Day 115: Frank Sinatra - A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra

I have officially pushed through the end-of-the-year slog. It’s Christmas eve and I’m now a free agent for a nice few days of holiday festivities, which for me means crémant and video games today. I, of course, need to set the mood with a bit of Christmas music, so today I’m going for A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra. Personally, I’m quite partial to the crooners on Christmas – maybe one year I’ll branch out with my Christmas music, but not today.

Album cover courtesy of Capitol Records

Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to Italian immigrant parents in 1915. His mother was a midwife known as Hatpin Dolly, who was a political activist and a lifelong Democrat who used her language skills to be a translator in immigration hearings for Italian migrants. She also ran an illegal abortion service for Catholic women, which she was arrested for many times, and sentenced for twice. His father was a boxer, firefighter and bar owner.

Sinatra started his singing career as a part of a group called Hoboken Four, who said they only accepted him as a member because he had a car, but he ended up becoming the lead singer of the group. After that, he sang in the Harry James and the Tommy Dorsey band, before getting his own recording contract with Columbia in 1943.

A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra was released in 1957, and it features Sinatra together with Ralph Brewster Singers and an orchestra conducted by Gordon Jenkins. It has two different sides, with side A featuring secular holiday songs and side B featuring all of your usual religious Christmas tunes.

It’s not difficult to see why Sinatra has been called the greatest singer of his generation, and why the ladies went hog-wild over him: that voice is just so stunning. He’s in a league of his own in evoking emotions. The atmosphere on this record is just so warm and jolly, it’s not really Christmas without a bit of Sinatra in my household.

“The Christmas Waltz” is chock-full of charm and showcases the deeper register of Sinatra’s voice – it’s among the top songs on the album. “The First Noel” is also genuinely touching, even though I’m not too partial to the religious Christmas songs. “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You)” is also surely one of the best Christmas songs of all time, at least to me, and I love Sinatra’s version.

A close second in the All-Time Christmas Song Showdown is “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney, for no other reason than it’s fun. I recently heard people on the radio saying that they hate it, but I rebuke that because it’s obviously just people who don’t have a sense of whimsy. Someone once said that the song is McCartney’s effort to find out what all the buttons on his synthesizer can do. And then there’s my favourite post about it:

A since-deleted post by user @theryangeorge

A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra is a Christmas ten, but it’s a decent 8/10 in the non-Christmas category.