and Coltrane’s jazz ensemble blend into a beautifully atmospheric set of poetic ballads and sublime musicality, Sinatra achieves something similar here with Riddle’s orchestra on Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!.

This is the audio equivalent of flinging the windows open and letting the sunshine in. It somehow carries the scent of freshly cut lawns or, as William Holden says in Sunset Boulevard, “freshly laundered linen handkerchiefs.” It is dappled light through trees on the windscreen of a classic car, and the clinking sound of mid-afternoon cocktails overlooking a mill-pond ocean while tennis balls are struck across nearby ochre-coloured courts.

All in all, it's a cocktail album executed to the standard of a Schubert song cycle, except far less depressing.

Cheers!