Frank Sinatra
Inside Tommy
Sessions for the Reprise album I Remember Tommy
Artisan ART 606-2
21 March 1961  and 1-3 May 1961

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Sy Oliver, arranger

May 1 1. I'll Be Seeing You 2. I'm Getting Sentimental over You  3. Imagination 4. Take Me May 2 5. Without a Song  6. Polka Dots and Moonbeams 7. Daybreak March 21 8. In the Blue of Evening May 2 9. Promo plus intro intercut [Intro intercut for "Daybreak,"

May 3 1. There Are Such Things 2. The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else 3. There Are Such Things 4. It Started All Over Again 5. It's Always You 6. East of the Sun (And West of the Moon)

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These are excerpts from the I Remember Tommy sessions. It's a mixed bag of alternate takes, incomplete takes, false starts, session chatter, etc., plus a single spoken line for a promotional bit of some kind. To the best of my knowledge, none of the material has been released commercially.

This album marked the reunion of Sinatra with one of the most important arrangers from his formative years, Melvin James "Sy" Oliver. Oliver was one of the arrangers for the Tommy Dorsey band, and he devised the original orchestrations for some of the numbers Sinatra chose to reprise in 1961.

The 1940 version of "The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else" was modeled after Dorsey's smash hit version of Irving Berlin's "Marie," in which the Dorsey band members chant rather light-hearted responses to vocalist Jack Lawrence's delivery of the Berlin lyric. (According to critic Will Friedwald, legendary arranger Don Redman is often credited with originating this idea for another band.) They did the same thing with "The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else," chanting tongue-in-cheek responses to the lyric delivered by Lawrence's replacement, young Frank Sinatra.

When Sinatra and Oliver tackled "The One I Love" in 1961, the conventional thing to do would have been to dispense with the band chants altogether and perhaps replace them with instrumental riffs -- which, in fact, is what Sinatra did when he subsequently performed the song live.

However, whether for old times' sake or maybe just for the fun of it, Sinatra and Oliver couldn't resist taking a different approach, so in the 1961 version, it's Oliver himself one hears reprising the original, light-hearted band chant lyrics (which he himself may have dreamed up) in response to Sinatra's lead vocal on the final refrain. That's true of the track released on I Remember Tommy, and it's also true of a complete alternate take included here.

While it might seem a bit odd to have an unexpected voice appear from nowhere to croon lines like "Like the bear, you ain't nowhere," I always enjoy hearing this tongue-in-cheek but undeniably affectionate nod to Sinatra and Oliver's fondly remembered earlier days with the Dorsey band. On top of all that, Oliver sounds great and he swings!