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FRANK SINATRA -- WITH THE RED NORVO QUARTET LIVE IN AUSTRALIA, 1959 (Blue Note) and FRANK SINATRA -- LIVE! SEATTLE, WASHINGTON CONCERT JUNE 9, 1957 (Jazz Hour): Fans argue endlessly over Sinatra's best recorded work, but for me, his best live work was in the late '50s when it seems he wasn't yet the living legend he would become later. The Australian concert has long been raved over, though I find it less than perfect on a number of points. The chief problem is the sound quality on this disc, which originally was issued as a bootleg. Though a slight improvement over the bootleg version, the Blue Note version still sounds less than perfect. Still, Sinatra is in great vocal form. He cuts through "Just One of Those Things" "like buttah," to borrow the overused Streisand cliche. Too bad there's not a true stereo copy of this floating about. That brings us to the Seattle disc, which is stereo, and sounds absolutely magnificent. Frank is really cooking on this one, and it's my favorite live Sinatra. It may be a bit hard to find, and a little more expensive than regular CDs (it's not a bootleg, to my knowledge), but well worth getting. Jazz Hour has also released a live performance on two separate CDs by Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. taped at Villa Venice in Chicago from the early '60s that's as raucous as the Seattle show isn't. A riotous night full of non-PC comments. But the Seattle disc is more music than comedy and and an exquisite portrait of the man onstage. (May '97)