Come Dance with Me - recorded  1958

 
 


At the end of September, 1958, following the very successful COME FLY WITH ME sessions of 1957 and a singles session in March of 1958, Sinatra and Billy May convened for a third set of recordings, this time to start work on a second Sinatra/May album project, COME DANCE WITH ME.  For whatever reason, the recordings from that September session were not used at the time (although they have slowly escaped on official releases over the years, beginning in 1973), and the album lay dormant until the parties regrouped in December with arrangements that were somewhat more urgent and hard-swinging in nature than the slightly more relaxed, quirky, angular COME FLY WITH ME-style arrangements of that initial, aborted session.


From a technical standpoint, COME DANCE WITH ME was the first Sinatra album for which the mono and stereo recordings shared the same compliment of microphones and for which the released mono mix was created from the 3-track tape, as opposed to being an on-the-fly, live mix.  (I cannot 100% rule out the idea that a live mix was performed and left unused, but, according to the tape box displayed below, the mono master that was used for production was created by mixing down from the 3-track tape.)

Vocals that Dance...

 

The tape box shown at right was displayed at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2015.  It contains the master reel for the mono mix of the entire COME DANCE WITH ME album, which is a short enough album that only one reel was necessary.  Indications are that the album was mixed to mono from the 3-track tape, not mixed “live” during the session, as had been done with all previous mono Sinatra albums.  More discussion here.

Above: D3#2 LP

Above: 1984 Netherlands DMM LP

Above: 1999 UK LP, mastered by Sean Magee

Above: D3#2 LP

Above: 1984 Netherlands DMM LP

Above: 1999 UK LP, mastered by Sean Magee

Mono Audio Clips

“Come Dance with Me”

(Click photos below to hear clips)

“Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)”

(Click photos below to hear clips)

Each clip on this page falls within the 90-second free sample clip freely available on iTunes.  Click VIEW in the iTunes box below to hear the 90-second iTunes clip.

Above: D5 LP, courtesy SHTV’s mahanusafa02

Above: D8#2 LP, courtesy SHTV’s mahanusafa02