September of My Years


September of My Years is a 1965 studio album by American singer Frank Sinatra, released on Reprise Records in September 1965 on LP and October 1986 on CD. The orchestral arrangements are by Gordon Jenkins, their fifth album collaboration. It peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
In 2000 it was voted number 190 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.

Background

Sinatra was to turn 50 years old in December 1965, and the release of this album along with A Man and His Music and Strangers in the Night marked a surge of popularity in his music. Both September of My Years and A Man and His Music won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. CBS television cameras were rolling the night Sinatra recorded "It Was a Very Good Year". The edited result was included in a Walter Cronkite CBS News special about the singer's 50th birthday, broadcast on November 16, 1965.
Sinatra's performance of "It Was a Very Good Year" won the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, Male, at the Grammy Awards of 1966. Arranger Gordon Jenkins was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist for the same song. This was the first album Sinatra and Jenkins had recorded together since 1962's All Alone. Jenkins and Sinatra would next work together on the 1980 album .
The album was released on CD on October 10, 1986. It was re-released and remastered on May 26, 1998, as part of the Entertainer of the Century series done together by Reprise and Capitol Records. That version is currently out of print. Concord Records reissued the album again, newly remastered on compact disc, on August 31, 2010. This version includes two bonus tracks, a live performance of "This Is All I Ask" recorded at Carnegie Hall in June 1984, and the single mix of "How Old Am I?" released in 1968.

Themes

September of My Years is a concept album exploring the "who am I" questions and perspectives that someone, particularly a man, faces upon entering middle age. For instance, in "It Was a Very Good Year", the narrator looks back upon his life at ages 17, 21, 35, and now, in his personal "September." The structure of the song, which lasts almost four and a half minutes, was highly unusual for a popular song of the time, as it exceeded most other songs of that era by over a minute. In the process, the narrator "takes his time" to review his past relationships with a bittersweet mixture of satisfaction and regret. Similarly, in "Hello, Young Lovers", the narrator offers to young people the guidance and wisdom he has gleaned from experience. In other songs, like "The Man in the Looking Glass" and "Last Night When We Were Young", the narrator conducts an internal dialogue that reviews both the accomplishments and disappointments of his life. In addition to the lyrical content, the musical background reflects a more mature Sinatra than the Capitol recordings of the 1950s and his Reprise albums of the early 1960s. Instead of the big-band, "swing" arrangements with horn sections of those earlier songs, this LP features an orchestra with nine violinists. These strings provide a delicate interplay with the vocals, allowing the listener to easily hear and take in the lyrics.

Track listing

  1. "The September of My Years" – 3:12
  2. "How Old Am I?" – 3:30
  3. "Don't Wait Too Long" – 3:04
  4. "It Gets Lonely Early" – 2:57
  5. "This Is All I Ask" – 3:03
  6. "Last Night When We Were Young" – 3:33
  7. "The Man in the Looking Glass" – 3:25
  9. "It Was a Very Good Year" – 4:25
  10. "When the Wind Was Green" – 3:22
  11. "Hello, Young Lovers" – 3:41
  12. "I See It Now" – 2:50
  13. "Once Upon a Time" – 3:30
  14. "September Song" – 3:30
  15. :Bonus tracks included on the 2010 reissue:
  16. "This Is All I Ask" – 3:49
  17. "How Old Am I?" – 3:42
Notes