
I bought this to hear the new arrangement of Body and Soul. I have the original Quincy Jones orchestration on a privately circulated limited edition cd. After hearing it, albeit in awful sound quality, one can totally understand why Frank didn't release it. Quincy cooked up an AWFUL chart that goes against Frank's tender reading of the song. The loud big band without strings just didn't allow for the tenderness of the song to come through. So they removed the band and isolated Frank's vocal and had Torrie Zito make a new arrangement. What has happened is nothing short of miraculous. Which goes to show how important it is to have a great arranger in order to make the song work. To my surprise, Come Fly With Me ends with a different tag from the previous issues. The Best is Yet to Come is also differnt, in the bridge, Frank phrases "Come the day your mine" differently. It's not as good as the previously issued version although the difference is slight, it's noticeable. And for hard core Sinatra collectors like me, it's essential. Strangers In The Night fades later than on previous issues. Two alternate takes, one track with a longer ending and an unissued Body and Soul make this a must buy for Sinatra collectors. Now the remastered sound. Overall it's excellent except for a few tunes. Drinking Again is MUCH better than the original issue. You can hear marimbas on this remaster. The older remastering you didn't even know marimbas were used! And you'll notice that the channels are reversed in the previous issues. One must assume that this is the correct set up. That scratchy part of the tape on Strangers In The Night at about 1:04, is FINALLY removed. For some reason, all previous issues had this flaw. My Way sounds much better than any of the previous incarnations. The only track that is "over remastered" is The Girl From Ipanema. For some reason, this remaster is overly dry, and colder sounding. The 1998 20 bit reissue is much better. But on the whole, it's a nice compilation and is a good one to recommend to people who are just getting into Frank.
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