Frank Sinatra – Sings His Greatest Hits Legacy CK-65240 (1997)
This album makes an excellent introduction to Frank Sinatra’s music. It’s not a perfect collection, but it features some great songs from the 1940s and early 1950s. There are a few alternate versions and previously unreleased tracks included. I would recommend this album over the more popular Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years if you only want a single disc Sinatra collection, and also over the bloated box set The Best of the Columbia Years 1943-1952. However, The Capitol Collectors Series and Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits are also good collections for later time periods (picking up both of those along with Sings His Greatest Hits would provide a fairly complete overview of his entire career — they cover basically non-overlapping periods).
Interesting aside: did you know that “The House I Live In” was the title song to short film Sinatra starred in that was organized by the communist party? Or that as a consequence of those sorts of activities he was barred from performing for troops during the Korean War?