The Voice

RCA 07863 66353-2 (five CDs), $81.98.
CODE: BAT-22

The recordings in this comprehensive set hardly need introduction; they include every studio recording from the pathbreaking association of Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, which lasted from 1940 to 1942, including some numbers never previously released, plus twenty-one never-before-issued live Sinatra-Dorsey performances, Sinatra’s four recordings with Axel Stordahl, and his complete farewell speech to the Dorsey band—a hundred and twenty tracks in all. This is Sinatra the skinny, young, silken-voiced crooner, suave and gentle and romantic, a master of nuance and inflection, and never a belter. In preparing this reissue, RCA engineers examined every master, mold, and stamper in the vaults and used six different restoration techniques to make the sound as clear and clean as modern technology permits. The jazz-singing chronicler Will Friedwald wrote the main essay in the handsome accompanying book, which includes a complete “sessionography” and other documentation. The first golden age of Sinatra has finally gotten the presentation on CD it deserves.