I knew this was a Frank Sinatra song about three seconds in, though I didn’t know which one. I don’t have many albums from this era in my collection, so the sound of a big band orchestra generally means just one thing: Ol’ Blue Eyes is back.
I’m not at all familiar with this particular song, though it’s instantly great in the way all of these old songs are great.
Best Albums of the 70s – #9
Watertown – Frank Sinatra (1970)
Frank Sinatra’s broken-heart concept album Watertown is one of only two albums that I’ve represented in their entirety on this blog. You can read my track-by-track analysis of the project here.
I wrote more about the lasting emotional power of Watertown in those 11 posts than I could hope to convey again here, so suffice it to say that the record may be the last transcendent moment Sinatra committed to tape and it works both for that reason and because it is a marvelous bit of theatrical storytelling.
Tomorrow marks the first day of Spring. And more important, today marks the first day of Spring Break for my wife and kids.
I’m taking the week off as well, both from work and Meet Me in Montauk. In place of actual blog posts this week I will post five songs about (or at least containing the word) spring.
Kicking things off is Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.
Here’s a bonus Watertown post for the completists out there.
Originally composers Bob Gaudio and Jake Holmes included ‘Lady Day’ as an epilogue to the Watertown album, conceiving it as a tribute to the Elizabeth character. But somebody (perhaps Sinatra himself) decided it didn’t fit in with the rest of the album and left it off.
An excellent decision, if you ask me. While ‘Lady Day’ is a lovely song, it is completely different in tone and content than the rest of Watertown. It has none of the album’s narrative focus, none of its effective specificity.
Here we are, at our final stop on the Watertown journey, suitably titled ‘The Train.’
How will the story end? With reconciliation or despair? Anybody familiar with Sinatra’s torch albums should know the answer.
‘The Train’ starts out positively buoyant, as the husband checks the weather, checks his watch, and prepares to meet his returning wife at the train station. He’s had “so many nights to find the way,” another clue that this break-up can’t be placed entirely on her shoulders.
Meet Me In Montauk 