The Rat Pack

The so-called Rat Pack wasn't a group in the normal sense, but consisted of a loose confederation of actors, comedians, and singers lumped together by the media under that name in the early '60s. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford formed the core of the Rat Pack, and they appeared together in several movies, including Robin and the Seven Hoods and the original Ocean's Eleven.

Sinatra, Davis, and Martin, the singing contingent of the group, all managed long individual careers in the recording industry, and would occasionally band together to do nightclub concerts, frequently in Las Vegas, that were equal parts comedy and music, and heavy on caricature, playing off of the trio's huge public personas. Several of these shows have been released on CD, VHS, and DVD under various titles, and while they conjure a kind of emblematic nostalgia for a particular time and place in the mythic 1960s (a time when a martini and a tux were seemingly all you really needed), Davis, Sinatra, and Martin are musically much better served by the material on their individual albums.