July 8, 2009 — He plays hard-rock chords and traditional country back to back in concert and showed up at the CMA Music Festival wearing a long fur coat in Nashville’s humid summer air. John Rich seems to want to do things his own way, which makes him a perfect candidate for a new Frank Sinatra tribute album, His Way, Our Way.
Currently available only on iTunes, the project has John covering "One For My Baby," a song Frank tackled on six different recording sessions between 1940 and 1961, according to jazzdiscography.com. Maroon 5 appears on His Way doing "The Way You Look Tonight," Entertainment Weekly reported, while the Kooks and A Fine Frenzy also redo the Chairman of the Board.
If John seems out of place on a Sinatra project to the casual observer, the clues to his interest in Ol’ Blue Eyes are there on his current Son Of A Preacher Man album, where he tipped a hat to Frank with a big-band production called "Drive Myself To Drink."
"You're probably talking to one of the biggest Frank Sinatra fans on earth," John told the Associated Press. "One record I want to make before I die is Let Me Be Frank."
How severe is John’s thing for Sinatra? When he adopted a bulldog several years ago, he named it Frank Sinatra Rich.
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