Saturday Morning Records: #9 — Frank Sinatra’s Watertown

A new series for paying subscribers — celebrating favourite albums for the weekend

As with last week’s recommendation, this is a very fine album to enjoy in ‘solitude’. But I’ve also enjoyed sharing it with people — via suggestion that they try it, as much as putting it on to listen to with other people. Watertown is one of the outliers in the Frank Sinatra catalogue, and as much as I love most of his discography and am slowly collecting it all up — I really do love the outliers. (Another favourite is the bonkers triple album Trilogy).

Knowing about Frank Sinatra is a bit like knowing of Aretha Franklin or Burt Bacharach or The Beatles, just music that is always there, and has always been there. But my mum was and is a huge fan, and I started my journey with generic greatest hits collections. And then I got to the real nub of it by finding those special 50s albums that are among the world’s first “concept records”. Big bold brash brass band-backed Frank is fine, and largely very dandy, but what I crave most — and it’s a whole other thing really, seperate and, well, better — is forlorn and heartbroken Frank. So, the Sinatra of In The Wee Small Hours, and Songs For Swingin’ Lovers — and a finer pair of records you might never find by anyone ever.