by William Ruhlmann 　　In 1945, Frank Sinatra recorded his first album, after a career previously devoted solely to single records. Over two sessions, he performed the eight songs included in The Voice of Frank Sinatra, which Columbia Records released as a four-disc set of 78-rpm records on March 4, 1946. The collection quickly topped the recently established Billboard album chart. The Voice of Frank Sinatra was a precursor to the "concept" albums Sinatra would pioneer at Capitol Records eight years later, a carefully chosen and arranged selection of songs creating a specific mood. In this case, arranger/conductor Axel Stordahl used a string quartet and a rhythm section, with occasional added instruments, to create settings for a group of classic ballads, all from the 1920s and '30s. Sinatra took the material very seriously, singing the love lyrics with utter seriousness. His singing and the classically influenced settings gave the songs unusual depth of meaning. Despite its initial popularity, The Voice of Frank Sinatra went out of print when the 12" LP era got underway in the mid-'50s. Columbia/Legacy has wisely brought it out of mothballs for this reissue in the CD era, giving the album the "bonus tracks" treatment, which, in this case, means more than doubling the length of the original 24-minute, eight-song album to 55 minutes and 18 tracks. The compilers have chosen well from similar recordings made by Sinatra in a group of 1947 sessions, including several that feature the same instrumentation and musical approach. To the Gershwin and Porter songs from the original album are added tunes by Berlin and Rodgers & Hart, among others. Six of the ten additions are previously unreleased takes of the songs that are nearly identical to the released masters (these are safeties, not faulty performances), and allow the compilers to present material in higher sound quality. The result is an even better version of what was already one of Sinatra's most impressive early packages, and a largely lost one at that.