Frank Sinatra

"Sinatra" redirects here. For other uses, see Sinatra (disambiguation).

Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and Academy Award-winning actor, often cited as one of the finest male American popular song vocalists of the 20th century.

Renowned for his impeccable phrasing and timing, , critics place him alongside such artists as Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley and The Beatles as one of the most important, popular and influential musical figures of the 20th century.. Over a career that spanned seven decades, Sinatra recorded arguably the most accomplished body of work in American popular music, including a catalogue of such revered albums as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs For Swingin' Lovers and Come Fly With Me along with numerous signature songs like My Way, New York, New York, Strangers in the Night and It Was a Very Good Year. Selling in excess of 250 million records worldwide, Sinatra, and his music, remain hugely popular over sixty five years after his first recordings, whilst, as an actor he became highly revered for his frequent, gutsy performances in films such as From Here to Eternity, The Man with the Golden Arm, Suddenly, The Joker is Wild, The Detective and The First Deadly Sin

Early life

Francis Albert Sinatra was born in a Paterson, New Jersey hospital to a family living at 415 Monroe St., Hoboken, New Jersey. He was the only child of a quiet Sicilian fireman, Anthony Martin Sinatra (1894-1969). Anthony had emigrated to the United States in 1895. His mother, Natalie Dolly Garaventa (1896-1977), was a talented, tempestuous Ligurian, who worked as a midwife, Democratic party ward boss, and part-time abortionist. Known as "Hatpin Dolly," she emigrated in 1897. Although it is part of the Sinatra folklore that Frank had an impoverished childhood, he was actually brought up in a middle-class environment, due to his father's secure job as a fireman and his mother's strong political ties to the Democratic Party in Hoboken. More exactly, the home he was raised in, especially after the age of 5, was comfortably middle-class even as the surrounding neighborhood tipped toward lower middle class.

Following his teen years in New Jersey, Sinatra was interested in serving his country during World War II. But on December 9, 1941, close to his 26th birthday, Sinatra was classified as 4-F at Newark Induction Center, due to a punctured eardrum he suffered from a difficult forceps delivery. This allowed Sinatra to pursue entertainment, rather than being enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

Early career with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey

One of Sinatra's earliest jobs as a singer was at the Hoboken Union Club where, in 1935 he got his first break when singing group The Three Flashes, along with Harold Arlen, were approached by talent scout Edward 'Major' Bowes. Frank's mother, Dolly, had been instrumental in getting her son work during these years, and managed to persuade the trio to include Frank, who would appear in non-singing roles - as a waiter and as part of a blackface minstrel group - in promotional films for Major Bowes' Amatuer Hour.

In September 1935 he appeared on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour as part a group called the Hoboken Four. The group won the show's talent contest with a record 40,000 votes, which led to a national tour with Bowes. Sinatra then took a job as a singing waiter and MC at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood, NJ. (Legend has it that Frank Sinatra was actually not going to get this job but when the first choice Frankie Manion turned down the job the owner chose Sinatra.) The pay was a mere $15 a week, and Sinatra was left to carry his own public-address-system around to local gigs, but the Rustic Cabin gig would allow Sinatra to be heard across New York on the WNEW radio station. In 1939 the wife of bandleader and trumpet player Harry James heard Sinatra on the radio. James, who Sinatra had been trying to contact via photos and letters sent, hired Sinatra on a salary of $75 a week and the two recorded together for the first time on July 13, 1939.

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Sinatra as caricatured by Sam Berman for NBC's 1947 promotional book

Although the Harry James Orchestra never met with a huge amount of success, they were generally well received and Sinatra, who recorded ten songs with the group for Brunswick and Columbia, gained a great deal of experience, and good notice from the likes of Metronome, during his tenure with the group. At the end of the year he left James to join the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, where he rose to fame as a ballad singer. His first and biggest hit with the band was 1940s "I'll Never Smile Again," which spent several weeks at number one - and was the first number one - on Billboard magazine's then-new chart of America's top-selling records. His vast appeal to the "bobby soxers," as teenage girls were called, revealed a whole new audience for popular music, which had appealed mainly to adults up to that time. (The complete span of his career with Dorsey was released in the 1994 box set The Song Is You.)

From March 13 to April 9, 1940 Sinatra sang with the Tommy Dorsey Band at the New York Paramount, the venue in which he, as a solo singer, caused pandemonium during over the coming years. On record, Sinatra cut 29 singles with Dorsey during 1941, and was named Male Vocalist of the Year by Billboard that May. His departure from the Dorsey Band was announced on stage at the Circle Theatre in Indianapolis on August 28 1942.

The Columbia years and "The Voice"

In 1943, he signed with Columbia Records as a solo artist with initially great success, particularly during the musicians' recording strikes. Vocalists were not part of the musician union and were allowed to record during the ban by using a cappella vocal backing. Sinatra scored several hits during the strike, then enjoyed one of his biggest hits when the strike ended with "Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week." He also starred on radio programs during this period and was widely considered the nation's second-most-popular singer, behind Bing Crosby, whose attendance/box office records at the New York Paramount he shattered in December 1942, when a two-week engagement was extended to eight. It was during these shows that teenage fans, known as Bobbysoxers, began to create a deafening roar, the likes of which had never been heard before, when Sinatra was on stage. "Sinatra-mania" was now, officially, in full swing as he landed no less than 23 top ten singles on Billboard between 1940 and early 1943 and became affectionately known as "The Voice."

In 1943, Sinatra returned to the Paramount, made his debut at Madison Square Garden - in a benefit show from Greek War Relief - and caused a stir playing to a crowd of 10,000 at the Hollywood Bowl, a venue usually reserved for classical music and opera. The takings were so huge that the Bowl, in severe financial distress, was able to wipe all of its debt from the earnings. That October, Songs by Sinatra premiered on CBS radio, and ran over the course of the next two years.

In 1944, Sinatra started his film career in earnest - after appearing in three pictures as the singer with the Dorsey Band in 1941/1942 - signing a seven-year contract with RKO and appearing in light musical vehicles - Step Lively, Higher and Higher, catered to appeal to teenage fans. Sinatra was soon noticed by Louis B. Mayer, who bought his contract from RKO and upped his salary from $25,000 to $130,000 per film under a $1.5 million contract with MGM.

When Sinatra returned to the Paramount in October 1944, 35,000 fans caused a near riot outside the venue. Dubbed 'The Columbus Day Riot', it took the police hours to diffuse the situation. Sinatra was rapidly becoming one of the biggest stars in all of the entertainment business, with estimates suggesting that he had some 40 million fans in America. He returned to the Paramount the following November, again playing to ecstatic crowds, something that was more than a trend across the nation as Sinatra embarked on a cross-country tour over the spring and summer of 1946, playing at The Golden Gate Theatre [San Francisco], Chicago Stadium, Madison Square Garden and The Hollywood Bowl amongst other major venues.

In 1945, Sinatra co-starred with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh. A major success, this set the standard for subsequent Kelly/Sinatra pictures, such as Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On the Town, all of which were hugely popular with fans and critics alike. That same year he was loaned out to RKO to star in a short film titled The House I Live In. Directed by Melvin LeRoy, this film on tolerance and racial equality earned a special Academy Award. In the 1950s Sinatra reprised The House I Live In on the Frank Sinatra Show, saying "That's a fine piece of material. I wouldn't mind doing that every week."

By 1946 Sinatra was performing 45 shows a week during some months. This year saw the release his first concept album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, and the debut his own weekly radio show. On screen he appeared at the finale of Till the Clouds Roll By singing Ol' Man River, starred in It Happened in Brooklyn, acted as a priest in The Miracle of the Bells and as a Zorro-esque lothario in The Kissing Bandit.

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Frank Sinatra, 1947

On April 13 1947, Sinatra was at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to receive the Thomas Jefferson Award for Fighting Against Intolerance. October 13 was named "Frank Sinatra Day" in Hoboken, New Jersey, where Sinatra was presented with the key to the city by the Major and the chief of police.

The down-side of fame for Sinatra was a series of public relations gaffes that tarnished his name and his image. Many saw him as a would-be thug, a womaniser and someone who wasn't adverse to slapping around members of the press if the got on the wrong side of him. Critic Lee Mortimer felt the brunt of Sinatra when he was struck in a Hollywood club after taking a dig at It Happened in Brookyln and Sinatra's performance in a film that was otherwise well received.

Of this first phase of Sinatra's career, it can be said that it anticipated virtually every phase of what, in the 1960s, would be called "the youth movement." His sudden--and for many his alarming--appeal to teenagers became a topic of journalistic and even sociological comment. Later musical idols would pass through the same stages of massive initial appeal, decline, and retrenchment, but few, however, would manage to attract as many new audiences as Sinatra did. This became essential to any popular music career that aspired to longevity.

From November 13 to December 3, 1947, Sinatra was giving eight shows a day during a 17-day engagement at the Capitol Theatre in New York. While there,he got involved in the fixed Jake LaMotta-Billy Fox boxing match held at Madison Square Garden on November 14,which caused his sponsorship of a youth football team that played only one game (in the first Pop Warner Santa Claus Bowl in Philadelphia), and lost; the details found at http://www.davtom.com. On December 29, 1947, Sinatra appeared with Kathryn Grayson and Gene Kelly on a Lux Radio presentation of Anchors Aweigh. Sinatra had stopped playing live in 1948, but returned to the concert stage on January 12, 1950, in Hartford, Connecticut. Takings of $18,267 over two nights were Sinatra's highest to date, but, under a hectic schedule over the ensuing years, Sinatra's voice suffered, resulting in him hemhorraging his vocal chords on stage at the Copa on April 26, 1950.

From July 10 to 23, 1950, Sinatra performed to standing-room-only crowds at the London Palladium, Ava Gardner being in attendance during, at least, one of his shows. In August 1950, Sinatra played to ecstatic crowds in Atlantic City, NJ.

On October 7, 1950, the Frank Sinatra Show premiered on CBS. This Saturday night show was broadcast weekly from 9:00 p.m. 10:00 p.m., leading to a radio series, also on CBS, called Meet Frank Sinatra. A second series of the Frank Sinatra Show premiered on October 1, 1952, but, ratings were dwarfed by the likes of the Milton Berle Show.

However, Sinatra's career began a decline in the late 1940s, as novelty tunes became popular with audiences, and Sinatra moved into his mid 30s, causing some loss of appeal to new teen-age audiences. But, contrary to popular belief, Sinatra did have some hits during this time - "Birth of the Blues", "Goodnight Irene", "Castle Rock", "Bim Bam Baby", "Mama Will Bark" - and continued to work on stage, TV and radio.

1950s

Ava Gardner, Vegas debut, dropped by MGM

On November 7, 1951, Sinatra married Ava Gardner . They had an extremely tempestuous relationship, and the ascent of Gardner's career seemed to conincide with the decline in Sinatra's career . They split up in 1953 and divorced in 1957. In September 1951, Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut at the Desert Inn. A month later, a second series of the Frank Sinatra Show aired on CBS.

By early 1950s, Sinatra was scoring fewer hit records and he was dropped by MGM - in spite of the massive critical and commercial success of On the Town.

Failure of Double Dynamite, UK tour, dropped by Columbia and MCA Records

By 1952 Sinatra was at his lowest ebb. He had few musical hits after the hemorrhaging of his vocal chords, whilst a movie vehicle with Jane Russell and Groucho Marx, Double Dynamite, was a critical and commercial failure .

In 1952 Sinatra acted in the underrated Meet Danny Wilson. Playing a nightclub singer attatched to the mob, he gave one of his best acting performances to date, but badly needed his $25,000 fee to stop the bank repossessing his home. Tony Curtis, who would later co-star with Sinatra in Kings Go Forth, has an early bit-part here.

Between March 26 and April 8, 1952, Sinatra was back on stage at the Paramount in New York, but long gone were the days of rioting Bobby-Soxers, whilst a U.K. tour in 1953, playing in Blackpool, Dundee and Glasgow amongst other places, was met with a middling response .

After several flops on record, on screen and on stage, both Columbia and MCA dropped Sinatra in 1952.

Rebirth of career, From Here to Eternity, The Man with the Golden Arm

What might be called Sinatra's second career began as a full-fledged dramatic actor when he played the scrappy Pvt. Angelo Maggio in the eve-of-Pearl Harbor drama From Here to Eternity (1953), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This role and performance has become legendary, marking the turnaround in Sinatra's career, from which he went from being lost in the wilderness for several years, to Oscar-winning actor and, once again, one of the top recordings artists in the world..

The following year, Sinatra played a crazed, cold-blooded assassin determined to kill the President in the thriller Suddenly (available freely online here). Critics found Sinatra's performance one of the most chilling portrayals of a psychopath ever committed to film.. This was followed in 1955 by his highly acclaimed .portrayal of a heroin addict in Otto Premiger's The Man with the Golden Arm, for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination. Later that year, Sinatra starred alongside Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls, then, in 1956, co-starred with his boyhood idol, Bing Crosby, in High Society. In 1957 Sinatra gave one of his finest on-screen performances as real-life comic Joe E. Lewis in The Joker Is Wild. In 1958 he won a Golden Globe for his performance in Pal Joey, the same year he starred in Vincente Minnelli's highly revered small-town melodrama Some Came Running. .

Birth of the 'Rat Pack', first albums for Capitol Records

It was during these years in Hollywood that Sinatra he would associate with Humphrey Bogart's "Holmby Hills Rat Pack," a group of actors - including Lauren Bacall, David Niven and Judy Garland - who had grown dissatisfied with the studio system. It was Bogart himself who bestowed upon Sinatra the long-lasting nickname "The Chairman of the Board", and once commented that "If he could stay away from the broads and devote his time to being an actor, he'd be one of the best in the business."

Musically, Sinatra reinvented himself with a series of complex adult albums featuring darker emotional material starting with In the Wee Small Hours, In 1953, he had signed with Capitol Records, where he worked with many of the finest arrangers of the era, most notably Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, and Billy May. Classic album followed classic album - Songs For Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly With Me, Close To You, Where Are You, Only the Lonely - as Sinatra diverted his attention fully to the L.P.

"Young at Heart", the song that could be considered as his "comeback" single, peaked on Billboard at #2 in 1954, putting Sinatra quite firmly back on top. By the end of the year, Billboard named "Young at Heart" Song of the Year, Swing Easy was named Album of the Year and Sinatra was named "Top Male Voclist" by Billboard, Down Beat and Metronome.

Titled after the successful song Young at Heart, the film Young at Heart, was released in 1954. Here, Gordon Douglas would direct Sinatra in the first of a five-movie partnership. Doris Day was Sinatra's co-star, working with him for the first time since they appeared together on radio in 1947.

Between 1955 and 1959, Sinatra spent more weeks than anyone else on Billboard's album chart - 450 weeks in total. The majority of his films released during this period secured major box office returns, whilst a one-off TV drama Our Town [1955], in which Sinatra starred alongside Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, was broadcast live on NBC, garnering positive reviews and an Emmy Award for the song "Love and Marriage".

In the U.K. Sinatra was just as successful, reaching the album top-ten fourteen times between 1956 and 1959, scoring four number ones in the process. Songs For Swingin' Lovers [1956] proved so popular that its sales registered on the singles chart, becoming the only album to rank among the U.K.'s top-twenty singles as well as becoming the first U.K. number one album on July 28, 1956.

Kings Go Forth, CBS deal

For the film Kings Go Forth [1958], Boris Karloff served as Sinatra's acting coach. Co-starring with Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood, this remains one of the few films based on the so-called Champaign Campaign in France at the end of World War II. Part war film/part message film about racial tolerance and understanding, Kings Go Forth never found a wide audience, despite good performances from the leading players..

In 1957 Sinatra signed a $3 million deal with CBS to star in twenty one hour-long musical variety shows and ten half-hour dramas. Many top stars of the day appeared as guests - Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin - but the public and critics failed to warm to an over-ambitious programme. Sinatra's subsequent TV projects with ABC proved more succesful, garnering positive reviews and mostly good ratings, especially the special It's Nice To Go Travellin' [1960] a.k.a Welcome Home Elvis.

In November 1957, the New York Times reckoned that Frank Sinatra's annual income was $4 million, whilst had proven himself to be the most consistant album-seller in the U.S, shifting, on average, 200,000 copies of each release.

In July 1958 Sinatra sang at a benefit in Monte Carlo. Princess Grace was in attendance and, on this night, Sinatra worked for the first time with Quincy Jones. Their working relationship would last until the 1980s, and their friendship until Sinatra's dying day.

The famous Sinatra comeback is the stuff of American legend, and, indeed, there seemed little in either his 1940s film career or his radio and television performances of the early 1950s to predict the dramatic success he would enjoy on screen in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the musical turnaround should not have been unexpected. At the very end of his Columbia recording career, in two performances in 1952 Sinatra had given advance warning of what would become the new sound he achieved in the 1950s at Capitol. In "The Birth of the Blues", it was the sound of the new and "swinging" Sinatra: a hipper, tougher, more masculine persona than the sometimes boyish Sinatra of the 1940s. In "I'm A Fool To Want You" he anticipated the darker, melancholic sound of the great "torch" albums of the 1950s. Neither performance was sufficient to prevent Columbia from declining to renew his contract, in what must surely rank as one of the great errors in the business history of American popular music.

In the 1950s and 1960s, this new Sinatra became the most popular attraction in Las Vegas, the venue of choice for performers of his era as the rise of rock and roll began to reduce the market for their recordings. He was friends with many other entertainers, including Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr, actor Peter Lawford, comedian Joey Bishop, and sometimes Shirley MacLaine. They formed the core of the Rat Pack, a loose group of entertainers who were friends and socialized together--and whose wild and unpredictable antics would dominate show business news for much of the period from 1958 to 1963.

Sinatra played a major role in the desegregation of Nevada hotels and casinos in the 1960s. Sinatra led his fellow members of the Rat Pack in refusing to patronize hotels and casinos that denied service to Sammy Davis Jr. With the release of the film Ocean's Eleven (1960), the Rat Pack became the subject of great media attention, and this gave the Rat Pack, Sinatra in particular, the leverage he needed to force hotels and casinos to end segregation.

In 2001, Las Vegas named Frank Sinatra Drive, a new street parallel to Interstate 15 and Las Vegas Boulevard, in his honor.

Sinatra was close to the Kennedy family and was a friend and strong supporter of President John F. Kennedy. Years later, Sinatra's youngest daughter Tina stated that Sinatra and mob figure Sam Giancana had helped Kennedy win a crucial primary election in 1960 by helping to deliver the union votes. Sinatra is said to have introduced Kennedy to Judith Campbell, who had been a girlfriend of both Sinatra's and Giancana. Campbell allegedly began a relationship with Kennedy; eventually Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy became alarmed and told his brother to distance himself from Sinatra. This soured Sinatra's relationship with the Kennedy family and the Democratic Party, and by the late 1960s Sinatra had become a Republican and supporter of Richard Nixon, who became President in 1968. Sinatra would lose his Nevada casino license in 1963 when Giancana was seen in the Cal-Neva Lodge casino, of which Sinatra was a part owner.

1960s

Founding of Reprise Records, Ocean's 11, Martin Luther King, World Tour

By the early 1960s, he was a big enough star to start his own record label: Reprise Records. His first album for the label, Ring a Ding Ding [1961] was a major success and top-ten albums continued throughout the decade. By the end of the 1960s, Sinatra had spent 1311 weeks on Billboard's album chart - second only to Johnny Mathis' 1544 weeks.

On May 29, 1960, Sinatra was in Tokyo to play his first shows in Japan, where he was extremely popular, and would return several more times over the next 34 years.

Sinatra's first [released] movie of the 1960s was the all-star vehicle Can-Can. Featuring Louis Jourdan, Maurice Chevalier, Shirley MacLaine and Juliet Prowse, the film was a major commercial success, especially after Russian Premier Nikita Krushchev visited the set in September of 1959, and lambasted the production as being an example of "western decadence."

Following on the heels of Can Can was Ocean's 11, the film that would become the definitive on-screen outing for The Rat Pack. A major success commercially, if hardly an artistic triumph, Ocean's 11 was the ninth most succesful film of 1960, with over $5.5 million taken in domestic rentals.

On January 27, 1961, Sinatra played a benefit show at Carnegie Hall for Martin Luther King. Later in the year, he returned to Australia for a series of shows at Sydney Stadium. As a live performer, Sinatra was far travelled, and, in April 1962, he embarked on a self-financed world tour to raise money for various children's charities. Concerts in Hong Kong, Israel, Greece, Italy, Japan and London raised in excess of a million dollars for various benefits.

The only Sinatra picture released in 1961 was the disatster movie The Devil at Four O'Clock. Directed by Melvyn LeRoy - The House I Live In - Sinatra would co-star with Spencer Tracy, who said of Sinatra that "Nobody at Metro (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) ever had the power that Sinatra has today.

Count Basie, The Manchurian Candidate

In 1962 Sinatra and Count Basie collaborated for the album Sinatra-Basie, then rejoined two years later for a follow-up It Might As Well Be Swing, which was arranged by Quincy Jones. One of Sinatra's more ambitious albums from the mid-sixties was The Concert Sinatra, which was recorded with a 73-piece symphony orchestra.

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Frank Sinatra as Maj. Bennett Marco in The Manchurian Candidate, 1962.

In 1962 Sinatra resumed his strong film work in John Frankenheimer's classic thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Here, Sinatra gave one of his finest acting performances, playing the disturbed Major Bennett Marco, whose recurring nightmares about events during the Korean war lead him on a quest to find the meaning behind what's going on in his mind. Widely hailed as a masterpiece, The Manchurian Candidate featured career-best performances from both Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury, in a film with dark comic undertones, shades of noir and a cutting satitical edge that made it one of the American Film Institutes 100 Greatest Films. But this was a film that struggled to make it to the screen, its complex plot and themes of cold war paranoia, spies and presidential assasination was strong enough to leave the head of United Artists, Arthur Krim, perplexed about its content and what the public reaction would be. Sinatra, who had a distribution deal with UA, personally approached John F. Kennedy to ask approval of its prooduction. Kennedy, a fan of the novel on which the film was based, eagerly agreed that the film should be made. Sinatra would later comment on "A wonderful, wonderful experience of my life... It only happens once in a performer's life. Once."

Come Blow Your Horn, Sinatra at the Sands

In 1963 Sinatra would host the Academy Awards ceremony, whilst returning to the big screen in lighter fare in the shape of Come Blow Your Horn [1963], which was a massive success, grossing almost $13 million in America alone - garnering Sinatra a Golden Globe nomination in the process - and the final Rat Pack Picture, Robin and the Seven Hoods [1964]. A prohibition-era Chicago-set take on Robin Hood, with Bing Crosby and Peter Falk in support, and a cluster of songs, such as Chigago, featuring throughout. In 1965 Sinatra made his directorial debut with the anti-war film None But The Brave. This, the first Japanese/American co-production (Warner Bros./Toho Studios) opened to good reviews and good box office in both America and Japan. Von Ryan's Express [1965] was more action based - almost like the saturday morning adventure serials of the '40s and '50s - teaming Sinatra up with Trevor Howard in a thrilling escapade that became a major box office success, grossing $17 million and fuelling Oscar-buzz on Sinatra's part.

Sinatra's first live album, Sinatra at the Sands, was recorded during January and February 1965 at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Backed by the Count Basie Band, with Quincy Jones serving as arranger, Sinatra at the Sands was released in August 1966, reaching #7 in the U.K. and #9 on Billboard.

Rat Pack St. Louis benefit, 50th birthday

In June 1965, Sinatra, along with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin played live in St. Louis to benefit Dismas House. The concert was beamed live via satellite to numerous movie theatres across America. Released in August 1965 was the Grammy Award winning album of the year The September of My Years, whilst a career anthology The Man and His Music followed in November, itself winning album of the year at the Grammys in 1966. In 1965, the compilations Sinatra '65 and My Kind of Broadway were also released, whilst the TV special Sinatra: A Man and His Music garnered both an Emmy award and a Peabody Award. On July 24, Sinatra headlined the Newport Jazz Festival, playing to a standing-room-only audience.

In early 1966 the album Moonlight Sinatra appeared without much notice, despite being a project of considerable charm. That's Life, both the single and album, would appear in the spring of the year, achieving considerable success in the US - both were top-ten hits on Billboard's pop charts - before Strangers in the Night went on to top the Billboard and U.K. pop singles charts on its way to winning the award for Record of the Year at the Grammys. The album of the same name also topped the Billboard chart and reached number 4 in the U.K.

Sinatra would start 1967 with a series of recording sessions with the highly revered Brazilian singer/songwriter Antionio Carlos Jobim. Hailed as one of the finest moments in his career, the album, Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim, would reap critical plaudits before charting in March. Later in the year a duet with daughter Nancy, "Something Stupid", topped the Billboard pop and U.K. singles charts. In December Sinatra collaborated with Duke Ellington on the album Francis A. & Edward K.

Sinatra was also in London and Berlin in 1967 to film scenes for the Sidney Furie diected film, The Naked Runner. Distracted by his plans to marry Mia Farrow, Sinatra left the production early, failing to fully complete his final scenes. The film, however, was a box-office success, something that Sinatra needed after Marriage on the Rocks [1965] and Assault on a Queen [1967] flopped with critics and the public alike.

In 1967, Gordon Douglas, who had directed the films Young at Heart 1954 and Robin and the Seven Hoods [1964], was back working with Sinatra on the film Tony Rome. Sinatra, playing a wise-cracking private detective, secured good box office in a hardboiled tale of murder and corruption. A sequel, Lady In Cement [1968] was less successful, but still a hit. Sinatra was also on more serious form in The Detective, a bleak policier that dealt with, for its time, taboo subjects. A major commercial success in America - the 20th biggest earner for 1968 with $6.5 million taken in rentals - The Detective was billed as being "An adult movie with adult themes," in which Sinatra gave one of his most intense, and dedicated acting performanes of the decade.

Watertown, A Man Alone

Sinatra's two most recent albums had followed an experimental vein, in keeping with his flirtation with contemporary styles of popular music. A Man Alone [1969] had Sinatra singing the songs of Rod McKuen, and was a moderate commercial success, peaking at #30 on Billboard and reaching the U.K. top 20. Watertown [1970] was one of Sinatra's most acclaimed concept albums, , but the public all but ignored what was also one of his most misunderstood albums. Selling a mere 30,000 copies, and reaching a peak chart position of 101 put an end to plans of a TV special based on the album.

The public's lack of response to Sinatra's more challenging and diverse offerings during this period was enough to permenantly put on hold a second album with Antonio Carlos Jobim. The album had been recorded, and the artwork finalised before the decision was made to lift tracks from these sessions and put them on the first side of Sinatra & Company [1970], which didn't fare much better, peaking at #73 on Billboard despite reaching #9 in the U.K. Still, the Christmas album The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas would peak at #3 over the holiday season, this being Sinatra's first top-ten album on Billboard since That's Life in 1967, and his 21st top-ten album of the decade. .

On August 16, 1969, at the Houston Astrodome, Sinatra headlined an all-star tribute to the astronauts of Apollo 11. "My Way" was released as a single in 1969. In the U.K. it spent a record 124 weeks on the singles chart, whilst the album of the same name peaked at #2 during a 51 week stay. On Billboard, the album would peak at #11.

Sinatra's last movie of the decade was the Burt Kennedy-directed comedy-western Dirty Dingus Magee, which was released in 1970 to a lukewarm reception. The role of a womanising, hard-drinking outlaw was his last acting role until Contract on Cherry Street in 1977.

1970s

Testimony on organised crime, support for Ronald Reagan

In November 1970, Sinatra performed in London's Royal Festival Hall with the Count Basie orchestra, in a charity benefit for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The shows were taped for a BBC special, Sinatra: In Concert at The Royal Festival Hall. Sinatra later said of this concert “I have a funny feeling that those two nights could have been my finest hour really. It went so well; it was so thrilling and exciting” .

In a secret session at midnight on February 17, 1970, Sinatra testified in front of the New Jersey State Commission on organized crime . Sinatra's appearance had come amid much acrimony. Sinatra declined to answer a subpoena, and subsequently sued the federal court, claiming that his subpoena was illegal . Sinatra's suit was dismissed, and he appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, who at four votes to three, found against him .

In the summer of 1970, Sinatra supported a Republican candidate for the first time, as he declared for Ronald Reagan in his race for the Governorship of California . Sinatra was also good friends with Vice-President Spiro Agnew. Sinatra said he agreed with the Republican Party on most positions, except that of abortion.

In April 1971, Sinatra was awarded his third Academy Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, for his humanitarian and charitable efforts.

Retirement

On 13 June 1971 - at a concert in Hollywood to raise money for the Motion Picture and TV Relief Fund - at the age of fifty five, Sinatra announced that he was retiring, bringing to an end his thirty-six year career in show business. Closing with the song "Angel Eyes", from his 1958 album Only the Lonely, Sinatra exited the stage on the line "'scuse me while I disappear", not returning for an encore.

After a lifetime of supporting Democratic presidential candidates, Sinatra supported Richard Nixon for re-election in the 1972 U.S. presidential election. In 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency, amid charges of bribery, extortion and tax fraud charges, and Sinatra helped Agnew pay some of his legal bills that he faced after his exit from office .

During his years in retirement, Sinatra would still occasionally perform for various charities, whilst, on November 1, 1972, he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors' Guild.

Return from retirement, Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back

Sinatra announced the end of his retirement with a television special and album, both entitled Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back. The album was a great success, reaching number 13 on Billboard and number 12 in the U.K.

In January 1974, Sinatra returned to Las Vegas, performing at Caesar's Palace. Sinatra had previously vowed never to work in Vegas again, after an argument with Sanford Waterman, the manager of Caesar's .

On March 13, 1974, Sinatra hosted the American Film Institute's tribute to James Cagney. The following month, he played at Carnegie Hall for the first time since 1963 in a series of benefit shows for the Variety Clubs of America. At $150 a head, the money raised from one show tallied $250,000. In May, Sinatra became a grandfather, when Nancy Sinatra gave birth to a daughter

From June 4 to 17, 1974, Sinatra toured the Far East, playing three shows in Tokyo and one concert aboard the USS Midway at the Yukosuka Naval Base.

Australia, The Main Event - Live

During a break in Australia, Sinatra caused an uproar when he described the journalists there - who were pushing for a press conference - as "fags", "pimps" and "whores". Australian unions representing transport workers, waiters, and journalists all went on strike, demanding that Sinatra apologise for his remarks . Sinatra instead insisted that the journalists apologise for "fifteen years of abuse I have taken from the world press" . The future Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke then a union leader, also insisted that Sinatra apologise, and a settlement was eventually reached, to the apparent satisfaction of both parties . A movie was later made of the tour - The Night We Called It a Day.

In October 1974, Sinatra appeared at New York City's Madison Square Garden, in a televised concert that was later released as an album under the title The Main Event – Live. Backing him was bandleader Woody Herman and the Young Thundering Herd, who accompanied Sinatra on a European tour later that month.

1975 Academy Awards, World Tour

Sinatra was one of the presenters at the 47th Academy Awards ceremony, and the Academy Award for Documentary Feature went to Hearts and Minds, produced by Peter Davis and Bert Schneider. Schneider's congratulatory telegram was read by the head of the Vietcong delegation to the Paris Peace Accords, and Sinatra read a disclaimer, saying that the Academy was not responsible for any political remarks made on the programme.

Who composed the disclaimer is still a matter of controversy, with Sinatra claiming that he was made to read it by his fellow presenter Bob Hope and the Academy Awards producer, Howard W. Koch , and Schneider claiming that it was Sinatra’s point of view .

In 1975, Sinatra embarked on his first world tour since in thirteen years. The tour proved so popular that he took out an advertisment in the Los Angeles Times stating: "It Was a Very Good Year, Countries 8, Cities 30, Attendance 483,261, performances 140, gross $7,817,473." In August 1975, Sinatra co-headlined with John Denver at Harrah's Lake Tahoe. An unprecedented 772,412 requests were made for tickets. In November 1975, he headlined at the London Palladium, where he had made his European debut in 1950. Some 350,000 requests were made for tickets, at the close of the year, Sinatra performed in front of 20,000 fans at the Chicago Stadium.

Marriage, death of mother

In July 1976, Sinatra married Barbara Marx, the former wife of Zeppo Marx. It was Sinatra's fourth marriage, and they remained married for the rest of Sinatra's life.

On January 9, 1977, Sinatra's mother, Dolly, was killed in a plane crash on the San Gorgonio Mountain in Southern California. The death of his mother had a profound effect on Sinatra, who returned to the Catholicism of his youth, taking instruction, and remarrying Barbara Sinatra in the Catholic Church, which required the annulment of his marriage to his first wife, Nancy Barbato .

In 1977, Sinatra produced and starred in his first television movie, Contract On Cherry Street. Hailed at the time as a major event, this two-part crime drama was based on the popular book by Phillip Rosenberg. Filmed on location in New York over a two month period, Sinatra played the Police Inspector of an Organised Crime Unit, who turns vigilante on the mob when his partner is murdered. Co-starring Henry Silva and Martin Balsam, critic Leonard Maltin commented, "aces to this fine thriller" - and it was nominated for Best TV Feature/Miniseries at the 1978 Edgar Awards.

Sinatra performed at the Westchester Premier Theater on April 11, 1976, and that evening posed for an infamous photograph with several organised crime figures, including Jimmy Fratianno and Carlo Gambino .

In 1979, in front of the Pyramids, Sinatra performed for Anwar Sadat, and to celebrate his forty years in show business and his sixty-fourth birthday, he received a Grammy Trustees Award at a special party at Caesar's Palace.

1980s

Reagan presidency, Nevada gaming licence

In the 1980 U.S. presidential election, Sinatra supported Ronald Reagan, and donated $4 million to Reagan's campaign. Sinatra said he supported Reagan as he was “the proper man to be the president of the United States…it's so screwed up now, we need someone to straighten it out” .

Reagan's victory gave Sinatra his closest relationship with the White House since the early 1960s, as a result of which Sinatra arranged Reagan's Presidential gala , as he had done for John F Kennedy, some twenty years previously.

In 1980, Sinatra also decided to apply for a Nevada gaming licence, with President Reagan submitted as one of his references. In February 1981, Sinatra was quizzed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board about his relationships with Mafia figures, and his fifty percent ownership of the Cal-Neva lodge . The board eventually voted four to one to reinstate Sinatra's gaming licence .

Between January 22 and January 25, Sinatra played to frenzied crowds at the Rio Palace in Rio de Janiero. Still in Rio, on January 26 he played to a then world-record crowd of 175,000 at Marcana Stadium. In June he returned to Carnegie Hall for a two-week long engagement. Tickets sold out in a single day, breaking all previous box office records at the ninety year old venue.

Trilogy, She Shot Me Down, Sun City

In 1980, Sinatra's first album for six years was released, Trilogy: Past Present Future, a triple album marking the three distinct epochs of Sinatra's career, with the final disc, 'The Future' being a free form suite of songs. The album provided Sinatra's first career retrospective since 1965's A Man and His Music, and garnered six Grammy nominations. Sinatra built on the success of Trilogy the following year, with 1981's She Shot Me Down, an album that revisited the dark tone of his Capitol years, and which has subsequently been praised by critics .

In 1980 Sinatra also returned to acting, playing a troubled New York City policeman in The First Deadly Sin. A film that, in tone, echoed the bleakly introspective She Shot Me Down. Commercially, it was not a major success, but Sinatra, in what was to be his final starring role, once again garnered praise for his acting. Roger Ebert said of the film that "This is a new performance, built from the ground up." .

Sinatra was embroiled in controversy in 1981 when he worked a ten day engagement for $2 million in Sun City, South Africa. He was criticized for the trip by Jesse Jackson, and the United Nations special committee on Apartheid condemned Sinatra as a collaborator in Apartheid.

Kennedy Center Honors, Golden Nugget incident

In 1982, Sinatra returned to the recording studio as a conductor, for Sylvia Syms, album Syms by Sinatra. Sinatra suffered the deaths of several people close to him in the 1980s, losing Buddy Rich in 1987, and Don Costa and Harry James in 1983. Sinatra delivered the eulogy at Joe Louis's 1981 funeral, and paid for his medical bills during his final illness .

In 1983 Sinatra was selected as one of the five Kennedy Center Honors, alongside Katharine Dunham, Jimmy Stewart, Elia Kazan and Virgil Thomson. Quoting Henry James in honouring Sinatra, Reagan said that 'art was the shadow of humanity', and said that Sinatra had “spent his life casting a magnificent and powerful shadow” .

Shortly after the Kennedy Centre Honors, Sinatra and Dean Martin were involved in an altercation at the Golden Nugget casino in Atlantic City. Rather than deal from the sealed plastic box, Sinatra told a blackjack dealer to deal by hand, which was prohibited under New Jersey state law. Sinatra was eventually accommodated, and the New Jersey Casino Control Commission fined the Golden Nugget $25,000, and suspended four employees following the incident .

Sinatra appearance on the big screen alongside his fellow Rat Packers in 1983's Cannonball Run II would be his last with "The Clan."

Return to Hoboken, L.A. Is My Lady, His Way

In 1984, for the first time in decades, Sinatra publicly returned to his birthplace in Hoboken, New Jersey, bringing President Reagan with him, who was in the midst of campaigning for the 1984 U.S. presidential election. Reagan had made Sinatra a fund-raising ambassador as part of the Republicans 'Victory 84’ get-the-vote-out-drive .

Earlier that year, Sinatra had worked with Quincy Jones for the first time in nearly two decades on the album L.A. Is My Lady. Well received critically, L.A. Is My Lady came after a Sinatra/Lena Horne project - instigated by Quincy Jones - was abandoned after Horne developed vocal problems and Sinatra, committed to other engagements, couldn't wait to record.

From September 17 to 22, 1984, Sinatra played six sold-out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The following year, on May 23, 1985, Sinatra received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and later that day was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, despite the protests of the student body .

In 1986, investigative journalist Kitty Kelley published a biography of Sinatra entitled His Way. Sinatra had been to court in 1983 to try to prevent it from being published, according to Kelley, seeking '$2 million in punitive damages from me for presuming to write about him without his authorization' . He also accused her of allegedly misrepresenting herself as his authorized biographer. He later withdrew his lawsuit amid much publicity and the book went on to become number one on the New York Times best seller list and was a bestseller not only in the US but also in England, Canada, and Australia.

On October 30, 1986, Sinatra re-recorded "Mack the Knife", feeling he could better the version recorded during the L.A. Is My Lady sessions in 1984.

In 1988 Sinatra appeared in an episode of Magnum, P.I.. This was his last acting role, but Sinatra returned to the big screen this year when, after being out of circulation for 25 years, The Manchurian Candidate would be re-released in theatres.

By the end of the decade, Suddenly, which had been pulled from distribution by Sinatra after the assasination of John F. Kennedy, was finding its way onto home video and being discovered by a new audience.

1990s

75th birthday and Duets projects

1990 saw Sinatra celebrate his 75th birthday with a national tour , and he was awarded the second 'Ella Award' by the Los-Angeles-based Society of Singers. At the award ceremony, he performed for the final time with Ella Fitzgerald.

In August, Sinatra was involved in a controversial verbal exchange with Sinéad O'Connor, as he promised to 'kick her ass' after his dismay at her apparent disrespect shown toward the American national anthem.

In December as part of Sinatra's birthday celebrations, Patrick Pasculli, the Mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, made a proclamation in his honour, declaring that "no other vocalist in history has sung, swung and crooned and serenaded into the hearts of the young and old... as this consummate artist from Hoboken" The same month Sinatra would give the first show of his Diamond Jubilee Tour at the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

The following year saw Sinatra embark on a hectic European tour of engagements, accompanied by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, to mark his sixty years in show business. After the deaths of Ava Gardner and Sammy Davis, Jr. in 1990, Sinatra’s life was once again affected by tragedy when his close friend and confidant Jilly Rizzo was killed in a car crash in Mission Hills, California, in 1992.

In November 1992, the CBS miniseries Sinatra, produced by Tina Sinatra and Warner Bros., was broadcast with the full cooperation and involvement of the Sinatra family. Frank Sinatra had long wanted any cinematic portrayal of his life to be produced whilst he was alive, claiming that "If they do it when I’m dead, they’ll screw it up so I want to be around to see it’s done right."

In 1993 Sinatra made a surprise return to Capitol Records and the recording studio for Duets, which was released in November. Sinatra’s duet with Bono on I've Got You Under My Skin contributed to the album's great commercial success, which reached 2 on the Billboard charts, and eventually selling over 2 million copies in the United States alone.

The artists who added their vocals to the album worked for free, and a follow-up album (Duets II) was released in 1994, which reached 9 on the Billboard charts. Duets II marked Sinatra's last recording with Antonio Carlos Jobim, as well as his last studio recordings, bringing to an end his sixty-year recording career.

80th birthday, last concert, 1994 Grammy Awards, health problems

Since the early nineties Sinatra often had to rely on teleprompters for his lyrics during concerts, to compensate for his failing memory. In 1994 he suffered a bad fall from the stage, while singing "My Way". Sinatra gave his last ever concert on February 25, 1995, at a private party for 1,200 select guests. His last public concert was held the year before in Japan, where 96,000 people saw him live over two nights at The Fukuoaka Dome.

Sinatra was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1994 Grammy Awards, and was introduced by Bono. Sinatra's acceptance speech was crudely cut off, as it apparently cut into advertising space

The Empire State Building glowed blue to mark Sinatra's eightieth birthday in 1995 , followed by a star-studded birthday tribute at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. This was his last televised appearance, and with the death of Dean Martin a few days later, Sinatra entered a period of seclusion and health difficulties, suffering both a mild heart attack and stroke in November 1996, and a heart attack in January 1997. .

Death, tributes, burial

After suffering another heart attack, Frank Sinatra died at 10:50 p.m. on May 14, 1998, at the age of 82. Sinatra's final words were 'I'm losing'. .

Bill Clinton led tributes to Sinatra, claiming that he had managed 'to appreciate on a personal level what millions of people had appreciated from afar.' .

On May 20, 1998 at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, Sinatra's funeral was held, followed by a private ceremony at St. Theresa's Catholic Church in Palm Springs.

Sinatra was buried a short distance east of St. Theresa's next to his parents in section A-8 of Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, a quiet, unassuming cemetery on Ramon Road at the border of Cathedral City and Rancho Mirage and near his famous Rancho Mirage compound, located on tree-lined Frank Sinatra Drive. Jilly Rizzo is buried nearby in the same cemetery.

Legend has it that Sinatra was buried in a blue suit with a flask of Jack Daniel's and a roll of ten dimes which was a gift from his daughter, Tina, along with a card that said "Sleep warm, Poppa - look for me." The ten dimes were a habit dating back to the kidnapping of his son, Frank Sinatra, Jr., due to the kidnappers' demands that negotiations be made via pay phone. A Zippo lighter (which some take to be a reference to his mob connections) is purported to be buried with him as is a pack of Camel cigarettes. The words The Best Is Yet to Come are imprinted on his tombstone.

Love and marriage

Sinatra was married to his childhood sweetheart, Nancy Barbato, in Jersey City, New Jersey on February 4, 1939. They had three children together: Nancy Sinatra (born June 8, 1940), Frank Sinatra, Jr. (born January 10, 1944), and Christina "Tina" Sinatra (born June 20, 1948). Although Sinatra did not remain faithful to his wife, he was by many accounts a devoted father. However, his affair with Ava Gardner became public and the couple was separated in 1950. They were divorced on October 29, 1951 despite Nancy Sr.'s (as she was sometimes known) religious qualms and objections. According to public reports Frank and Nancy Sr. remained on at least civil terms, if not better, and Nancy would recount how Frank still loved her cooking and would send someone by to pick up her home-made specialties many decades after they separated.

Sinatra married the actress Ava Gardner on November 7, 1951, only ten days after his divorce from his first wife became final. They were separated on October 27, 1953 but were not divorced until 1957.

Sinatra proposed to actress Lauren Bacall, whom he had been seeing since shortly after her husband Humphrey Bogart died in 1957, but reneged when word of their relationship became public.

On December 8, 1963, Frank Sinatra, Jr. was kidnapped. Sinatra paid the kidnappers' $240,000 ransom demand (even offering $1,000,000 though the kidnappers bizarrely turned down this offer), and his son was released unharmed on December 10. Because the kidnappers demanded that Sinatra call them only from payphones, Sinatra carried a roll of dimes with him throughout the ordeal, and this became a lifetime habit. The kidnappers were subsequently apprehended and convicted. A movie called Stealing Sinatra was made about the incident.

Sinatra married actress Mia Farrow, 30 years his junior, in 1966. They were divorced two years later.

In 1976, Sinatra married Barbara Blakeley Marx (formerly married to Zeppo Marx), who converted to Catholicism to marry him. She remained his wife until his death, although her relations with Sinatra's children were consistently portrayed as stormy, something Nancy Sinatra (Jr.) confirmed when she publicly claimed that Barbara had not bothered to call Frank's children even when the end was near, although they were close by, and the children missed the opportunity to be at their father's bedside when he died.

Alleged organized crime links

Sinatra has been frequently linked to members of the Mafia and it has long been rumored that his career was aided behind the scenes by organized crime.[4]

One of his uncles, Babe Gavarante, was a member of a Bergen County armed gang connected to the organization of Willie Moretti. Gavarante was convicted of murder in 1921 in connection with an armed robbery in which he had driven the get-away car. Sinatra was also allegedly personally linked to Willie Moretti, his first wife Nancy Barbato was a cousin of one of his senior henchmen and Sinatra sang at the daughter's wedding in 1948. According to testimony from Moretti, Sinatra received help from him in arranging performances in return for kick-backs.

He had associations with and did favours for Charles Fischetti, a notorious Chicago mobster dating back to 1946 according to the FBI. Sinatra was also friends with Charles's brother Joseph who ran the Fontainebleau Hotel complex in Miami, who arranged work for him and introduced him to Charles Luciano in Havana. After Luciano's deportation to Italy, Sinatra visited him at least twice, singing at a 1946 Christmas Party and gifting the famed mobster with a gold cigarette case engraved "To my dear pal Charlie, from his friend Frank" the next year.

These visits were widely reported by the media and used as further evidence of Sinatra's ties to the mob, haunting him for the rest of his life. Among the allegations was the $2 million that Sinatra gave Luciano. As Joseph "Doc" Stacher later recalled of the Havana meeting, "The Italians among us were all very proud of Frank. They always told me they had spent a lot of money helping him in his career ever since he was in Tommy Dorsey’s band. Lucky Luciano was very fond of Frank’s singing. Frankie flew into Havana with the Fischettis, with whom he was very friendly, but of course, our meeting had nothing to do with hearing him croon. Everyone brought envelopes of money for Luciano. But more important, they came to pay allegiance to him." The "Havana" allegations - while the basis of rumors for Sinatra's mob ties - have never been proved, and Luciano himself denied there was any criminal association in his autobiography.

Sinatra had a strong friendship with Sam Giancana who always wore a sapphire friendship ring given to him by Sinatra, and who ordered the killing of about 200 people. A number of alleged incidents have been noted where people who angered Sinatra had been threatened by Giancana's mob. Comedian Jackie Mason has alleged that after mocking Sinatra in his routine, he received threats and his hotel room was shot up in his presence. After he continued, he received death threats and was roughed up and his nose broken.

J. Edgar Hoover apparently suspected Sinatra over the years, and Sinatra's file at the FBI ended up at 2,403 pages[5], detailing allegations of extortion against Ronald Alpert for $100,000. Sinatra publicly rejected these accusations many times, and was never charged with any crimes in connection with them.

The character Johnny Fontane in the book and movie The Godfather is widely viewed as having been inspired by Frank Sinatra and his alleged connections. Indeed, Sinatra was furious with Godfather author Mario Puzo over the Fontane character and reportedly confronted Puzo in public with profane threats.

Recorded legacy

Influences

Sinatra's vocal style represented a significant departure from the 'crooning' style of his idol, Bing Crosby. Sinatra's generation represented the first generation of children that had grown up in the era of the microphone, and the amplification of sound enabled singers to sing in a much softer, personal and nuanced style. Crosby had begun this change, and established a new American singing style based around conversational ease.

However Sinatra, as he himself once noted, sang more, by which he meant that he introduced a bel canto sound to the tradition begun by Crosby. And, more importantly, he might be said to have brought the Crosby tradition to artistic completion, taking it to levels of intensity and depth of feeling that, because of the displacement of the Crosby-Sinatra tradition by rock and roll and subsequent genres, are unlikely to be achieved again.

Two other great performers of the 1930s and 1940s were significant influences on Sinatra: Billie Holiday and Mabel Mercer. Sinatra regularly heard "Lady Day" in New York clubs in the 1940s and learned from her the importance of authenticity of emotion. From Mercer he learned the importance of the element of "story" in a song. For Sinatra a song is a three-four minute narrative — sometimes even the story of himself, his own life, his own heartaches, his own feelings of buoyancy — and this is why Ella Fitzgerald could say of him, "With Frank, it's always this little guy, telling this ... story." The archetypal examples of the Sinatra song as story could later be found in two selections from his 1958 Capitol album, Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely: "Angel Eyes" and "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)".

Sinatra's vocal range

Sinatra had an exceptional vocal range, his early recordings found him singing in near-tenor range, hitting a high F on "All or Nothing At All" or "Where's My Bess", whilst being equally adept in the lower register, the low E on his 1962 recording of "Ol' Man River" being a prime example of such.

Sinatra's breath control and vocal phrasing are the stuff of legend - he could hold notes for in excess of 12 bars - studying Tommy Dorsey's trombone playing as a means of cultivating a more free-flowing vocal style - and swimming underwater to develop his lung capacity - which enabled him to continue a musical phrase through a stanza without pausing, or breaking the note, for breath. Sinatra's legato-style of singing/phrasing took pop singing in new directions when most singers of the 1940s were keen to ape Bing Crosby.

Sinatra as a conductor

Between 1946 and 1983 Sinatra conducted seven albums and occassionally conducted live orchestras on stage. His first recordings on which he weilded the baton were instigated by producer Mitch Miller, who approached Columbia boss Maine Sachs to request that Sinatra conduct some of the work of Alec Wilder, later released as Frank Sinatra Conducts The Music Of Alec Wilder. In 1956 Sinatra recorded the first album in the Capitol Records tower, not as a vocalist, but as a conductor on the album Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color. In 1957 and 1959 he conducted albums for Peggy Lee - The Man I Love - and Dean Martin - Sleep Warm - the latter, charting inside Billboard's top 40. A lesser-known project for his own label, Reprise, entitled Frank Sinatra Conducts Music From Pictures and Plays remains relatively obscure, and it was twenty years before Sinatra conducted in a studio again, for Sylvia Syms on the album Syms by Sinatra, which featured the final arrangements of Don Costa. The following year Sinatra conducted for trumpeter Charles Turner on the album What's New.

Genres

Sinatra would certainly have been considered a 'pop' singer before the Rock and roll era, and the epithets Traditional Pop or more specifically Classic Pop have perhaps been coined to describe Sinatra's style.

There still exists a much wider debate, as to whether Sinatra is a jazz singer. Certainly he performed with the finest jazz musicians and, in fact, headlined the Newport Jazz Festival and toured with the Red Norvo Quintet. There are very few occasions when Sinatra was recorded scat singing, but minor nuances and slight deviations from the vocal line are a hallmark of the material he recorded, and he is also known for his impecable jazz timing and phrasing. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine the Sinatra of the great years after 1953 without the influence of jazz. It is no accident that he would be Lester Young's ideal singer in the band Young had hoped to lead, nor that Miles Davis identified Sinatra's phrasing as an influence on his own. The list of Sinatra's jazz admirers is long and stellar, including such figures as Count Basie, Stan Getz, and Oscar Peterson. The question of his status as a "jazz singer" has never seemed to matter as much to such artists as it has to critics and academicians.

Songs and albums

Sinatra left a vast legacy of recordings, from his very first sides with the Harry James orchestra in 1939, the vast catalogs at Columbia in the 1940s, Capitol in the 1950s, and Reprise from the 1960s onwards, up to his 1994 album Duets II.

Some of his best known recorded songs include:

• Great American Songbook entries such as "Night and Day", "I've Got You Under My Skin", and "Fly Me To The Moon"
• Comic numbers such as "Love and Marriage" (used as theme for American television comedy Married... with Children)
• Torch songs such as "One for My Baby", "Angel Eyes", and "Drinking Again"
• "It Was a Very Good Year" and "Summer Wind", which capture his mid-1960s persona of sentimental nostalgia
• "That's Life", "My Way", and "New York, New York", which convey his late-stage attitude of bombastic defiance.

Three of his songs made #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after the advent of the rock and roll era: "Learnin' the Blues" (1955), "Strangers in the Night" (1966), and "Somethin' Stupid" (1967), the last a duet with daughter Nancy.

Of all his many albums, At the Sands with Count Basie, which was recorded live in Las Vegas in 1966, with Sinatra in his prime, backed by Count Basie's big band, remains his most popular and is still a big seller. Whether in nightclubs, casinos, arenas, or stadiums, Sinatra was one of the most mesmeric entertainers of the twentieth century, capable of turning the largest venue into a simulacrum of an intimate club. There are, however, few recordings or videos of his concerts. In addition to the Sands performance with Basie, three performances of Sinatra at the very peak of his career were captured: With Red Norvo Quintet: Live In Australia, 1959, Sinatra '57 In Concert, a performance in Seattle with an orchestra conducted by Nelson Riddle and Sinatra and Sextet: Live in Paris, recorded in June of 1962.

File:Weesmallhours.jpeg

In the Wee Small Hours (1955), an early concept album

Sinatra is also credited with putting out perhaps the first concept album. 1955's In the Wee Small Hours is the prime example: a set of songs specifically recorded for the album, using only ballads, organized around a central mood of late-night isolation and aching lost love (supposedly due to his separation from Ava Gardner), with a now-classic album cover reflecting the theme. Rolling Stone magazine later named In the Wee Small Hours as #100 on their list of the 500 best albums of all time.

The following year's Songs For Swingin' Lovers took an alternate tack, recording existing pop standards in a hipper, jazzier fashion, revealing an overall exuberance; Rolling Stone placed it #306 on the above list. It is worth noting that each ranking would have shocked the two generations that preceded the generation that founded Rolling Stone, suggesting that the final assessment of Sinatra's achievement in the history of American popular music must await a time no longer marked by the "conflict of generations" that began in the late 1960s.

It was the advent of the long-playing record that opened the door to these famous concept albums of the 1950s, but Sinatra's first efforts in this direction go back to the Columbia years and The Voice, when the 78 rpm disc made "album" less of a metaphor than it would become with the single-disc LPs of the 1950s. The Voice of Frank Sinatra was released on March 10, 1946 - it was re-issued as a 10" record in 1958. Four more albums would follow over the next five years, as would a Christmas album and a project in which Sinatra conducted the songs of Alec Wilder.

Other notable Sinatra albums include Where Are You? from 1957, which was his first stereo album and his first album recorded with Gordon Jenkins, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958), a bleak, introspective album, which Sinatra later claimed was his finest work.

The lavish The Concert Sinatra (1963) offered re-recordings of "Ol' Man River" and "You'll Never Walk Alone", backed by a 73 piece orchestra. 1965's September of My Years, which according to critic Stephen Holden, "summed up the punchy sentimentality of a whole generation of American men," Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967) was a late foray into bossa nova, with Antonio Carlos Jobim.

1973's comeback album Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back was Sinatra's first album after being away from recording for three years, whilst 1980s Trilogy: Past Present Future, an ambitious triple album using three arrangers that attempted to portray the past, present, and future of his career.

1981's She Shot Me Down is sometimes considered the last great Sinatra album. A collection of what Sinatra called "saloon songs", it includes Alec Wilder's "A Long Night".

Speaking to Robin Douglas-Home in 1961, Sinatra said, with regards to the making of his many concept albums, "First I pick the mood for an album, and perhaps pick a title. Or perhaps it might be that I had that title and then picked the mood to fit it... Then I get a shortlist of maybe sixty possible songs and out of these I pick twelve to record. Next comes the pacing of the album, which is vitally important... Once we chose songs that will be in a particular album, I'll sit with Bill Miller, my pianist, and find the proper key. Then I will meet with the orchestrator... Usually we wind up doing it the way the arranger feels it should be done, becuase he understands more than I do about it..."

Sinatra's star for music on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Charts and hits

Frank Sinatra holds the unique distinction of singing on the first Billboard #1 single, "I'll Never Smile Again" (1940)- which sold 900,000 copies - and had the first ever #1 album in the U.K. Songs For Swingin' Lovers (July 28, 1956). This same album is also the only album to chart among the U.K. top twenty singles, peaking at #12 on June 15, 1956. In 1959, the album Come Dance With Me! also entered the U.K. singles chart peaking at #30 the same week it would start a 30 week run on the album chart, going as high as #2.

From his first released single in 1940 - as the singer with Tommy Dorsey's band - to the 1980 release of "Theme from New York, New York", Frank Sinatra had 209 hits on Billboard's pop singles charts. Of those, 127 made the top twenty, 70 made the top-ten and 10 reached the number one position -- "I'll Never Smile Again" (1940), "There Are Such Things" (1942), "In the Blue of the Evening" (1943), All or Nothing at All" (1944), "Oh What It Seemed To Be" (1945), "Five Minutes More" (1946), "Mam'selle" (1947), "Learnin' The Blues" (1955), "Strangers in the Night" (1966) and "Something Stupid" (1967).

Of Sinatra's 55 top twenty albums on Billboard's pop album charts, 41 - including soundtracks - reached the top ten and six made the number one position - The Voice of Frank Sinatra (1946), In the Wee Small Hours - which spent 18 weeks at #2 - Come Fly With Me (1956), Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958), Nice 'n' Easy (1960) and Strangers in the Night (1966).

Sinatra's 1958 album Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely spent 120 weeks on Billboard's album chart, peaking at #1. His next album, Come Dance With Me! (1959) spent 140 weeks on Billboard, peaking at #2.

"My Way" (1969) is the longest charting U.K. single of all time, with 122 weeks spent on the chart, peaking at number 5. The single re-entered the chart 8 times between 1970 and 1972. A 1995 re-release spent 2 weeks on the chart.

In the U.K., 41 Sinatra albums have made the top ten. 53 Sinatra albums have made the top twenty, the longest charting of those albums being the 1997 compilation My Way: The Very Best of Frank Sinatra, which, to date, has charted for 128 weeks achieving 5 x platinum status. Six of Sinatra's albums reached the #1 position on the U.K. album chart, with a further five peaking at #2.

Awards and legacy

For a listing of Sinatra's awards and accolades, please see List of Frank Sinatra's awards and accolades.

Stephen Holden wrote for the 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide:

Frank Sinatra's voice is pop music history. [...] Like Presley and Dylan—the only other white male American singers since 1940 whose popularity, influence, and mythic force have been comparable—Sinatra will last indefinitely. He virtually invented modern pop song phrasing.

Two decades later, radio personality and musician Jonathan Schwartz's assessment in a 2005 book review for the New York Observer showed that Sinatra's musical reputation had not diminished: "I believe, based on a lifetime of consideration, that Frank Sinatra was the greatest interpretive musician this country has ever produced."

Discography

• Chronological list of singles and albums recorded by Frank Sinatra
• Alphabetical list of studio recordings by Frank Sinatra

Filmography

See Frank Sinatra filmography.

Commercials

In the United States, Frank Sinatra has appeared in commercials for Steve Wynn's Golden Nugget casino, and for Michelob beer (singing "The Way You Look Tonight"). He posthumously appeared in a 2004 commercial for Visa. In Japan, Frank Sinatra appeared in commercials for All Nippon Airways.

See also

• List of jazz musicians
• Best selling music artists
• Rat Pack
• Sinatra Doctrine
• 1920 US Census with Sinatras
• 1930 US Census with Sinatras

Further reading

• The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, Rolling Stone Press, 1983.
• "Frank Sinatra — Through the Lens of Jazz", Jazz Times Magazine, May 1998
• Freedland, Michael. All the Way: A Biography of Frank Sinatra. St Martins Press, 2000.
• Friedwald, Will. Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer's Art. Da Capo Press, 1999.
• Granata, Charles. Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording. Chicago Review Press, 1999.
• Hamill, Pete. Why Sinatra Matters. Back Bay Books, 2003.
• Havers, Richard. "Sinatra". Dorling Kindersley, 2004
• Jacobs, George and Stadiem, William. Mr. S The Last Word On Frank Sinatra. HarperCollins, 2003.
• Kelley, Kitty. His Way. Bantam Press, 1986.
• Lahr, John. Sinatra. Random House, 1997.
• Munn, Michael. Sinatra: The Untold Story. Robson Books Ltd, 2002.
• Mustazza, Leonard, ed. Frank Sinatra and Popular Culture. Praeger, 1998.
• Petkov, Steven and Mustazza, Leonard, ed. The Frank Sinatra Reader. Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Pugliese, S., ed. Frank Sinatra: "History, Identity, and Italian American Culture ". Palgrave, 2004.
• Rockwell, John. Sinatra: An American Classic. Rolling Stone, 1984
• Sinatra, Frank Jr. The Sinatra Treasures. Virgin Books, 2004.
• Sinatra, Nancy. Frank Sinatra 1915-1998: An American Legend. 1998.
• Smith, Martin. When Ol' Blue Eyes was a red. Redwords, 2005.
• Summers, Antony and Swan, Robbyn. Sinatra: The Life. Doubleday, 2005.
• Taraborrelli, J. Randall. Sinatra: The Man Behind the Myth. Mainstream Publishing, 1998.

External links

• Frank Sinatra at IMDb
• Frank Sinatra at the TCM Movie Database
• Frank Sinatra at the Internet Broadway Database
• Obituary, NY Times, May 16, 1998 Frank Sinatra Dies at 82; Matchless Stylist of Pop
• Official site of the Sinatra family
• Sinatra! The Complete Guide An internet guide to all of Frank's works
• FBI's Frank Sinatra file
• Fun Sinatra Facts Learn to talk like Sinatra
• Sinatra - The Main Event
• A radio show containing an interview with Frank Sinatra, Junior's kidnapper
• Frank Sinatra's Hoboken: Walking Tour
• Last Will and Testament of Frank Sinatra