Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim Songwriting Credits by Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim is the thirty-fourth studio album by Frank Sinatra, released in January 1967 on Reprise Records and produced by Sonny Burke with arrangements by Claus Ogerman. It was a collaboration between Sinatra and the composer of 'The Girl from Ipanema' that drew bossa nova into the Sinatra interpretive framework and produced one of the most distinctive albums of his late career. Sinatra interpreted all material; Jobim contributed guitar and background vocals throughout, with his presence as a performer rather than simply a source of composed material giving the collaboration a genuine dialogue quality. The album's 10 tracks (including 'The Girl from Ipanema,' 'Corcovado,' 'Meditation,' and 'How Insensitive') are rendered with the same interpretive intelligence Sinatra brought to the American songbook, while Ogerman's arrangements replaced the brass-forward American big band context with light acoustic guitars, flutes, and a sparse Brazilian palette that was entirely different from Sinatra's previous work. The album reached number 19 on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for the Grammy for Album of the Year; it was described by critics at the time as the most artistically adventurous album of Sinatra's Reprise period and is now regarded as one of the finest American interpretations of bossa nova material. The collaboration was well-received enough to produce a sequel (Sinatra & Company, 1971), though the first album remains the more critically regarded of the two.