sinatra: night and day

Fred Dellar

and Mal Peachey

Chameleon, #14.99

Apres la mort, le deluge. As the scabrous biographies fly from the shelves in the wake of the Hoboken Hoodlum's eventual demise, true fans might be looking for a lighter memento. Dellar and Peachey's picture-filled coffee table book is just the thing to grace the G-plan.

Peachey has a newspaper background, Dellar was for many years the Mr Facts of the New Musical Express. If there is a date wrong in Night and Day, I will be very surprised.

After we get past the early years of the youthful Frank (pictured right), this is a film-by-film and disc-by-disc journey through the man's career, peppered with suitable anecdotes, few of them new, but most well worth the retelling. Like how I Got You Under My Skin (Porter, arr Riddle) found its way on to Songs for Swinging Lovers at the last minute, or Dean Martin's wedding congrats cable to Sinatra and Mia Farrow (''I've got Scotch older than her'').

It is an impressive - if not very detailed - package, from the Harry James band in 1938 to the Duets album in 1993.

Nicely worded, and containing a fine selection of photographs.