SINATRA AT THE SANDS (1966)
By Mahnuel Muñoz
On october 16, 1966, the album “Sinatra At The Sands” reached number nine on the Billboard magazine charts, one of the best live musical testimonies in history, regardless of the genre we are talking about. The album, recorded during the series of concerts that The Voice offered with Count Basie and his orchestra between January and February 1966, obtained a notable commercial achievement if we take into account that it is the year in which “Aftermath” (Rolling Stones), “Freak Out” (The Mothers Of Invention), “Pet Sounds” (The Beach Boys), “Blonde On Blonde” (Bob Dylan) and “Revolver” (The Beatles) were published, among many other revolutionary slices.
The Voice has come a long way, and it still has much more sky to cross. He is no longer a close friend of the president of the United States and on more than one occasion he wonders who is that somewhat aged man looking at him from the looking glass…
But Frank, the man, is in love with the young Mia Farrow and the joy anesthetizes him at the first aches and wrinkles. And Sinatra, the artist, sings like never before, steps on the stage as always and teaches as only he knows how.
The classic, solid and irresistible sound of these two giants was captured fresh in this work that shows us Sinatra at the supreme artistic summit, backed by the most competent and merciless army of musicians of the moment. The treatment applied to standards such as “Come Fly With Me“, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin“, or “Where Or When” gives a refreshing impulse that allows them to look as equals at the nascent pop anthems of psychedelia and hippieism and even surpass them as catalysts of the human soul, since its message is not locked in a historical moment but engraved in the universal DNA. The ballads and saloon songs in the repertoire take on twilight overtones, like panegyrics of the golden era of Las Vegas, which will soon become, in the hands of business holdings, a destination for all audiences.
Every second of the album is worth drinking like the wine at your last dinner, from the self-parody reinterpretation of “I’ve Got A Crush On You” to the sizzling “Luck Be A Lady” and “Get Me To The Church On Time” , without forgetting some confessionals “You Make Me Feel So Young” and “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me“. But there are two moments that stuck in my soul and that remain there, like an old tattoo on a crazy night: “The Shadow Of Your Smile“, a sad and elegant farewell to the smiles that are left behind, no matter how much their shadows chase us through corners and white nights, more frequently than decency dictates…And “Street Of Dreams“, states that love laughs at kings, queens, fortunes and miseries , gold, silver and cat-eyed ladies. In the wings of Sinatra’s singing I am even able to perceive the smell of that Street, and my hope for a brighter and friendlier tomorrow grows stronger, with my Jack Daniels-drunken ghosts in a bar without doors or windows.
Sinatra and the Basie band hope in this album to take us to the moon. The offer is good; On the cruise you will know what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. It’s beautiful to travel, but it’s even more beautiful to come home, where the other half of our soul and our Sinatra records are kept.
Nothing was the same for Frank after those incredible days at the Sands, and nothing is the same for you when you listen to a record like this. It is one of those experiences that turns your drawers upside down. In 2024 , very few things remain of everything done or dreamed of in 1966, and without a doubt one of the most powerful echoes is the one that occurred within the four walls of the Sands, a more friendly and perfumed place than the “Hotel California” that our world has become.
TRACK LIST
“Come Fly with Me” (Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen) – 3:45
“I’ve Got a Crush on You” (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) – 2:42
“I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (Cole Porter) – 3:43
“The Shadow of Your Smile” (Johnny Mandel, Paul Francis Webster) – 2:31
“Street of Dreams” (Victor Young, Sam M. Lewis) – 2:16
“One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” (Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer) – 4:40
“Fly Me to the Moon” (Bart Howard) – 2:50
“One O’Clock Jump” [Instrumental] (Count Basie) – 0:53
“The Tea Break” (Sinatra Monologue) – 11:48
“You Make Me Feel So Young” (Mack Gordon, Josef Myrow) – 3:21
“All of Me” [Instrumental] (Gerald Marks, Seymour Simons) – 2:56
“The September of My Years” (Cahn, Van Heusen) – 2:57
“Get Me to the Church on Time” (Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner) – 2:22
“It Was a Very Good Year” (Ervin Drake) – 4:01
“Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me” (Rube Bloom, Ted Koehler) – 3:18
“Makin’ Whoopee” [Instrumental] (Walter Donaldson, Gus Kahn) – 4:24
“Where or When” (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) – 2:46
“Angel Eyes” (Earl Brent, Matt Dennis) – 3:26
“My Kind of Town” (Cahn, Van Heusen) – 3:04
“A Few Last Words” (Sinatra Monologue) – 2:30
“My Kind of Town” [Reprise] – 1:00
