Swing Easy!

Swing Easy! is the eighth studio album by Frank Sinatra. It was released in 1954 as a 10" album (Capitol H-528) and consisted of only eight songs, as each side of the record only allowed approximately fourteen minutes of music.

Background

The album was Sinatra's second for Capitol and the first to feature arrangements by Nelson Riddle (Riddle had merely conducted on Songs For Young Lovers). As its title implies, the record concentrates on up-tempo swingers done with a light touch. Again, the songs were all standards -- "Just One of Those Things," "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams," "All of Me" -- which the singer felt benefited from the new thematic setting, new arrangements, and his increasingly playful and textured vocal style.

In 1955, the eight songs were combined with the eight songs from the 10" album Songs for Young Lovers on a new, 16 song, 12" LP (Capitol W-587) called "Swing Easy!", featuring the "Swing Easy!" cover but including a miniature inset of the "Songs for Young Lovers" cover. In 1962, the 1954, 8 song, 10" album was re-released as a 12 song, 12" LP (Capitol W-1429) with four additional songs added to expand the running time: "Lean Baby", "I Love You", "How Could You Do A Thing Like That To Me?", and "Why Should I Cry Over You?".

Swing Easy (TV series)

Swing Easy is a Canadian music variety television series which aired on CBC Television in 1959.

Premise

Regular performers included host Ruth Walker, music group the Rhythm Pals and an orchestra led by Bill Richards.

One episode (29 August 1959) for example featured a Shakespeare theme with singer Denyse Angers and musician Peter Appleyard.

Scheduling

This half-hour series was broadcast Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. from 4 July to 26 September 1959.

References

External links

Sly and Robbie

Sly and Robbie are a prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo, associated primarily with the reggae and dub genres. Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare teamed up in the mid-1970s after establishing themselves separately in Jamaica as professional musicians. Sly and Robbie are estimated to have played on or produced 200,000 recordings, many of them on their own label, Taxi Records.

Career

1970s: Beginnings in reggae

Sly Dunbar, then drumming for Skin Flesh and Bones, and Robbie Shakespeare, playing bass and guitar with the Aggrovators, discovered they had the same ideas about music in general (both are huge fans of Motown, Stax Records, the Philly Sound, and country music, in addition to Jamaican legendary labels Studio One and Treasure Isle), and reggae production in particular. They first worked together with The Revolutionaries for the newly created Channel One studio and label, operated by the Hoo Kim brothers.

According to The Independent, their breakthrough album was The Mighty Diamonds' 1976 release Right Time, which helped to establish them as the "masters of groove and propulsion." The drum beat on the title song was particularly tricky; in 2001 Dunbar recalled, "When that tune first come out, because of that double tap on the rim nobody believe it was me on the drums, they thought it was some sort of sound effect we was using. Then when it go to number 1 and stay there, everybody started trying for that style and it soon become establish."