Nice 'n' Easy

Lore & Background

By 1960 Sinatra had already conquered the world of popular music, the stage, and the screen, and Capitol Records had been his home for nearly two decades. Yet the industry was shifting around him; the rock-and-roll wave had crested, and the label's attention was drifting toward younger, louder voices. Nice 'n' Easy arrived in that transitional space: Sinatra still commanding, but choosing intimacy over spectacle, letting a small combo and Jenkins's warm orchestral touches carry the weight that a full pit band might have. It reads as a man who no longer needed to prove anything, simply enjoying the act of singing. Gordon Jenkins, who had arranged for Sinatra since the early fifties, was the ideal partner for this mood. His scoring favored rounded brass, gentle strings, and a rhythm section that walked rather than stomped. The result is an album that feels like a late-night set in a dimly lit room where the audience has shrunk to a handful of friends who've known the singer for years and are happy just to listen. The record also sits in the broader narrative of Sinatra's relationship with his label. He would leave Capitol the following year to found Reprise, a move that reshaped the recording industry's power dynamics. Nice 'n' Easy, in its quiet confidence, almost feels like a farewell handshake — warm, unhurried, and utterly without bitterness.

In Their Own Story

The studio lights are low, just enough to catch the sheen on the microphone grille. Sinatra stands a half-step back from the mic, one hand resting on the music stand, the other loosely holding a sheet of lyrics he's already memorized. He hums the first two bars of the title track, tilts his head, and lets a small, private smile cross his face. Jenkins, in the control room, nods to the band. The upright bass drops a soft root note. Sinatra exhales, leans in, and sings the first line like he's telling a secret to someone sitting just out of frame. The take is done in one pass. He tips an imaginary hat to the engineers and says, 'That's the one, boys.' The tape keeps rolling a little longer, capturing the faint clink of a glass on the console before the session ends.

Reader's Guide

1960 · Capitol Records · Arranged and produced by Gordon Jenkins

Nice 'n' Easy is Sinatra's late-Capitol masterclass in restraint. Where his mid-fifties records often swung hard or soared with full orchestral force, this album settles into a lower, warmer register. Jenkins scores the tracks for small combo and rounded strings, giving Sinatra room to stretch a phrase, drop his voice into that signature chest resonance, and let the silences between notes carry as much weight as the notes themselves. The overall mood is one of easy confidence — a man who has nothing left to prove and is simply in the pleasure of singing. Standout tracks include the title number, a lazy, swaying groove that sets the album's tone; a tender reading of 'I Get a Kick Out of You'; and a smoky, unhurried take on 'I've Got You Under My Skin.' The album also features 'The Best Is Yet to Come' and 'The Way You Look Tonight,' both handled with the kind of understated phrasing that makes a familiar standard sound freshly discovered. No single Grammy is widely attributed to this record, and it did not top the Billboard album chart in the way some of his earlier releases did, but its influence on the easy-listening and vocal-jazz idiom of the early sixties is hard to overstate. Fan takeaway: If you want to hear Sinatra not as a legend on a pedestal but as a guy in a good mood, pouring you a drink and singing to you across the table, this is the album to put on.

Did You Know?

• Gordon Jenkins had been arranging for Sinatra since the early 1950s, making Nice 'n' Easy a product of nearly a decade of musical partnership between the two.
• The album was recorded just before Sinatra left Capitol Records to launch his own Reprise label, making it one of his final projects with the company that had defined his career.
• Sinatra's vocal approach on this record is noticeably lower and more relaxed than on his earlier swing-era albums, reflecting both his age and a deliberate artistic choice toward intimacy.
• The small-combo, conversational style of Nice 'n' Easy anticipated the lounge and easy-listening formats that would dominate popular radio in the early 1960s.