Frank Sinatra Sings "These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)"

The recording sessions for "Point of No Return" had an overt tension that had an under current of care and understanding. The overtly callousness at these sessions were a method to hide the fact that Frank Sinatra was deeply concerned about his old music director's health which was deteriorating slowly from the ravages of cancer. Outwardly, Sinatra would do only one or two takes of each song. This perturbed a lot of the musicians and the technical staff to no end. The method behind this madness, though, was to make things easy on Axel Stordahl who was seriously ill. Although some like to quibble about the overall effect of this recording, it nevertheless stands as a masterpiece of Sinatra's Capitol Records period, coming as it does at the very end of his relationship with the label that had literally picked him up from the ash heaps and projected him into the sunlight. Al Viola, guitarist extra ordinary, relates, "I remember after we did the first tune, I went over to June [Hutton, Axel's wife] and she had tears in her eyes. She said, 'Al you have no idea what this means to Axel. He so wanted to do this album with Frank, he wanted to have his last hurrah.'"