The eighty-one titles gathered here are presented in chronological order. They were selected by quietly passionate expert James Isaacs, cool and reasonable record producer Joe McEwen, and myself. The collection represents America's greatest interpretive artist at the top of his commercial and artistic game, on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, December 12, 1990. Ten percent of the music will be brand new to one and all, as Warner Bros. at long last yields unreleased material. The rest, spanning thirty years, is the basic hum of American popular culture. It is my opinion (and I write without hyperbole), that Frank Sinatra is a musician of genius.

These discs are living, audible proof

- Jonathan Schwartz
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1. Let's Fall In Love
H. Arlen, T. Koehler (Bourne Inc. ASCAP)
December 19, 1960 Los Angeles
Arranger: Johnny Mandel

2. You'd Be So Easy To Love
C. Porter (Chappell & Co. ASCAP)
December 20, 1960 Los Angeles
Arranger: Johnny Mandel

3. The Coffee Song
B. Hilliard, D. Miles (Cromwell Music, Inc. BMI)
December 20, 1960 Los Angeles
Arranger: Johnny Mandel

4. Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart (Previously Unreleased)
J. Hanley (Warner Bros. Inc. ASCAP)
December 21, 1960 Los Angeles
Arranger: Johnny Mandel

Sinatra on his own at last, operating under his own banner, Reprise - ''To play and play again," so the slogan went. Sinatra recording for the first (and as things turned out, the only) time with a jazz flavored ex-Basie trombonist-arranger, Johnny Mandel. Standard songs all, except for the commissioned title song by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, who were able to actually write a tune called "Ring-A-Ding Ding."

The album stands today as one of Sinatra's best. The first three songs here, "Let's Fall In Love," "You'd Be So Easy To Love" and "The Coffee Song" are generic Ring-A-Ding Ding! tracks. The fourth, "Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart," is a monumental celebrity. Recorded for Ring-A-Ding Ding!, but never released, it has, for thirty years, been the subject of much speculation. Did it exist at all? Did Sinatra add some blue lyrics that made it unreleasable? Was the tape destroyed? Was there only an incomplete take?

The answer (solution) has been supplied by two tenacious collectors in the Albany, New York, area, Charlie Pignone and Ed O'Brien, who archaeologically came upon the master tapes of the whole album and discovered a complete '''Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart," including, to everyone's surprise, the verse. WNEW in New York has, on three occasions, played every released Sinatra record in alphabetical order, calling their week of programming SINATRA, A TO Z. Except that there was no Z. The package you are holding resolves this problem, supplies the Z, and plunges us back into those great recording sessions of December 1960 - JFK a President-elect for a month, Bill Mazeroski a recent baseball hero, and me, twenty-two years old, waiting waiting waiting for the release of Ring-A-Ding Ding!

5. The Last Dance (Previously Unreleased)
S. Cahn, J. Van Heusen (Cahn Music Co./Maraville Music Corp. ASCAP)
December 21, 1960 Los Angeles
Arranger: Nelson Riddle

Written by Jimmy and Sammy to conclude a Capitol "concept" album, Come Dance With Me. "The Last Dance," taken in a dreamy 1940's dance tempo, quickly became everybody's favorite Come Dance With Me song.

For Reprise (almost at once) Sinatra re-recorded it with a Nelson Riddle arrangement. A bit brisker than the first, it includes a nice clarinet obligato probably provided by jazz great Buddy DeFranco (Nelson, under a Capitol contract, couldn't be credited with a Reprise chart, which is why Felix Slatkin, the conductor, was listed as arranger). Curiously, the record has stayed unreleased until now.

6. The Second Time Around
S. Cahn, J. Van Heusen (EMI Miller Catalog Inc. ASCAP)
December 21, 1960 Los Angeles
Arranger: Nelson Riddle

7. Tina
S. Cahn, J. Van Heusen (Maraville Music ASCAP)
December 21, 1960 Los Angeles
Arranger: Nelson Riddle

"The Second Time Around," backed by "Tina," was Sinatra's first Reprise single. It's a wonderful song, a singer's song that Sinatra made a standard even though his record was never a smash hit.

"Tina" balances the daughter scale. Both tunes are by Jimmy and Sammy.

8. Without A Song
V. Youmans, B. Rose, E. Eliscu (Miller Music Corp. ASCAP)
May 2, 1961 Los Angeles
Arranger: Sy Oliver

9. It Started All Over Again
B. Carey, C. Fisher (Embassy Music BMI)
May 3, 1961 Los Angeles
Arranger: Sy Oliver

"Without A Song," the centerpiece of I Remember Tommy, an album of songs Sinatra had done twenty years earlier with Dorsey, and Sy Oliver's one album of arrangements for Sinatra.

"It Started All Over Again" is a song about how difficult it is to irrevocably extinguish romantic love.

Sinatra and Oliver speak through what Nelson Riddle called "the heartbeat rhythm," by which he meant the natural, unfrenetic fingersnap that controls many Sinatra records.

10. Love Walked In
G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin (Chappell & Co. ASCAP)
May 18, 1961 Los Angeles
Arranger: Billy May

11. You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You
R. Morgan, L. Stock, J. Cavanaugh (Southern Music Publishing Co., Inc. ASCAP)
May 23, 1961 Los Angeles
Arranger: Billy May

A wild and woolly swing tempo Sinatra album, Sinatra Swings (originally called Swing Along With Me, to inflame Capitol Records who were still issuing Sinatra albums, especially one called Come Swing With Me; Capitol went to court and forced Reprise to change Swing Along With Me to Sinatra Swings). The liner notes on Sinatra Swings - Swing Along With Me called the singing "uninhibited." The Gershwin song, "Love Walked In," is unacrobatic and subtle. "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You" builds up and up and up to the sky with a Sinatra-Riddle-Capitol intention, but with a Billy May arrangement.

No doubt Capitol knew what they had lost.

12. Don't Take Your Love From Me (Initial U.S. Release)
H. Nemo (Indano Music ASCAP)
November 21, 1961 Los Angeles
Arranger: Don Costa

13. Come Rain Or Come Shine
H. Arlen, J. Mercer (Chappell & Co. ASCAP)
November 22, 1961 Los Angeles
Arranger: Don Costa

14. Night And Day
C. Porter (Warner Bros. Inc. ASCAP)
November 22, 1961 Los Angeles
Arranger: Don Costa

One of the two songs withheld from the lovely Sinatra And Strings, Sinatra's first collaboration with Don Costa, "Don't Take Your Love From Me" has floated amongst collectors along with its companion in silence, "As You Desire Me," finding its way onto privately issued albums all over the world, always presented with fuzzy and unsatisfying sound. Here is "Don't Take Your Love From Me" with state-of-the-art quality, along with two masterpieces from the same album, "Come Rain Or Come Shine" and "Night And Day," the latter the only recording of four through the years of "Night And Day" on which the singer has included the verse.

15. All Alone
I. Berlin (Irving Berlin Music Corp. ASCAP)
January 15, 1962 Los Angeles
Arranger: Gordon Jenkins

16. What'll I Do
I. Berlin (Irving Berlin Music Corp. ASCAP)
January 17, 1962 Los Angeles
Arranger: Gordon Jenkins

Irving Berlin's "All Alone," the title song of a 1962 torch-waltz album with Gordon Jenkins originally titled Come Waltz With Me. (The Jimmy-Sammy tune "Come Waltz With Me," written for the occasion, resisted Sinatra's best efforts to the point of eventual exclusion.

Another Berlin song, "What'll I Do," helped the project considerably.)

17. I Get A Kick Out Of You
C. Porter (Warner Bros. Inc. ASCAP)
April 10, 1962 Los Angeles
Arranger: Neal Hefti

18. Don 'Cha Go 'Way Mad
J. Mundy, A. Stillman, I. Jacquet (Warner Bros. Inc. ASCAP)
April 11, 1962 Los Angeles
Arranger: Neal Hefti

A 1962 re-recording of a Capitol standard, on the only acknowledged Neal Hefti-arranged Sinatra album.

"Don'Cha Go 'Way Mad" is another nice moment from the package. Hefti, an innovative instrumentalist with a sturdy knowledge of big band writing, also contributed two other 1962 arrangements for a 45 rpm of "Everybody's Twistin'" and "Nothing But The Best," that made for an energized if unsuccessful release.

19. A Garden In The Rain (Initial U.S. Release)
C. Gibbons, J. Dyrenforth (Campbell-Connelly, Inc. ASCAP)
June 12, 1962 London
Arranger: Robert Farnon

20. A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square (Initial U.S. Release)
E. Maschwitz, M. Sherwin (Colgems EMIl Shapiro-Bernstein ASCAP)
June 13, 1962 London
Arranger: Robert Farnon

Two songs from the only unreleased-in-the United States Sinatra album. Made in June of 1962 in London with Robert Farnon, the sessions were held near the end of a grueling world charity tour. Sinatra, not in absolutely top vocal shape, struggled with a group of songs by English writers, including the well-known "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square."As for "A Garden In The Rain," all I knew when I saw the title on the album was that I was familiar with the song as a hit single by a numbingly unmusical early Fifties group called The Four Aces. Sinatra's reading, however, immediately evoked the almost literary landscape of the lyric, and revealed a very pretty melody.

21. Please Be Kind
S. Chaplin, S. Cahn (Warner Bros. Inc. ASCAP)
October 2, 1962 Los Angeles
Arranger: Neal Hefti
Count Basie And His Orchestra