Sinatra : A Celebration, A Memoir

For me THE  iconic image: In concert, cigarette in hand, the late 50's

In 1980 my two best friends left town. One to go to college, the other had a job opportunity. As a result I was starting to feel a bit disconnected with things. Being a young guy, unattached, kinda drifting without a real goal or purpose at that time, I made a great discovery : Frank Sinatra. He quickly became my new best friend. I knew this guy but Sinatra was exactly what my generation wasn't : boozy, misogynistic, cocky. Called women broads or dames. Made in bad taste racial jokes at Sammy's expense [ no matter that Frank and his friends were the least prejudiced folks in America at the time ]. He had just had a big hit on the air waves the previous year with " New York, New York " from his " Trilogy " album that proved to the world that at age 64 Sinatra was not going to go into that long, dark night easily or gently. The Voice still had a few tricks up his sleeve. I was not of Frank's generation, being only 20 or 21 at the time of my great discovery of his music. B.F., or before Frank, I generally preferred music of my own generation or a close proximity there of : The Beatles were and are still an all-time fave, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Steve Miller Band, Paul Simon etc; you know the drill. It was the late 70's and that was the music of the time.To listen to Sinatra at such a time was like visiting a time machine, and being ridiculed for it. Retro wasn't cool yet. It was just old fashioned, something to be made fun of. There was no Swingers movie or Big Bad Voodoo Daddy to re-examine the era, no Rod Stewart or Michael Buble to introduce listeners to what has come to be known as the Great American Songbook, no swing dance classes at the local recreation center. I was by myself and this was a discovery I made on my own.

One of my favorite Sinatra performances: The Joker is Wild, 1957

One afternoon, pretty much a whim, I went to a record store [ yeah, that long ago ] and got two Sinatra albums: " The Best of Frank Sinatra " which featured hits from his 1950's Capitol Record's period and Columbia's " Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits: The Early Years ", which highlighted his popular output of the 1940's when Frank was fresh with fame and a bobby-soxer sensation. Two different Frank's, the Capitol Record period was the height of his ring-a-ding years with songs that reflected that time: "High Hopes", "Young at Heart", "Come Dance With Me", "Witchcraft", with mostly upbeat tempo's and a killer horn section, most of the charts arranged by the magnificent Nelson Riddle. The Columbia sessions were from a more romantic era of music: "I've Got a Crush On You", "If You Are But A Dream", "Nancy [ with the laughing face ]", "The House I Live In" and "Dream", all backed up with lush strings, put together by Frank's main man at that time, Axel Stordahl. These albums hit me on a purely emotional level. Considering my state of mind at the time I'm surprised the music didn't kill me. I took the lyrics Frank sang with more conviction than I'd ever heard before, and wove them into my own life experience to devastating results.

This same picture was on the cover of Time magazine the week after he died.

If I had known better I may have left well enough alone, but when I like something and am as moved as I was by those initial records, there was nothing and no one to hold me back from the industry known as Sinatra-mania. Suddenly I sought out books on Frank, books that not only informed me on his manic life but also books that informed me on his best recordings. As for the films there were some I was already familiar with like From Here to Eternity , Pal Joey, Guys & Dolls but not much beyond those. I was a Sinatra novice, ripe and ready for Frank's special brand of brash hijinks and suicidal lows.

One of my favorite pictures ever: Sammy with the man he called ' My Leader ', sometime in the 60's

It's kind of a miracle I found him. Neither of my folks liked him, their musical tastes were more along the lines of Kenny Rogers or Anne Murray for my mom. My dad had a different appreciation of music. He liked Elton John, The Beatles, Merle Haggard, or his own barbershop quartet album he made in the early 60's. My older sis, who worshiped Streisand, influenced my tastes in culture a lot and in music she was fairly eclectic : In addition to Babs she liked Crosby, Stills and Nash, Carly Simon, The Beatles, Elvis but also jazz and the classical music of Gershwin, Beethoven, Mozart and the like. But no one in our family liked Sinatra or owned one of his albums when he hooked me in 1980.                                              

Capitalizing on Sinatra's playboy image

                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                                                     The best of Sinatra's albums perfectly capture his up-one-moment-down-the-next personality. Albums like " Only The Lonely ", " Songs For Swingin' Lovers ",  " Sinatra & Strings ", " Come Fly With Me ", " In the Wee Small Hours " to name just a few favorites of the man's nearly 60 studio albums. Featuring songs like the torchy " All Or Nothing At All ", " Come Rain or Come Shine ", " I Can't Get Started ", etc; set the tone for the that melancholy 3AM feeling, when one has had too much to drink, thinking bad thoughts, and better off passed out in bed. For every " One For My Baby " that he's recorded there is the equally exuberant " I've Got The World On A String ", " I Get a Kick Out of You " and " The Lady is a Tramp " or " New York, New York ". That was one of the things that drew me to Sinatra's music: emotionally he was all over the place and never in any one place for very long.

In the 1950's Frank's lonely guy image gave his love songs more poignancy

Knowing about the basics of Sinatra's life helped to deepen my appreciation of his music and some of his films.The loves [ Ava Gardner, Juliet Prowse, Mia Farrow and Lauren Bacall are among the wives/girlfriends ], the movie career, the private side with it's hints of bad tempers, mafia rumors, the comebacks, the drinking and the games the Rat Pack played, all on the world's stage. But also there was the quiet side, the side he tried so hard to hide. Sinatra, for all his hangers-on and cronies, was a loner. Biographer James Kaplan wrote that it was in his emotional make-up, that as long as Sinatra lived he was the loneliest bastard he ever knew. I understood that, too. I have reacted to things with strong emotion a lot in my life, as a youth it was something I was told I would have to overcome. As a young adult I have been told I am angry or immature. Maybe I do live on the emotional edge, but at times it feels right.  

You wouldn't know from this photo but they weren't crazy about each other. With Marlon for Guys & Dolls, 1955

Frank's movie career took on an added dimension as well. I made sure I saw as many of his films that I could, if they interested me. I must say, most of them did. From the early MGM days of On The Town or Take Me Out To The Ballgame to his major comeback in 1953's Oscar winner From Here To Eternity, Man With The Golden Arm, The Tender Trap, High Society, The Joker is Wild, Pal Joey, Some Came Running,  A Hole in the Head, Manchurian Candidate; I did my best to see them all. Sinatra did movies, recordings and club dates, he worked continuously, especially in the 1950's and 60's. Vegas is the swingers paradise it is today because of Frank and his bad boy friends. People may go to Vegas without this conscious realization, but what they are trying to recapture is the wild party days of Sinatra and his Rat Pack.   

Originally there were four of them, five if you count Joey Bishop. Peter Lawford, President Kennedy's brother-in-law and the forgotten Rat, is on the far left. He was the one who brought the Ocean's Eleven script to Frank.

              I saw Sinatra perform twice. The first time was in 1983 at the Universal Amphitheater. I went with a friend's wife because I couldn't get a date for myself. Can you believe that? Well, it's true. No one close to my age wanted to see Sinatra in 1983.The second time I saw him was in 1986 at the Irvine Meadows with my wife at the time. I do think the 1983 show was the best, but I think I would have enjoyed it so much more if I had someone special to share it with. Despite that setback, it is one of the great night's in my life. I do however regret not being able to see him in his prime, from about 1955 to around 1966. Sometimes, I think I was born too late.

I have gotten thru some dark times with Sinatra's music as the soundtrack. I have a keener appreciation of  the dark side of the genius that he represented and still represents today. Other singers may have better voices, other actors have a better range, but the total package of talent, style, danger, humility, arrogance, humor, conceit and romance make Sinatra one of the 2 or 3 most popular and emulated singers of the 20th century and beyond. You know, I find it kind of perverse when people say they listen to and admire Michael Buble, a 21st Century Sinatra-wanna-be. His voice is okay, but the depth of feeling that Sinatra gave to the same songs, sometimes with the same arrangements Buble uses, is far superior. So my question to these people is why listen to an imitation when the original is so much better and just as accessible? When in doubt, always go to the source. That is where real genius lives. December 12th would have been his 97th birthday, but he's not here to blow out the candles. Happy birthday anyway, all the way.