Frankie Campofelice
Every Night at Seven
March 30, 2025
By John Amodeo
Every Night at Seven is jazz crooner Frankie Campofelice’s debut solo recording, and listening to it, one wonders where he’s been keeping himself. Well, this writer knows that he can be found in Boston every Thursday night with his best friend and music director Andy Lantz at the piano in their longstanding gig, Lush Life, at the Club Café’s Napoleon Room, always to a packed house. His live performances are filled with creative arrangements, extraordinary singing, and vibrant accompaniments by Lantz. This recording is a perfect microcosm of those weekly appearances.
The recording opens with a slow, sensual, reflective arrangement of “The Best Things in Life Are Free” (Buddy DeSylva & Lew Brown/Ray Henderson) that has some lovely vocal scoops from low notes up full octaves to high notes. Then it picks up to an up-tempo in the vein of Sam Cooke who had a hit with this tune in 1964. Campofelice’s smooth singing, along with some growls to punctuate particular words in DeSilva and Brown’s elegant lyrics, draws one in right from the start. Fans of The White Lotus will recognize both versions, which were featured in Season 2’s final episode; the slow version was played by Mia at the hotel piano, and Cooke’s version was played under the final scene and credits. Lantz encouraged Campofelice to work Mia’s slow version into their act, and Campofelice thought to combine the two versions into a medley, that brings different emotional colors to the same lyrics.
This is a beautifully produced recording from the first of 16 cuts on the CD (10 on vinyl) to the last one, most of them handpicked from the Great American Songbook. There are some surprising choices from more recent decades, including a stunning original song. Despite the variety of musical eras represented, the recording has a pleasantly cohesive sound. It offers thoughtful arrangements, and various moods are set by the talented combo that joins Campofelice and Lantz—Todd Baker on bass, Mike Flanagan on saxophone, and Steve Langone on percussion. But what really makes this recording come together is Campofelice’s fine silky tenor voice, which often jumps into a delicate falsetto when it suits the lyric. His exquisite phrasing, sense of rhythm, and melodic creativity add a jazzy sheen to each number, and yet he never abandons the lyric; every word is crystal clear and filled with authentic feeling.
A perfect example of this can be found in the recording’s slow, haunting arrangement of the Billie Holiday gem “Good Morning Heartache” (Dan Fisher/Ervin Drake/Irene Higginbottom). In it Campofelice employs his lovely falsetto to emphasize love’s fragility, but he shifts into a two-measure up-tempo syncopation on the lyric, “Got those Monday blues, straight from Sunday blues.” Then he returns into the song’s solemnity and builds to a dramatic crescendo before finishing on a heartbreakingly quiet note. The mood is further enhanced by Lantz’s delicate playing and Langone’s shimmering brushes and symbols.
In another Billie Holiday standard, “God Bless the Child” (which she wrote with Arthur Herzog), Campofelice makes every word count and uses melodic riffs to highlight certain words or sentiments. Flanagan’s soulful sax elegantly heightens the blues atmosphere. A rare celebratory finish for this song brings it to an unusual conclusion, congratulatory rather than regretful place. It is these little unexpected changes from standard procedure that make this album so delicious, especially upon repeated listening.
Campofelice’s embrace of music and lyrics is evident in his own composition, “Petrichor.” It’s an ode to a lover that uses the metaphor of the petrichor—that pleasant odor that follows a warm summer rain—to describe the sensual satisfaction of their love, perfectly described in the poetic lyric line, “a calm in the air rose up in the shape of you.” This unabashedly romantic cut may be the highlight of the recording.
The recording has many other highlights, such as the beautifully buoyant arrangement of “Hello, Young Lovers” (Rodgers & Hammerstein); in it Campofelice savors the lyrics and deftly toggles between his chest and head voice. The musical interlude played by piano, bass, and maracas provides a nice Latin feel that adds further freshness. Singer and band deliver a hot, finger-snapping arrangement of “Love for Sale” (Cole Porter), and Flanagan’s jazzy saxophone interlude spices things up.
Lantz makes his baby grand sound like an upright in “I Love a Piano” (Irving Berlin) in an arrangement that cooks on all six cylinders. Lantz and Campofelice give their signature song “Lush Life” (Billy Strayhorn) the requisite bluesy atmosphere, and Campofelice’s octave leap in the final verse emphasizes its melancholy mood.
The album isn’t all mood pieces, however. The Chick Corea song “Spain” (cowritten by Joaquin Rodrigo Vidre with English text by Al Jarreau), has a bright samba tempo that would make anyone get up to dance. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s novelty “No More Blues” (cowritten with Jessie Cavanaugh, Jon Hendricks, and Vinicius de Morales), has a fun bossa nova beat that feels very film noir; it’s further enhanced by some mood-setting scatting and a sizzling sax interlude. Finally, the recording’s title song, “Every Night at Seven” (Alan Jay Lerner/Burton Lane), a cute, rarely heard Fred Astaire number from the film Royal Wedding, adds a bright note of cheer to conclude this rich journey through several decades of music.
This may be Campofelice’s first recording, but given the deep repertoire that he has amassed working with Lantz over the years, let’s hope that there will be more where this delectable recording came from.
