“One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)” — Frank Sinatra

Creating the right atmosphere for a song is much harder than you might think. It’s so much more than just writing a nice tune…important though that is too.

Songwriters, producers and arrangers who can instantly conjure up the feelings which place a listener right in the middle of the story as it’s being told are rare animals.

And one of the best examples of that rarest of musical skills is “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)” by Frank Sinatra

I’m a big Sinatra fan and this, for me, is the best song he ever recorded.

Yet “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)” isn’t the sort of song most people would instantly associate with Frank Sinatra nowadays.

It’s rarely heard on the radio or in performance any more. It’s musically and temperamentally a million miles away from Sinatra’s more popular songs like “The Lady is a Tramp” or “Come Fly With Me”…although I adore both of them too.

“One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)” wasn’t even written for Frank Sinatra although, as it turned out, there was probably no song which captured his mood and his feelings better than this one.

Fred Astaire was the first major artist to perform the song, in a musical called “The Sky’s The Limit” back in 1943.

Sinatra himself recorded “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)” a number of times over the years, but his rendition on…