Frank Sinatra – Five Minutes More / How Cute Can You Be?

Label: Columbia – 37048
Format: 
Shellac, 10", 78 RPM
Country: US
Released: Aug 1946
Genre: Jazz, Pop
Style: Vocal
A  Five Minutes More
Written-By – Cahn - Styne*
2:38
B  How Cute Can You Be?
Written-By – Carey*, Fischer*
2:45
Directed By [Orchestra] – Axel Stordahl
Vocals – Frank Sinatra
Made in U.S.A.



Side A recorded May 28, 1946, Hollywood, CA.

Side B recorded February 3, 1946, Hollywood, CA.Please see top of the page for condition

Francis Albert “Frank” Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American popular singer and Academy Award-winning film actor. Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a solo artist with great success in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers". His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records (finding success with albums such as Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, and fraternized with the Rat Pack and President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way". Sinatra attempted to weather the changing tastes in popular music, but with dwindling album sales and after appearing in several poorly received films, he retired in 1971. Coming out of retirement in 1973, he recorded several albums, scoring a hit with "(Theme From) New York, New York" in 1980, and toured both within the United States and internationally until a few years before his death in 1998.

 Biography
 
Early life
Sinatra left school without graduating,[4] and worked for some time at the Jersey Observer newspaper,[5] and as a riveter at the Tietjan and Lang shipyard.[6] It was in the early 1930s that Sinatra began singing in public.[7]

[edit] 1935-1940: Birth of career, work with James and Dorsey
In 1935, he got his first break when his mother persuaded a local singing group, The Three Flashes, to let him join. With Sinatra, the group became known as the Hoboken Four,[3] and they sufficiently impressed Edward Bowes that they appeared on his show, Major Bowes Amateur Hour, and with a record 40,000 votes they won the first prize, a six month contract to perform on stage and radio across the United States.

Sinatra's first cousin, Ray Sinatra, had an orchestra and his own network radio program ("Cycling the Kilocycles") in the mid-1930s, but Ray and Frank did not work together.[8]

Sinatra left the Hoboken Four and returned home in late 1935. His mother secured him a job as a singing waiter and MC at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood, New Jersey, for which he was paid $15 a week.[9]

On March 18, 1939, Sinatra made his first recording, of a song called "Our Love" , with the Frank Mane band. In June, Harry James hired Sinatra on a one year contract of $75 a week.[10]

Growing dissatisfied with the James band, Sinatra was approached by Tommy Dorsey in November 1939, and formally joined Dorsey's band the following January.

In his first year with Dorsey, Sinatra released more than forty songs, with "I'll Never Smile Again" topping the charts for twelve weeks in mid-July.[11]

[edit] 1940-1950: Sinatramania and decline of career
In the autumn of 1940, Sinatra appeared in his first film, Las Vegas Nights.[12] In May 1941, Sinatra was at the top of the male singer polls in the Billboard and Downbeat magazines.[13] Sinatra's relationship with Tommy Dorsey was tenuous, and Sinatra recorded his first solo sessions without the Dorsey band (but with Dorsey's arranger Alex Stordahl and with Dorsey's approval) in January 1942. Sinatra left the Dorsey band late in 1942.

His appeal to bobby soxers, as teenage girls of that time were called, revealed a whole new audience for popular music, which had been recorded mainly for adults up to that time.

On December 31, 1942, Sinatra opened at the Paramount Theater in New York. It is there that 'Sinatramania' really began, an event which led Sinatra's rival Bing Crosby to jokingly declare: "Frank's the kind of singer that comes along once in a lifetime, but why did he have to come along in mine?"[citation needed]

During the musicians' strike of 1942–44, Columbia’s rereleased Harry James’ "All or Nothing at All" , recorded in August 1939 and released before James' new vocalist, Frank Sinatra, had made a name for himself. The original release didn’t even mention the vocalist’s name. When the recording was re–released in 1943 with Sinatra’s name prominently displayed, the record was on the best–selling list for 18 weeks and reached number 2 on June 2, 1943. [14]

In 1943, he signed with Columbia Records as a solo artist with initially great success, particularly during the musicians' recording strikes. Sinatra signed with Columbia on June 1, 1943, with the musicians' strike ten months old. And while no new records had been issued during the strike, he had been performing on the radio (on "Your Hit Parade"), and on stage. Columbia wanted to get new recordings of their growing star as fast as possible, so Sinatra convinced them to hire Alex Wilder as arranger and conductor for several sessions with a vocal group called the Bobby Tucker Singers. These first sessions were on June 7, June 22, August 5, and November 10, 1943. Of the nine songs recorded during these sessions, seven charted on the best–selling list. [15]

When Sinatra returned to the Paramount in October 1944, 35,000 fans caused a near riot outside the venue because they were not allowed in. Dubbed "The Columbus Day Riot," it took the police several hours to defuse the situation.[citation needed]

In 1945, Sinatra co-starred with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh. That same year, he was loaned out to RKO to star in a short film titled The House I Live In. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, this film on tolerance and racial equality earned a special Academy Award shared among Sinatra and those who brought the film to the screen, along with a special Golden Globe for "Promoting Good Will." 1946 saw the release of his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, and the debut of his own weekly radio show.

By the end of 1948, Sinatra himself felt that his career was stalling, something that was confirmed when he slipped to No. 4 on Down Beat's annual poll of most popular singers (following Billy Eckstine, Frankie Laine, and Bing Crosby).[16]

1949 saw an upswing, as Frank once again teamed up with Gene Kelly to co-star in Take Me Out to the Ball Game. It was well received critically and became a major commercial success. That same year, Sinatra would team up with Gene Kelly for a third time in On the Town.

[edit] 1950-1960: Rebirth of career, Capitol concept albums
After two years' absence, Sinatra returned to the concert stage on January 12, 1950, in Hartford, Connecticut. Sinatra's voice suffered and he experienced hemorrhaging of his vocal cords on stage at the Copacabana on April 26, 1950.[citation needed] Sinatra's career and appeal to new teen audiences declined as he moved into his mid-30s.

In September 1951, Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut at the Desert Inn. A month later, a second series of the Frank Sinatra Show aired on CBS. On November 7, 1951, Sinatra married Ava Gardner.[17] They had an extremely tempestuous relationship, and the ascent of Gardner's career seemed to coincide with the decline in Sinatra's career.[17] They split up in 1953 and divorced in 1957.

Columbia and MCA dropped Sinatra in 1952.

The rebirth of Sinatra's career began with the eve-of-Pearl Harbor drama From Here to Eternity (1953), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This role and performance mark the turnaround in Sinatra's career, in which he went from being in a critical and commercial decline for several years to an Oscar-winning actor and, once again, one of the top recording artists in the world.[18]

Sinatra being interviewed for American Forces Network during World War II.In 1953, Sinatra signed with Capitol Records, where he worked with many of the finest musical arrangers of the era, most notably Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, Mavis Rivers, and Billy May. Sinatra reinvented himself with a series of albums featuring darker emotional material, starting with In the Wee Small Hours (1955), and followed by Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely (1958), and Where Are You? (1957). He also developed a hipper, "swinging" persona, as heard on Swing Easy! (1954), Songs For Swingin' Lovers (1956), Come Fly With Me (1957).

By the end of the year, Billboard named "Young at Heart" Song of the Year, Swing Easy! with Nelson Riddle at the helm, (his second album for Capitol) was named Album of the Year and Sinatra was named "Top Male Vocalist" by Billboard, Down Beat and Metronome.

Also in 1955, Sinatra's first 12" LP In the Wee Small Hours, his second collaboration with Nelson Riddle, was released.

A third collaboration with Nelson Riddle, Songs For Swingin' Lovers, was a success, featuring a historic recording of "I've Got You Under My Skin"

Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, a stark collection of introspective saloon songs and blues-tinged ballads, was a mammoth commercial success, peaking at #1 on Billboard's album chart during a 120-week stay. Cuts from this LP, such as "Angel Eyes" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)," would remain staples of Sinatra's concerts throughout his life.