In the Wee Small Hours Songwriting Credits by Frank Sinatra

In the Wee Small Hours is the seventh studio album by Frank Sinatra, released in April 1955 on Capitol Records and produced by Voyle Gilmore with arrangements by Nelson Riddle. It is widely regarded as the first concept album in popular music history and the record that established the album format as capable of sustained emotional and thematic coherence rather than simply collecting individual songs. Sinatra did not write any of the 16 tracks; the album is a song-cycle of loss and nocturnal loneliness drawn from the American popular songbook, and was recorded following the end of Sinatra's marriage to Ava Gardner (whose departure is generally cited as the biographical context for the album's emotional register, though the specific connection is rarely stated directly in the liner notes). The arrangements by Nelson Riddle (strings, muted brass, spare orchestration) gave each song a hushed, 3 a.m. intimacy that was categorically different from the upbeat swing of Sinatra's previous Capitol work; the album essentially invented the template of the lonely-in-the-night adult pop album that dozens of subsequent artists would deploy. In the Wee Small Hours reached number two on the Billboard Best Sellers chart and spent more than 18 months on the chart, demonstrating that an album of consistently mournful material could sustain long-term commercial appeal. The album is consistently cited by critics and musicians as one of the most influential albums in the history of popular music and the foundational document of Sinatra's artistic identity as interpreter of the American popular song.