I cannot believe that I am the first person to review this superb album.

This Columbia "Legacy" CD has terrific artwork: a few pretty pics of Frankie at his skinniest-a real bobbysox idol, a new appreciation of Sinatra by Will Friedwald, an explanation by Charles Granata of how and why these specific songs were chosen (when it is obvious that a true Greatest Hits of Sinatra might be at least TEN CD's long). The original graphics & liner notes look great and the CD, itself, is painted to look like a long playing vinyl disc of the post WW2 years.

Then there are the songs, the interpretations, the arrangements. All impeccable. Sure, I could do without hearing "Nancy With the Laughing Face" or "The House I Live In" ever again but Sinatra is at his torchiest in "I'm a Fool To Want You," his most tender in "I've Got A Crush On You," his coolest in "Body and Soul" and his swingingest in "Sweet Lorraine." And if I've read the enclosed booklet correctly, that song has Nat King Cole on piano and Buddy Rich on drums!!!!!!!

Recorded from 1944 to 1952,the sound is remastered monaural and it is fine.

For that one song alone, the album is worth it. You can go for the big box, or just this collection. They both contain his great, lovely, young Columbia voice. But on "House," he howls with all the force of a rock singer. It truly should be our national anthem.

Four songs make this disc a treasure to cherish:ALL OF ME,SATURDAY NIGHT,BODY AND SOUL and TIME AFTER TIME are all incredibly nostalgic because in the case of the two SAMMY CAHN songs,these are the originals versions.The way the orchestra cooks on SATURDAY NIGHT is so representative of the forties it makes you wish to go back in that era.Many other songs are dated by today's standards,but the overall overview of the COLUMBIA years is perfectly realized.Many of these songs were recorded again in FRANK's CAPITOL years.It is fascinating to cite an example to compare I'M A FOOL TO WANT YOU with the one recorded in 1957 on the WHERE ARE YOU album.Fortunately for his fans,FRANK did not record THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE again.This is the SINATRA that women were crazy about to the point of even neglecting their husbands.Luckily for us,those days are over.

and this one is a good choice. The young, post-WWII Sinatra is represented here for an hour. No, his voice does not yet have either the casino-style swagger he found for his "hat" albums on Capitol later in the '50's, and Reprise in the '60's, or the smoky heartbreak you can hear starting with "In the Wee Small Hours" of 1955 through "September of My Years" in 1965. But it is Sinatra, and therefore, not bad at all. Most of these 18 recordings made between 1945 and '52 are mellow, but not depressing. "All of Me" starts the CD off with swing, and "I Could Write a Book" is a great song. Look at the song list: many of these would be re-recorded for his subsequent labels, in the years of his greatest influence, but these early versions are high-quality in their own fashion. This is the Sinatra of the radio more than movies, of 78-RPM vinyl singles rather than long-playing albums. According to the nice booklet that comes with the disc, in this era Frank was creating a new identity, distinct from the big band singer he was prior to the war's end. (His debut as a solo concert artist came on the next-to-last day of 1942, almost exactly two years before the oldest tune on this compilation was recorded.) The crowds of frenzied young women who adopted Elvis in 1956, and the Beatles in 1964, were foreshadowed by the "bobby-soxers" who filled Frank's audiences. Ironically, Frank's success as a solo act helped kill off the era of the traveling big bands, an "unintended consequence" of his gamble that he could sell enough tickets and records doing things "his way". Well, I don't want to reprint the dang booklet in a music review. The sound quality on this pressing is super.While the 18 tunes are more accurately "SOME of Sinatra's Greatest Hits", if you are a fan, buy it. If not a fan yet, know that I think "Songs for Swingin' Lovers" and "In the Wee Small Hours" are the absolute tops, and this lags a bit behind those achievements. But a Frank disc with four stars outranks most singers' five-star efforts. No one did male pop/jazz singing quite like Frank, and this Legacy collection shows you how he got going on that 40-year career.

Along with all of the other reviewers, I found this CD marvelous. The House I Live In is the best American song out there, and I think it represents our nation better than any other song that is sung at patriotic events... national anthem material???? I think so!

One of my favorite things about this, though, is that Frank Sinatra helped write 'I'm a fool to want you', probably about Ava Gardener, I presume. Hearing him sing this song, knowing he wrote it, makes it all the more special. And I haven't been able to find it on any other cd!!