A Spectacular Album by Frank Sinatra

Over the 54-year course of his solo career, Frank Sinatra recorded 59 studio albums. Out of all of these, one of his most creative masterpieces was his album, ‘September of My Years’. It released in 1965 and considering how his other albums, ‘Strangers in the Night’ and ‘Man and His Music’ had already garnered so much traction from the public, a third simply enhanced his music’s popularity among the masses.

It won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year, along with ‘A Man and His Music,’ which came out the same year.

A Wholesome Concept

I think this album was unique as opposed to the rest, because the themes revolve around Sinatra reviewing his life and relationships.

Fans would agree it’s a distinct concept album that explored his own questions and notions about who he was and what his purpose was.  It’s something that we all can relate to at a middle point of life, except Frank Sinatra used it as fuel for his artistic venture.

When you hear the tracks on the album, they refer to new perspectives that a person faces when they approach a ‘middle stage’ of their life.

In his song, “It Was a Very Good Year,” he narrates a story in which the character looks back at different ages of his life – when he was a teenager, a young adult, at the mature age of 35, and then ‘now,’ which was essentially the “September” of his life. At the time, Frank Sinatra turned 50 years old, so he creatively compared the years of his life to an actual year, with different ages representing different months.

In this sense, being 50 years old was his personal September, which is coincidental considering how he lived to be 82 years old. As a popular song at the time, it was over four minutes, which was unusually long because it was over a minute longer than other songs released those days.

September Song

One of my favorite songs on the album was Frank Sinatra’s rendition of September Song. Composed by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill, it’s an American Standard pop song that was first introduced in the pair’s Broadway musical, 1938’s Knickerbocker Holiday.  

In 1950, the song was used in the film September Affair, after which it became a common choice for many artists to record.  It uses the same metaphor as the song “It Was a Very Good Year” except it follows a different narrative.

Through the lyrics, he reminisces his time as a young man who ‘played me a waiting game,’ referring to how he had plenty of time to wait around for girls who would eventually come around. But that was ‘early in the Spring,’ and even though there’s a long time from May to December, things start to change in September. He refers to how the ‘days grow short’ and how he doesn’t have ‘time for the waiting game’, which represents his life at the stage when he recorded the song.

All in all, it’s a soulful album that every jazz or Sinatra fan should have a listen to. If you like Sinatra, take a listen to my debut album, Yesterday Once More, which has numerous covers of popular jazz songs such as Sinatra’s ‘Nice ‘N Easy,’ ‘Here’s That Rainy Day’ and ‘Le Jazz Hot.’

Tune into my album here!

With Love, 

Maggy

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