Frank Sinatra: Watertown

His great concept album from 1970

Sinatra was the master of the broken-hearted and the broken-hearted song. During his time at Capitol, as well as releasing a collection of superb swing and jazz vocal tracks he recorded some powerful, touching and melancholic ballads on albums such as In The Wee Small Hours, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, No One Cares and Point of No Return. After founding Reprise Records he continued releasing some great music, and in 1970 he released the concept album, Watertown, a haunting and poignant record that describes the thoughts and words of a man after his wife leaves him and their two sons. Our character is left behind in Watertown, and he sings of his love and his sadness.

The songs were all written by Bob Gaudio and Jake Holmes, and between them and Sinatra they created one of those albums that seemed to fail on release, but is now rightly…