Slim Whitman - Serenade/I Talk To The Waves, London HL-U 8287

Ottis Dewey Whitman, Jr. (born January 20, 1924), known professionally as Slim Whitman, is an American country music and western music singer/songwriter and instrumentalist known for his yodeling abilities and his smooth high octave falsetto. He has sold in excess of 120 million records. He is consistently more popular throughout Europe, and in particular Britain, than in his native America, particularly with his covers of pop standards and movie songs, love songs, folk tunes and gospel melodic hymns. His 1955 hit single "Rose Marie" held the Guinness World Record for the longest time at number 1 on the UK Singles Chart until Bryan Adams broke the record in 1991 after 36 years. In the U.S., his "Indian Love Call" (1952) and "Secret Love" (1953) reached number 2 on the Billboardcountry chart. Whitman had a string of hits from the mid-1960s and into the 1970s and became known to a new generation of fans through television direct marketing in the 1980s.

   
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Frank Sinatra - Songs For Swinging Lovers, Capitol LCT 6106

Songs for Swingin' Lovers! was the tenth studio album recorded by the American singer Frank Sinatra for Capitol Records, it was arranged by Nelson Riddle and released in March 1956.

It took an alternative tack after In the Wee Small Hours (1955), recording existing pop standards in a hipper, jazzier fashion, revealing an overall exuberance in the vein of Songs for Young Lovers and Swing Easy!. The original cover had Sinatra facing away from the young couple, but in 1957 Capitol altered the cover with a new image of Sinatra facing the couple. All CD releases have retained the new cover.

In 2000 the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and ranked number 306 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003.

The album was the first ever number one album in the UK. It was knocked off the top after two weeks by Carousel (the 1956 movie's soundtrack).

 

Original 1956 cover