55: Songs for Swingin' Lovers!

SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast

We're back, ahead of schedule, with an emotional first episode of 2025 after a long and personally very traumatic few months. This week we turn to Sinatra's classic 1956 album Songs for Swingin' Lovers! and explore how the album title inadvertently became a double entendre in the 1960s. Placing this album in the inadvertent context of the "swinging" sexual revolution throws new light on it and snaps the album's "concept" into focus. Mostly, this is just spectacular music and we're back to our roots of appreciating it. In particular, we spotlight the trumpet work of Harry "Sweets" Edison, a major part of the timeless sound of this era.

Selected sources:

• "Music Hath Charms, Even Unto Motherhood", The Indianapolis Star, 25 March, 1962
• Frank Sinatra: Portrait of an Album (1985)
• Interview with Harry "Sweets" Edison, conducted by Les Tomkin in 1970 for National Jazz Archive UK
• Hugh Rawson - A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk (1983)
• All the Loving Couples (1969)
• Terry Gould - The Lifestyle: A look at the erotic rites of swingers (1989)
• Gilbert D. Bartell - Group sex: a scientist's eyewitness report on the American way of swinging (1971)
• Ray Connelly - A Girl Who Came to Stay (1975)
• Charles A. Varni - "An Exploratory Study of Wife-Swapping" (1972)

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