This article was first published at All About Jazz in December 1998.

Back in 1947, I covered, for kicks, a Frank Sinatra Columbia record date, produced in New York at Liederkranz Hall. There was an acoustically superb studio large enough to handle the sumptuous, full-fiddle orchestra assembled by Axel Stordahl, the leader and arranger. In the band were many of the city's top studio musicians, a stimulating sight.

Dominating the scene was Sinatra, the one-time skinny kid, now filled-out and looking handsome and confident. His voice still had the seamless, carefully articulated, meaningful quality that could make everyone, even in a large audience, feel that he was sending a private message to him or her.

A happy scene? Not quite. It was widely known that Sinatra's once-meteoric career was skidding badly. Gone were personal appearances jammed with screaming, adoring fans. Where once his recordings typically topped the weekly sales charts, they now more often placed near the bottom, if they placed at all. Columbia was rumored to be ready to drop him, as was filmmaker MGM. It was also rumored that the lavish support he received at the Liederkranz date was due to obligations in a contract signed at an earlier, more positive year.

Sinatra's problems were due to the confluence of many factors, among them such unappealing personal characteristics as his ill-timed pugnacity, his reputed friendship with Mafia bosses and his blatant womanizing, all of which alienated fans and the press. There were powerful outside forces, too, including the ascendancy of rock, bebop and country music, as well as the inevitable introduction of newer singing styles, like those of belter Frankie Laine (with Elvis Presley and