Note: I wrote the entry on Frank Sinatra in "MusicHound Lounge" (Visible Ink).
Pour one more for the road and then close the saloon, the voice of the century fell silent today, when 82-year-old Frank Sinatra died of a heart attack. Since a hospitalization in late 1996, the singer known as the Chairman of the Board had been rumored to be on his deathbed.
The self-styled "saloon singer" had his boom and bust periods, but he endured as a star for the greater part of five decades. He virtually invented pop-music stardom, creating the path that rock generations followed, even when they were rebelling against his way.
Although calling him the "voice of the century" is just the kind of grandiose claim his critics would skewer him for, no other American pop singer comes close.
Billie Holiday? Louis Armstrong? Ella Fitzgerald?
The deck was stacked against singers on the black side of the color line. Influential and great though they were (and Sinatra acknowledged Holiday's influence on him), the white mainstream could never have accepted them as pop stars Sinatra-style -- sexy, brawling and controversial.
Al Jolson? Rudy Vallee? Bing Crosby?
Although all three were major stars of their time, only Crosby came close to having Sinatra's staying power and influence. More importantly, Crosby didn't challenge himself musically. When he found his style, he repeated it with little variation. Sinatra's singing went through two major stylistic phases, and he kept refining his approach, seeking new collaborators and special projects well into his 60s.
Judy Garland?
Garland, so influenced by Jolson, is the idol of impersonators decades after she died. Her contributions seem encased in amber at this point, a relic of their time, a tribute to great showmanship, but with little impact on the rest of pop.
Elvis Presley? Ray Charles? Michael Jackson?
As entertainers, Presley and Jackson were far more dynamic, but their way with a song lacked the multiple dimensions of a Sinatra performance. Charles' voice has all the complexity of Sinatra's, and he had the creative fire to change his approach and experiment as he grew. However, Charles' output was more inconsistent than Sinatra's, and consistency counts in this particular evaluation. (Sinatra's That's Life can be seen as a tip of the hat to Charles.)
Teen idol
Sinatra was the first true "teen idol." Sure, years before Sinatra, Vallee had created riotous stirs among a youthful following, and young women's heartbeats quickened at Crosby's relaxed "ba-ba-ba-boos."
However, neither provoked the sweeping mania among teen-age girls that Sinatra did, prompting journalists to dub him "Swoonatra" and to write that his fans were in a "Sinatrance."
Sinatra, born Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, N.J., to Italian immigrants, spent his teen years active in athletics and intent on becoming a singer. His dad, a retired boxer, wanted him to go for a ring career, and Sinatra did try his hand, apparently with some success, learning skills that he sometimes brought to bear outside the ring.
Sinatra dropped out of high school. At 18, he took in a Crosby show in Jersey City that firmed his resolve to sing.
Both parents strongly disapproved. His mother, reportedly the dominant parent, wanted him to do something with stability. Like most Italian families, the elder Sinatras stressed "respect" -- both giving it and earning it.
Sinatra, an otherwise dutiful son, disrespected his parents' wishes and began singing in Jersey roadhouses, often for free, just to learn the ropes.
An only child, he had been doted upon up until that time. So he was used to getting his way and easily maintained his resolve despite being unaccustomed to his parents' opposition. This stubborn focus on his own goals helped forge the contradictory personality that earned Sinatra as many enemies as admirers.
As far as his singing and work habits were concerned, he was the epitome of class and gentility. Yet he could turn pugnacious the instant he felt the slightest disrespect coming his way. Worse than the flash of temper was his ability to hold a grudge and continue to criticize enemies to the point that even friends would tire of his harangues.
His way
By the time he started singing in earnest, Sinatra was already something of a ladies' man with a persuasive manner and dapper threads. He soon formed a group called the Hoboken Four, which won a Major Bowes Amateur Hour audition.
His mother, resigned to her son's determination, found him a paying gig at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood. He was the master of ceremonies and sang little in this job, but on the plus side the shows were broadcast on radio, giving him good exposure. Soon after, he married Nancy Barbato, his first wife and the mother of his three children.
In 1939, Harry James heard one of the Rustic Cabin broadcasts and invited Sinatra to sing with his big band for $75 a week. With James, the painfully thin, bow-tied, crooning Sinatra began to exert a hold on teen-agers and young adults. They hung around the stage door screaming for him.
When the James band folded, Tommy Dorsey played coy in negotiations, but eventually snatched up the singer for $100 a week.
Sinatra soon was stealing the show from Dorsey, which caused considerable tension even though the singer admired the trombonist's mastery of his instrument and "I'll do it my way" approach. Sinatra's voice jumped out of the first single he sang with the band, I'll Never Smile Again. When Dorsey played the Paramount Theater in New York in 1942, Sinatra's effect on the crowd was electric, and the bobby-soxers started swooning in their seats.
Soon after, Sinatra, already signed to Columbia Records as a solo singer, left the band. His subsequent success led to an era dominated by pop singers, an era that helped kill off the big bands he loved.
Swoonatra
On Dec. 30, 1942, the solo Sinatra was booked as an "extra added attraction" on a bill featuring Benny Goodman's orchestra. After Sinatra was introduced, the scream was so loud and unprecedented, that a clueless Goodman reportedly said, "What the hell was that?"
Sinatra's style was sweet. He sang ballads in a deceptively breathless fashion, holding notes with the slightest of quavers, sounding sincere and more vulnerable and sensuous than Crosby, Vallee or Jolson.
At each show, thousands of longing voices responded in a single cry, "Frankie! Frankie!"
Sinatra's engagement at the Paramount was extended to eight weeks with an attendance of 1.5 million, breaking Vallee's 1929 record in the same building. (When Sinatra returned five months later, he received a bonus of $7,500 a week above and beyond his regular pay.)
Writer Jack Long took in that engagement and wrote in The American magazine that "Sinatra's voice is to popular music what Valentino's eyes were to the silent movies -- sweet dreams and dynamite."
By early 1943, Sinatra was a regular radio voice on Lucky Strike's Hit Parade. He had knocked Crosby out of the top pop-vocalist spot in polls by Down Beat and Metronome magazines.
Highs and lows in the '50s
When he won over the adult crowd during an engagement at the Riobamba nightclub in Manhattan, his celebrity was sealed. Newspaper columnist Earl Wilson noted in his biography of the singer, "Within a week, Frank Sinatra had changed from singer to national hysteria. I had to rush over to the Riobamba every night and try to squeeze in."
By 1946, Sinatra was selling 10 million singles a year. He was in such movies as Anchors Aweigh! He met and became friends with Crosby.
Yet, thanks in part to his on-again, off-again relations with his wife over his reported womanizing, his alleged ties to mobster Lucky Luciano, his brawls with the press, a temper on perpetual boil and a scandalous soap-opera romance with Ava Gardner (whom he wed in 1951), Sinatra had fallen from grace by the beginning of the '50s.
Columbia Records had him singing novelty tunes, which shamed him more than gossip did. He lost his voice at a nightclub engagement, ultimately suffering a throat hemorrhage that sidelined him. He was dropped by his agents.
Undaunted, Sinatra methodically rebuilt his career, signing at age 37 to Capitol Records. Through the 1950s, he created a new, swinging image that could appeal to audiences that had grown up beyond teen-age passions.
The bow ties of his early days were replaced by a hat cocked at a jaunty angle. The romantic ballads still remained his strong suit, but the solid swing and sentiments of such tunes as I've Got the World on a String defined his self-confidence and the muscle-flexing, prosperous America of the post-World War II era.
While continuing to make hit singles, Sinatra was the first performer to focus on albums. The concept albums he and such collaborators as Nelson Riddle created during the '50s stand up today as essential collections of pop-music craft.
He resurrected his movie career with 1953's From Here to Eternity, winning an Oscar as best supporting actor for his role as an Italian-American GI named Maggio. He was nominated for a best-actor Oscar in 1955 for his role in The Man With the Golden Arm.
The Rat Pack and Camelot
By the end of the decade, he was divorced again and ruled Hollywood with a retinue known as the Rat Pack, which he "inherited" from Humphrey Bogart. He was linked romantically to Bogart's widow, Lauren Bacall, and to a divorced Marilyn Monroe.
He was so active with women that Dean Martin was quoted as saying, "When Sinatra dies, they're giving his zipper to the Smithsonian."
Sinatra also ruled Las Vegas' clubs, where questions about mob ties again came up.
By 1960, Sinatra was courting political power. He became friends with John F. Kennedy, who apparently enjoyed the swinging lifestyle that Sinatra embodied.
Sinatra wanted to be a kingmaker. He threw a star-studded inaugural gala for Kennedy. However, the mob shadows circling the singer made Kennedy refuse an invitation to stay at Sinatra's place in Palm Springs in 1962. Sinatra was embarrassed. Kennedy stayed with the non-controversial Crosby. The relationship ended.
On the music front, Sinatra had started his own record label, Reprise, and continued his streak of good work, although the big hits were ceded to Presley and the rock and rollers. (When it first exploded, Sinatra hated rock, calling it brutish music, but later he hosted a television special in Presley's honor upon the rocker's discharge from the Army.)
Such mid-'60s songs as Strangers in the Night and That's Life let Sinatra compete successfully on the charts against The Beatles -- the latest heirs to Sinatra-like teen frenzy.
However, the mid-'60s Sinatra focused much more on musically challenging album projects than on singles. Sinatra's penchant for concept albums had expanded to include new musical settings, from team-ups with Count Basie to explorations of Brazilian sounds.
As focused as he was professionally, he seemed to drift in his personal life. He fell in love with Peyton Place TV star Mia Farrow, who was five years younger than his daughter Nancy. He married Farrow in 1966, and they divorced in 1968.
A couple of years later, Barbara Marx left Zeppo Marx to live with Sinatra. The singer married her in 1976.
Retirement was not his way
In 1971, with Barbara at his side, he retired from show business, deciding he was tired and that his voice just couldn't stand the strain of touring or multi-night engagements.
On the political front, he had supported Hubert Humphrey in '68, and the Democrats had backed away from him once again. So he switched to the Republicans and became a staunch supporter of Ronald Reagan, one-time Kennedy antagonist Richard Nixon and Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew. The Roosevelt liberal who had sung The House I Live In as a plea for racial and social tolerance was now considered part of the Establishment.
As the Nixon White House was going down in political flames over the Watergate scandal and allegations of corruption against Agnew, Sinatra "unretired" with Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back, a TV special that aired Nov. 18, 1973. His show came in third in a three-way ratings race. Worst of all, it came in behind a special by another singer, Dinah Shore.
Surprisingly, considering that the rancor between him and the press had become about as deep as it would ever be, he received glowing reviews for the show.
Sinatra's comeback had brought him into an era when he would tour arenas and amphitheaters. Treated as a legend, he was now expected to endlessly reprise his hits. In the '70s and onward, Sinatra's challenges were not about expanding his artistic grasp anymore, but about maintaining his hold on the audience. Nostalgia became more important than challenging himself or his audience. Now, his major goals were to fight off time's toll on his voice and to play bigger tours.
Even so, he still found contemporary tunes that he could make his own, such as The Beatles' Something. Nelson Riddle's overhaul of the song made it a staple of Sinatra's later years.
Grappling with Father Time
By the late '70s, he used his considerable skill at phrasing to mask wavering pitch and a rawness in his upper register. The drama and his way with a song were still good. As time went on, his singing deficiencies worsened, yet somehow he kept his skill at interpreting a song, at acting it -- even when he couldn't remember lyrics.
The audience that had grown up with him mostly overlooked the weaknesses. They needed him out there, and he needed them. Younger generations came to the shows to pay their respect for what he had done, not necessarily for what he was doing.
Yet in each decade of his career, he found some way to stay a player in pop music. It was easy for the '40s crooner and the '50s swinger, but a little tougher for the mature artist of the '60s and onward.
In 1980, he released Trilogy, a three-record set that was the most ambitious of a career that produced many innovations in pop. Each record of the set had a theme -- Past, Present and Future. The Past record explored old standards that Sinatra had not previously recorded. The Present featured takes on such then-current tunes as Neil Diamond's Song Sung Blue and Sinatra's last real hit song, Theme From 'New York, New York.' On the Future record, the idea was to have Sinatra reflect on himself and his continued ambition, but the suite dragged embarrassingly, maybe because it was more about his celebrity than his singing.
He kept touring even when he took a long hiatus from recording after the 1985 release, L.A. Is My Lady, produced by Quincy Jones, who had helmed the biggest-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson's Thriller in 1983.
End of the road
In 1988, Sinatra reunited his singing Rat Pack buddies, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., for a much-heralded arena tour. Martin, scarred by the tragedy of his son's death, didn't share the nostalgia or Sinatra's drive to work so hard. He left the tour, which carried on with non-Rat Packer Liza Minnelli in his place.
The dates on Sinatra's 75th birthday tour in 1990 routinely sold out.
His series of Duets albums in the early '90s brought in some other star power to give the legend a chance at reaching young audiences. He reportedly never sang in the same room as his duet mates. His vocals sound as though they had some studio help, but nonetheless these projects worked.
Such people as U2's Bono sang his praises ("Frank Sinatra has got what we want: swagger and attitude"), and youngsters started listening to lounge music and embracing such Sinatra acolytes as Tony Bennett.
Even the press was on his side in 1994 when he received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy and was cut off for a TV commercial as he gave his acceptance speech. After all, this was pretty shabby treatment when the voice of the century was getting an award he clearly deserved. What other singer's lifetime achievement in the music business even came close?
Now, Sinatra's personality can be forgotten because his work is what's left behind -- and most of it is very good indeed.
There'll be no more for the road.
The saloon is closed.
