To listen to Frank Sinatra’s "That’s Life" in a lossless FLAC format is to step directly into a smoky, neon-lit studio in 1966. It is the sound of a man who has seen it all, done it all, and survived not just to tell the tale, but to laugh in its face.
While 1965’s September of My Years was a contemplative, melancholic look backward, 1966’s "That’s Life" was a defiant, finger-snapping look at the present. It is the quintessential Sinatra swagger captured in a bottle—or rather, in a high-fidelity digital wrapper.
When Sinatra stepped into the studio in 1966 to record "That’s Life," he was in a unique transitional period. He had already conquered the world with the lush, string-laden arrangements of his Capitol years (think In the Wee Small Hours), but now he was deep into his Reprise era. frank sinatra thats life 1966 jazz flac 1 fix
"That’s Life" was different. It wasn't a ballad; it was gritty. It was R&B-infused pop with a heavy jazz swing. Sinatra famously disliked the song initially, but he understood its power. He delivered the vocal with a rougher edge, leaning into the lyrics about riding high in April and getting shot down in May.
The "Fix" is the critical part. Even the first-generation transfers often suffered from a known phase issue on the left channel during the song "The Impossible Dream." In the original mix, the piano was panned hard left, and the upright bass was muddy. The Summit of Swing: A Look at Frank
The "1 Fix" is a custom, manual correction performed by a known archivist (username "JazzDesmond" on several lossless forums) who re-aligned the phase between 2:14 and 3:02 of "The Impossible Dream," corrected a 0.5dB drop in the right channel, and re-encoded the result to FLAC level 8 (the highest compression without quality loss).
Without the "Fix," the album’s jazz rhythm section lacks punch. With it, you finally hear the distinct thwack of drummer Irv Cottler’s rimshots. Preservation: It retains every bit of the 1966
Sinatra wasn't strictly "jazz" (he was a vocal pop artist who swung like a jazz musician), but the That's Life album lives in the jazz collector's sphere because of its improvisational energy and reliance on upright bass, piano, and horns.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is the format of choice for this fix because:
The title track, "That’s Life," is universally known. Its arrangement is bombastic—the repeated piano figure, the ascending brass, Sinatra’s weathered growl. However, the magic for the jazz enthusiast lies in the deep cuts:
Without the proper audio source, these tracks sound muffled and flat. But with the correct digital transfer—specifically the FLAC 1 Fix—the stereo separation of the horns and the snap of the snare drum transform the listening experience entirely.