Details

After failing to acquire Verve records during 1960, Frank Sinatra resolved to start his own recording label. Titled Reprise Records, the new label launched in March 1961 with Sammy Davis, Jr.’s The Wham of Sam and Sinatra’s own Ring-a-Ding Ding! being amongst the first releases.

It was important to Frank that the label look out for the interests of the artists themselves; Reprise gave the artists increased creative control, and offered contracts which saw rights to the recorded masters revert back to the artists after a brief period. Sammy Davis Jr. took full advantage of the former, but not the latter – instead, he sold the future rights back to Reprise in exchange for more short-term cash. On the creative side, though, Sammy got to pick an arranger with whom he really wanted to work, and the answer was: Marty Paich.

Paich had developed a sterling reputation as a doyen of West Coast jazz, cultivating a distinctive sound with a small group of expert jazz sidemen referred to as his Dek-Tette, most notably on recordings with Sammy’s close friend Mel Tormé. In his initial collaborations with Paich, Sammy would therefore dive headlong into mainstream vocal jazz, and the results were sensational.

While Paich would continue to work regularly with Sammy for a further three years (mostly on more conventional material with orchestra and strings), their early collaborations proved Sammy’s mettle as a pure jazz singer. Frustratingly, Reprise never released an entire album of Sammy’s work with the Dek-Tette per se. The B-side of The Wham of Sam collects six such recordings, and the few others recorded in 1961 and 1962 were placed here and there into later Reprise LP releases.

But for Sammy’s first Reprise album release he wasn’t going to forget his own personal musical director and arranger Morty Stevens. Hence the A-side of The Wham of Sam contains six arrangements by Stevens, all of which are amongst his best work, and provide ample opportunity for Sammy to display his full range of talents as a singer.

The album therefore has two distinct atmospheres: On one side we get the full Sammy Davis, Jr. repertoire – swinging hard on “Out of This World”, dispensing a bit of Ray Charles on “Back In Your Own Back Yard”, channeling Sinatra in “I’m Gonna Live Till I Die” and “(Love Is) The Tender Trap”, and providing the full-on torch-song experience in “I’m A Fool To Want You”. Flipping the LP over, we get Sammy the West Coast jazz vocalist. Was there nothing the man couldn’t do?

The twelve recordings on The Wham of Sam feature Sammy Davis, Jr. at the height of his powers, both vocally and creatively.