Frank Sinatra - Frank In Monte Carlo (1958)

In June 1958, Frank Sinatra was scheduled to head for Europe for the first time since 1953, at the request of his friend, ex-movie star Grace Kelly – who was now Princess Grace Of Monaco – to perform at a charity event to raise money for the United Nations Refugee Fund. The concert was also timed to coincide with the European premiere of Sinatra’s latest movie, a war film called 'Kings Go Forth'. Hired to arrange and conduct Sinatra’s show was a young American living in Paris called Quincy Jones. Still only 25, Jones was a Seattle-born trumpeter-turned-composer/arranger who had moved to France in 1957 to study with noted classical music teacher Nadia Boulanger. While he was there, he also became the musical director for the Barclay record label, run by Eddie Barclay. Jones travelled by train from Paris to Monte Carlo with 55 hand-picked musicians, which included ex-pat Americans, drummer Kenny Clarke and saxophonist Lucky Thompson, plus French violin maestro Stéphane Grappelli. In Monte Carlo, Sinatra rehearsed with the orchestra for four solid hours, and later that day the film premiere took place, followed by the concert at the Sporting Club, which was scheduled to begin at midnight. The audience was filled with the rich and famous, including Prince Rainier, movie stars Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and novelist W. Somerset Maugham, and the master of ceremonies was playwright and actor Noël Coward, who made a short speech, first in French and then in English. The set list was pretty much a greatest hits collection, featuring many of his best-known songs, plus a reading of 'Monique', the Elmer Bernstein-penned theme song to the movie 'Kings Go Forth', and a request from Princess Grace for 'You Make Me Feel So Young', a song that he and the band hadn’t rehearsed. The concert was recorded for French radio, and was originally released as a cassette in Italy some years later, and it has been bootlegged many times since then, despite being included in a 2016 box set. However, it's still worth posting here as it showcases Sinatra's first major engagement with Quincy Jones, and includes live versions of many of his greatest songs. I've done a bit of editing to remove the French announcer at the beginning and end of the concert, but I've left Noël Coward's full introduction, and I've also given it a new cover. 

Track listing

01 Introduction by Noël Coward 
02 Come Fly With Me 
03 I Get A Kick Out Of You 
04 I've Got You Under My Skin 
05 Where Or When 
06 Moonlight In Vermont 
07 On The Road To Mandalay 
08 Your Lover Has Gone 
09 April In Paris 
10 All The Way 
11 Monique 
12 Bewitched 
13 The Lady Is A Tramp 
14 You Make Me Feel So Young