Frankie & Billy with the Billy May Orchestra

Album Review

Although the time allotted for this CD is an unconscionably short 24 minutes, what's there is precious. Recorded in 1992 but never released nationally, the album includes the inimitable big-band styling and charts of one of the foremost and exciting arrangers ever to attack a piece of staff paper, Billy May. Frank Stallone comes well equipped to work with May with his powerful, consummately pitched set of vocal chords. No way does May drown out this singer. May was unabashedly an admirer of the master, Frank Sinatra, whom he backed on several albums during the 1950s and '60s, and several of the tunes here have been long associated with Sinatra such as "Exactly Like You." This iteration of the May outfit has many familiar names in it, representing some of the top studio, session, and performing musicians on the West Coast including Tommy Newsom, Bob Cooper, and the Candoli Brothers with the irrepressible Alvin Stoller driving the group from his drum set. A rousing, but all too short, meeting of two exciting performers, this album is one of Stallone's finest to date. In addition to being very short, the play list listed in the liner notes doesn't match the songs in order as they appear on the CD. Very disconcerting to say the least.