Two Sinatras for 2022

Who knew that 2022 would turn out to be a big year for the Sinatras?

On May 20, Light in the Attic Records issued a deluxe, newly remastered edition of Nancy & Lee, the 1968 album that united Nancy Sinatra and the “psychedelic cowboy” Lee Hazelwood and that went gold in 1970.

Two weeks later, Universal Music Enterprises and Frank Sinatra Enterprises issued a deluxe, remixed edition of Watertown, the 1970 concept album by Nancy’s legendary father that, according to some, led to his (short-lived) retirement when it sold only 30,000 copies (or 470,000 fewer than Nancy & Lee).

Other than their DNA and having originally appeared on Reprise (the label that Frank Sinatra founded in 1960), the two albums have nothing in common.

Watertown’s thematically linked songs tell the story of a man who, abandoned by his wife, must face the vicissitudes of small-town life as a single father of two. Nancy & Lee, on the other hand, in keeping with a common ’60s format, is a randomly sequenced mixture of other people’s hits (including “Jackson,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” and “Elusive Dreams”) and originals (all written, like Nancy’s signature hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” by Hazelwood).

But if Nancy & Lee’s structure was typical for its time, its sound was not. Sonny & Cher, Johnny Cash & June Carter—the usual ’60s male-female duos stood out because of their voices. Not so Nancy and Lee. Although Sinatra made the most of her pleasant soprano and Hazelwood’s semi-spoken baritone made for a striking foil, it was Hazelwood’s hazily ethereal production that set Nancy & Lee—the beguilingly inscrutable single “Some Velvet Morning” in particular—apart.

“Some Velvet Morning” has at least one foot in the musical equivalent of The Twilight Zone. Never a radio staple (it peaked at No. 26), it enjoyed a renaissance when Art Bell added it to the bumper-music rotation of his all-night radio show Coast to Coast AM. It has since appeared on various best-of lists and remains unique.

Frank Sinatra’s Watertown remains unique as well, and not just for the linearity of its narrative arc or its poor sales. The latter, incidentally, is no reflection on the music. Not only had the market for sophisticated, adult-oriented pop all but dried up during the Woodstock era, but the album, which was greater than the sum of its parts, also lacked a knockout single.

But perhaps Watertown’s most distinguishing characteristic is its requirement that Sinatra inhabit a specific character for the length of an entire album, making it in some ways the most cinematic of his many recordings while at the same time telescoping his trademark universality.

“Frank Sinatra,” wrote Pete Hamill in Why Sinatra Matters, “was the voice of the 20th-century American city.” For one album, he convincingly became the voice of the 20th-century American town.