Frank D'Rone Sings

The first time I heard Frank D’Rone sing was when a mutual friend persuaded me to go and listen to him at a small Chicago club called Dante’s Inferno.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t really prepared for what I heard because too often well-meaning friends drag me somewhere to hear a new singer and the experience is rather embarrassing. It’s one of the hazards of working in this business.

But all I had to do was hear one set of Frank’s and I was sold.

This guy is really something!

By the time he had finished four bars of his opening tune everyone in the room had put aside drinks and conversation: indeed a great compliment to any artist.

Now, I don’t know where Frank was born, if he won or lost a particular amateur contest, where he got started, or even how old he is (my guess is about 25). I do know that he was first a musician (guitar) and still is an excellent one. When he accompanies himself he has a marvelous chordal sense and selects only the loveliest of chords to play.

But it is as a singer that he is going to star . . . a singer with an individual sound that invites no comparisons; a singer who understands a lyric and tells a story when he sings it, doesn’t just mouth words; a singer who can seemingly sustain a note forever; one of the few singers who can change a mood of a room from song to song by moving from one emotion to another naturally. He holds an audience.

His choice of tunes is excellent. He doesn’t rely on shopworn songs of proven popularity to win you over, as witness his selections in this album, of such as “Joey,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “The Moon Is Blue,” and “Love And The Weather.”

In short, this is one of those singers I like to think of as “the stayers,"—artists who are going to be around for many years to come because they are that good, not because they have a gimmick or trick voice that brings them a hit this week and obscurity the next.

Evidently, some of my enthusiasm for Frank is shared by others. Playboy magazine for the first time in its history devoted a double-page spread to an “unknown” singer when it pictorially covered the recording session from which this album resulted. When Frank opened at the Hungry I in San Francisco early in 1959, one reviewer had this to say: “One of the most completely satisfying singing talents to come to San Francisco night life in years.” From another: “D’Rone has superlative taste for a man of his years.”

As I listen to this hollow-cheeked, deep-eyed and frail-looking young guy, I can’t help but think of my own inceptive years in music. There seems to be more than a slight parallel in our careers. We both started as musicians and became singers later. We both got our real start in Chicago. I developed my own style and approach to singing, and so has he.

And I can only hope that the entertainment business is as good to Frank D’Rone as it has been to me. He deserves every possible success not only because of his unquestioned talents, but because he’s an awfully nice guy.

– Nat ‘King’ Cole

Track Listing

Side 1

1. Love and the Weather (2:23) Irving Berlin (composer); Irving Berlin Music Corp. (publisher)
2. Yesterdays (2:37) Otto Harbach (lyricist); Jerome Kern (composer); T. B. Harms (publisher)
3. I Could Write a Book (2:10) Lorenz Hart (lyricist); Richard Rodgers (composer)
4. Everything Happens to Me (2:25) Dennis (composer); Adair (composer); Embassy Music Corp. (publisher)
5. My Foolish Heart (2:05) Victor Young (composer); Ned Washington (lyricist); Joy Outerbridge (publisher)
6. Fascinating Rhythm (2:03) G. Gershwin (composer); I. Gershwin (lyricist); New World Music Corp. (publisher)

Side 2

1. The Moon Is Blue (2:32) Herschel Burke Gilbert (composer); Sylvia Fine (lyricist); Joy Music, Inc. (publisher)
2. Sophisticated Lady (3:21) Duke Ellington (composer); Mitchell Parish (lyricist); Irving Mills (lyricist); Gotham Music Service, Inc. (publisher)
3. Joey, Joey, Joey (2:37) Frank Loesser (composer); Frank Music (publisher)
4. Spring Is Here (2:21) Richard Rodgers (composer); Lorenz Hart (lyricist); Robbins Music Corp. (publisher)
5. The Way You Look Tonight (1:15) Dorothy Fields (lyricist); Jerome Kern (composer); T. B. Harms Co. (publisher)

Album Information

• Artist: Frank D’Rone
• Catalog Number: MG 20418
• Catalog Numbers: MG 20418
• Label: Mercury Records
• Liner Notes: Nat ‘King’ Cole
• Source: MG-20418
• Format: High Custom Fidelity
• Country: USA Recording Note:

This Mercury Custom Hi Fidelity recording is the result of the most modern recording technique of our time. The masters for this album were transferred through an Ampex 601 tape machine, a Pultec filter and Equalizer. Also featuring amplifier, Mac Intosh monitor amplifier and a 15” coil, Jensen speaker designed especially to drive the RCA Cinnabar Feedback Horn. This monaural disc can be played equally well with either a STEREO cartridge or a STANDARD full microgroove cartridge. Because of the fine technical equipment used in the recording of these masters, one is assured of the most faithful representation in the transfer from original recording to the final masters used for processing.