How is it that these two never recorded an album together? The two appeared on the same stage only periodically over the years of their legendary careers, in television specials in 1958 and 1959, and again on 1967’s A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim. Pianist Paul Smith has said, “Ella loved working with [Frank]. Sinatra gave her his dressing-room on A Man and His Music and couldn’t do enough for her.” When asked, Norman Granz would cite “complex contractual reasons” for the fact that the two artists never recorded together. Fitzgerald’s appearance with Sinatra and Count Basie in June 1974 for a series of concerts at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, was seen as an THE incentive for Sinatra to return from his self-imposed retirement of the early 1970s. The shows were a great success, and September 1975 saw them gross $1,000,000 in two weeks on Broadway, in a triumvirate with the Count Basie Orchestra.