Frank Sinatra

Singer

• Born: December 12, 1915
• Birthplace: Hoboken, New Jersey
• Died: May 14, 1998
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

American singer-entertainer

Perhaps the most popular singer of his generation, Sinatra recorded definitive renditions of many popular American songs. His personal sense of style extended to performances on stage and screen, making him an icon of American culture.

Areas of achievement Music, film, theater and entertainment

Early Life

Frank Sinatra (sih-NAH-trah), the son of Italian immigrants, was born in the blue-collar town of Hoboken, New Jersey, and grew up during the Great Depression. He dropped out of high school determined to become the next great crooner. Bing Crosby set the model for him, as he in turn would set the model for younger singers such as Vic Damone.

Sinatra got his first break when he appeared on an amateur hour on national radio in 1935. With Sinatra as the lead singer and spokesperson, the Hoboken Four proved so popular that they were invited back regularly. They used the name of a different New Jersey town each week to preserve their image as amateurs. Later, Sinatra began singing at the Rustic Cabin, a tavern near the George Washington Bridge. Because there was a radio hookup with WNEW in New York City, his voice was on the air several times per week. In June, 1939, the great trumpeter Harry James listened to a broadcast and liked what he heard. James had just left the band of Benny Goodman to form his own group, and he soon signed Sinatra as his “boy singer.”

James had exceptional breath control and a snappy sense of rhythm. He would draw out a line where others would cut it off and would rush or lag the next line to syncopate the beat. Sinatra learned a lot from him, and their best-known recording, “All or Nothing at All,” has a phrasing that amounts to an interpretation of the lyrics. By the time he left James to join Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra, Sinatra was a respected singer as well as a new celebrity.

Life’s Work

Sinatra’s recording career is conveniently divided into his years with several major recording companies. His first hit recordings were made with Dorsey’s group on the RCA Victor label. “I’ll Never Smile Again,” recorded May 23, 1940, topped the Billboard chart for twelve consecutive weeks. Backed up by a female group, the Pied Pipers, Sinatra’s voice projected all the sweet sadness of a world at war, setting the mood for a wonderful trombone solo by Dorsey. Like James, Dorsey had remarkable breath control, and his long lines challenged Sinatra to develop the clear, apparently effortless style of singing that he displayed in “Without a Song” and “In the Blue of Evening.” By the mid-1940’s, Sinatra had a huge following, especially of young women. Newsweek called him the “Swami of Swoon.” Sinatra, sometimes known as “Swoonatra,” was ready to go out on his own.

Sinatra signed a contract with Columbia Records, where he worked with the gifted arranger and conductor Axel Stordahl. With Stordahl, he recorded songs by some of the best-loved composers of Broadway show tunes: George and Ira Gershwin (“Embraceable You”), Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern (“The Song Is You”), Irving Berlin (“Always”), Cole Porter (“Night and Day”), and Johnny Mercer (“Fools Rush In”). Most of these were old favorites by the time Sinatra got to them: The Gershwins and Porter had written their songs for films of the previous decade, and Mercer’s song was in Dorsey’s repertoire when Sinatra joined the group. However, Sinatra managed to make each his own by adding unique phrasing.

Sinatra was everywhere in the 1940’s: at popular night clubs such as the Copacabana, on the radio show Your Hit Parade, on the early television program The Lucky Strike Hour, in musical films such as Anchors Aweigh (1945), and in public-service advertisements calling for racial tolerance. He moved from New York to Hollywood, California, and romanced the film stars, divorcing his first wife to marry the beautiful actor Ava Gardner in 1951. However, the wheel of fortune continued to turn, and he was soon nearing the bottom. The House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated his possible ties to left-wing organizations. He lost his voice after a grueling series of performances and was losing his hair too. Columbia Broadcasting System(CBS) canceled his television show, while Columbia Records, unwilling to put up with his moods and demands, dropped him from their list of artists. Gardner dropped him as well.

Capitol Records signed Sinatra in 1953, and he stayed with them until he organized his own recording company, Reprise Records, in 1960. The Capitol years were perhaps Sinatra’s greatest as a singer. His voice had lost some range and sweetness but had gained darker tones that allowed him to explore the experiences of midlife. Self-described as “an eighteen-carat manic depressive,” Sinatra was either up or down, “swinging” or “blue,” and the new long-play (LP) recording technology enabled him to extend the mood beyond the single song rendition. His main arranger at Capitol was Nelson Riddle, a former trombone player with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Riddle wanted to produce a theme or concept album with a group of songs connected by a single mood and by a core of musicians backing up Sinatra. While Sinatra chose the songs, many of them from his club repertoire, Riddle made the arrangements. The LP gave new control over sequence and transition. Sinatra’s first venture in the new genre was Songs for Young Lovers (1953) with eight songs by the Gershwins, Porter, and others.

For many fans, Sinatra’s finest hour came at quarter to three in the morning, when he probed the depths in torch songs such as “I See Your Face before Me” by Jimmy Van Heusen on In the Wee Small Hours (1955) and saloon songs such as “One for My Baby” by Johnny Mercer on Sings for Only the Lonely (1960). Sinatra recorded two other saloon songs by Mercer: “Drinking Again” and “Empty Tables.” If he had a problem with alcohol he certainly had a fondness for Jack Daniel’s whiskey he also had uncanny knowledge of the culture that depended on it.

Sinatra’s claim as “The Come-Back Kid” was secured when he won an Academy Award for his performance as Maggio, the offbeat Italian American soldier in the film From Here to Eternity (1953). His film career continued with serious dramas such as The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962) but moved increasingly toward typecast roles with a musical dimension. The delightful Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), which ends with the song “My Kind of Town,” resembles the Hollywood musicals of his early career.

After Sinatra formed the Reprise label in 1960, he worked with a wide variety of musicians and styles. He hated racial intolerance and worked with legendary black performers when other white performers would not. Although he disliked rock and roll, he admired the Beatles as songwriters and dabbled in soft rock. Indeed, he tried everything from folk (September of My Years, 1965) to bossa nova (Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim, 1967). He added newly composed numbers to his repertoire, including “My Way” and “New York, New York,” but increasingly sang the songs that had made him famous. His last major effort was a collection of duets (1993) performed with the top singers of the younger generation.

Even new technology did not leave him behind. With the advent of the compact disc (CD) in the 1980’s, his works were reengineered, and old albums were enriched with the addition of previously omitted studio sessions; for example, the CD of Nice ’n’ Easy (1960), Sinatra’s last project with Riddle, includes a haunting rendition of “The Nearness of You” that was omitted from the original album at the last minute to make room for the title song.

After two strokes and hints of Alzheimer’s disease left him a lonely celebrity, Sinatra died of heart failure at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles in May, 1998. The outpouring of affection was almost unparalleled, even in an age of celebrity. Radio and television stations around the country played his records and films. Sales of his recordings reached all-time highs.

Significance

In a career spanning more than five decades, Sinatra made some 1,800 recordings for which he won many Grammys (including a Grammy Legends Award and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award). He has some sixty film credits, earning two Academy Awards. As an actor he was often typecast, but as a singer he chose his own material. At a time when popular singers tended to avoid old songs, Sinatra recorded whatever he liked. His total body of recorded work provides a cross-section of the best American music of his era.

A New York disk jockey, William B. Williams, gave Sinatra the nickname by which he would be known for the last four decades of his life: Chairman of the Board. The name was appropriate in the conservative 1950’s, when Sinatra had, in Williams’s words, the “most imitated, most listened to, most recognized voice” in the world. This became increasingly true as Sinatra aged with the century. Perhaps most to the point, Time magazine chose him as “The Singer of the Century” in its list of the entertainers of the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Friedwald, Will. Sinatra: The Song Is You. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. This book, based on interviews with the musicians who helped make Sinatra’s records, includes a defining essay on “the Sinatra style.”

Ingham, Chris. The Rough Guide to Frank Sinatra. London: Rough Guides, 2005. This book is less a biography than it is a compendium of facts for Sinatra fans. However, it contains solid information about his life, music, and influences, and how he influenced other singers, as well as details of his films and recordings.

Kelley, Kitty. His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra. New York: Bantam, 1986. Sinatra tried to block publication of this controversial “tell-all” by the writer of “unauthorized” lives of personalities such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Nancy Reagan. Later exposés modify certain claims by Kelley.

Lahr, John. Sinatra: The Artist and the Man. New York: Random House, 1997. This sympathetic essay was written by a drama critic for The New Yorker, where it was first published in a shorter version. Profusely illustrated with black-and-white photographs, many in full-page format.

O’Brien, Ed, and Robert Wilson. Sinatra 101: The 101 Best Recordings and the Stories Behind Them. New York: Boulevard Books, 1996. Detailed production notes on Sinatra’s best-known renditions, arranged chronologically.

Petkov, Steven, and Leonard Mustazza, eds. The Frank Sinatra Reader. New York: Oxford, 1995. One of two anthologies compiled on the occasion of Sinatra’s eightieth birthday. Many of the items first appeared in newspapers and magazines, assessing Sinatra’s success at different stages of his career.

Summers, Anthony, and Robbyn Swan. Sinatra: The Life. New York: Knopf, 2005. Although Summers and Swan cover much of the material that appeared in previous biographies, they provide new information about Sinatra’s ties to organized crime, his drinking, and his abusive treatment of women.

Taraborelli, J. Randy. Sinatra: Behind the Legend. Secaucus, N.J.: Carl, 1997. Taraborelli’s exposé has information on Sinatra’s gangland ties and Hollywood romances. The author preserves Sinatra’s tough-guy language, which some readers will find offensive, but presents him as vulnerable.

Vare, Ethlie Ann, ed. Legend: Frank Sinatra and the American Dream. New York: Boulevard Books, 1995. This is the second of two anthologies that were compiled as Sinatra turned eighty. Arranged chronologically, the items follow Sinatra through his career.

Zehme, Bill, and Phil Stern. The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. The worshipful book is based on an Esquire magazine interview with Sinatra and members of his so-called Rat Pack.

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