Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra
BORN: December 12, 1915, Hoboken, NJ
DIED: May 14, 1998, Los Angeles, CA
Frank Sinatra was arguably the most important popular music figure of the
20th century, his only real rivals for the title being Bing Crosby, Elvis
Presley, and the Beatles. In a professional career that lasted 60 years,
he demonstrated a remarkable ability to maintain his appeal and pursue his
musical goals despite often countervailing trends. He came to the fore during
the swing era of the 1930s and '40s, helped to define the "sing era" of the
'40s and '50s, and continued to attract listeners during the rock era that
began in the mid-'50s. He scored his first number one hit in 1940 and was
still making million-selling recordings in 1994. This popularity was a mark
of his success at singing and promoting the American popular song as it was
written, particularly in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. He was able to take the
work of great theater composers of that period, such as Jerome Kern, Irving
Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers, and reinterpret
their songs for later audiences in a way that led to their rediscovery and
their permanent enshrinement as classics. On records and in live performances,
on film, radio, and television, he consistently sang standards in a way that
demonstrated their perennial appeal.
The son of a fireman, Sinatra dropped out of high school in his senior year
to pursue a career in music. In September 1935, he appeared as part of the
vocal group the Hoboken Four on Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour. The group
won the radio show contest and toured with Bowes. Sinatra then took a job
as a singing waiter and MC at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood, NJ. He was still
singing there in the spring of 1939, when he was heard over the radio by
trumpeter Harry James, who had recently organized his own big band after
leaving Benny Goodman. James hired Sinatra, and the new singer made his first
recordings on July 13, 1939. At the end of the year, Sinatra accepted an
offer from the far more successful bandleader Tommy Dorsey, jumping to his
new berth in January 1940. Over the next two and a half years, he was featured
on 16 Top Ten hits recorded by Dorsey, among them the chart-topper "I'll
Never Smile Again," later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. During this
period, he also performed on various radio shows with Dorsey and appeared
with the band in the films Las Vegas Nights (1941) and Ship Ahoy (1942).
In January 1942, he tested the waters for a solo career by recording a four-song
session arranged and conducted by Axel Stordahl that included Cole Porter's
"Night and Day," which became his first chart entry under his own name in
March 1942. Soon after, he gave Dorsey notice. Sinatra left the Dorsey band
in September 1942. The recording ban called by the American Federation of
Musicians, which had begun the previous month, initially prevented him from
making records, but he appeared on a 15-minute radio series, Songs By Sinatra,
from October through the end of the year and also did a few live dates. His
big breakthrough came due to his engagement as a support act to Benny Goodman
at the Paramount Theatre in New York, which began on New Year's Eve. It made
him a popular phenomenon, the first real teen idol, with school girls swooning
in the aisles. RCA Victor, which had been doling out stockpiled Dorsey recordings
during the strike, scored with "There Are Such Things," which had a Sinatra
vocal; it hit number one in January 1943, as did "In the Blue of the Evening,"
another Dorsey record featuring Sinatra, in August, while a third Dorsey/Sinatra
release, "It's Always You," hit the Top Five later in the year, and a fourth,
"I'll Be Seeing You," reached the Top Ten in 1944. Columbia, which controlled
the Harry James recordings, reissued the four-year-old "All or Nothing at
All," re-billed as being by Frank Sinatra with Harry James & His Orchestra,
and it hit number one in September. Meanwhile, the label had signed Sinatra
as a solo artist, and in a temporary loophole to the recording ban, put him
in the studio to record a cappella, backed only by a vocal chorus. This resulted
in four Top Ten hits in 1943, among them "People Will Say We're in Love"
from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical Oklahoma!, and a
fifth in early 1944 ("I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night") before protests
from the musicians union ended a cappella recording.
In February 1943, Sinatra was hired by the popular radio series Your Hit
Parade, on which he performed through the end of 1944. Adding to his radio
duties, he appeared from June through October on Broadway Bandbox and in
the fall again took up the Songs by Sinatra show, which ran through December.
In January, it was expanded to a half-hour as The Frank Sinatra Show, which
ran for a year and a half. In April 1943, he made his first credited appearance
in a motion picture, singing "Night and Day" in Reveille With Beverly. This
was followed by Higher and Higher, released in December, in which he had
a small acting role, playing himself, and by Step Lively, released in July
1944, which gave him a larger part. MGM was sufficiently impressed by these
performances to put him under contract. The recording ban was lifted in November
1944, and Sinatra returned to making records, beginning with a cover of Irving
Berlin's "White Christmas" that was in the Top Ten before the end of the
year. Among his eight recordings to peak in the Top Ten in 1945 were Jule
Styne and Sammy Cahn's "Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week),"
Johnny Mercer's "Dream," Styne and Cahn's "I Should Care," and "If I Loved
You" and "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical
Carousel. Sinatra insisted that Styne and Cahn be hired to write the songs
for his first MGM musical, Anchors Aweigh, and over the course of his career,
the singer recorded more songs by Cahn (a lyricist who worked with several
composers) than by any other songwriter. Anchors Aweigh, in which Sinatra
was paired with Gene Kelly, was released in July 1945 and went on to become
the most successful film of the year.
Sinatra returned to radio in September with a new show bearing an old name,
Songs by Sinatra. It ran weekly for the next two seasons, concluding in June
1947. Among his eight Top Ten hits in 1946 were two that hit number one ("Oh!
What It Seemed to Be" and Styne and Cahn's "Five Minutes More"), as well
as "They Say It's Wonderful" and "The Girl That I Marry" from Irving Berlin's
musical Annie Get Your Gun, Jerome Kern's "All Through the Day," and Kurt
Weill's "September Song." He also topped the album charts with the collection
The Voice of Frank Sinatra. His only film appearance for the year came in
Till the Clouds Roll By, a biography of the recently deceased Kern, in which
he sang "Ol' Man River."
By 1947, Sinatra's early success had crested, though he continued to work
steadily in several media. On radio, he returned to the cast of Your Hit
Parade in September 1947, appearing on the series for the next two seasons,
then had his own 15-minute show, Light-Up Time, during 1949-1950. On film,
he appeared in five more movies through the end of the decade, including
both big-budget MGM musicals like On the Town and minor efforts such as The
Kissing Bandit. He scored eight Top Ten hits in 1947-1949, including "Mam'selle,"
which hit number one in May 1947, and "Some Enchanted Evening," from the
Rodgers & Hammerstein musical South Pacific. He also hit the Top Ten
of the album charts with 1947's Songs by Sinatra and 1948's Christmas Songs
by Sinatra. Sinatra's career was in decline by the start of the '50s, but
he was far from inactive. He entered the fall of 1950 with both a new radio
show and his first venture into television. On radio, there was Meet Frank
Sinatra, which found the singer acting as a disc jockey; it ran through the
end of the season. On TV, there was The Frank Sinatra Show, a musical-variety
series; it lasted until April 1952. His film work had nearly subsided, though
in March 1952 came the drama Meet Danny Wilson, which tested his acting abilities
and gave him the opportunity to sing such songs as Harold Arlen and Johnny
Mercer's "That Old Black Magic," "I've Got a Crush on You" by George and
Ira Gershwin, and "How Deep Is the Ocean?" by Irving Berlin.
At Columbia Records, Sinatra came into increasing conflict with musical director
Mitch Miller, who was finding success for his singers by using novelty material
and gimmicky arrangements. Sinatra resisted this approach, and though he
managed to score four more Top Ten hits during 1950-1951 -- among them an
unlikely reading of the folk standard "Goodnight Irene" -- he and Columbia
parted ways. Thus, ten years after launching his solo career, he ended 1952
without a record, film, radio, or television contract. Then he turned it
all around. The first step was recording. Sinatra agreed to a long-term,
boilerplate contract with Capitol Records, which had been co-founded by Johnny
Mercer a decade earlier and had a roster full of faded '40s performers. In
June 1953, he scored his first Top Ten hit in a year and a half with "I'm
Walking Behind You." Then in August, he returned to film, playing a non-singing,
featured role in the World War II drama From Here to Eternity, a performance
that earned respect for his acting abilities, to the extent that he won the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the part on March 25, 1954. In
the fall of 1953, Sinatra began two new radio series: Rocky Fortune, a drama
on which he played a detective, ran from October to March 1954; and The Frank
Sinatra Show was a 15-minute, twice-a-week music series that ran for two
seasons, concluding in July 1955. Meanwhile, Sinatra had begun working with
arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle, a pairing that produced notable chart entries
in February 1954 on both the singles and albums charts. "Young-at-Heart,"
which just missed hitting number one, was the singer's biggest single since
1947, and the song went on to become a standard. (The title was used for
a 1955 movie in which Sinatra starred.) Then there was the 10" LP Songs for
Young Lovers, the first of Sinatra's "concept" albums, on which he and Riddle
revisited classic songs by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Rodgers and Hart
in contemporary arrangements with vocal interpretations that conveyed the
wit and grace of the lyrics. The album lodged in the Top Five. In July, Sinatra
had another Top Ten single with Styne and Cahn's "Three Coins in the Fountain,"
and in September Swing Easy! matched the success of its predecessor on the
LP chart. By the middle of the '50s, Sinatra had reclaimed his place as a
star singer and actor; in fact, he had taken a more prominent place than
he had had in the heady days of the mid-'40s. In 1955, he hit number one
with the single "Learnin' the Blues" and the 12" LP In the Wee Small Hours,
a ballad collection later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
On September 15, 1955, he appeared in a television production of Our Town
and sang "Love and Marriage" (specially written by Sammy Cahn and his new
partner James Van Heusen), which became a Top Five hit. Early in 1956, he
was back in the Top Ten with Cahn and Van Heusen's "(Love Is) The Tender
Trap," the theme song from his new film, The Tender Trap. As part of his
thematic concepts for his albums of the '50s, Sinatra alternated between
records devoted to slow arrangements (In the Wee Small Hours) and those given
over to dance charts (Swing Easy). By the late winter of 1956, the schedule
called for another dance album, and Songs for Swingin' Lovers!, released
in March, filled the bill, stopping just short of number one and going gold.
The rise of rock & roll and Elvis Presley began to make the singles charts
the almost-exclusive province of teen idols, but Sinatra's "Hey! Jealous
Lover" (by Sammy Cahn, Kay Twomey, and Bee Walker), released in October,
gave him another Top Five hit in 1957. Meanwhile, he ruled the LP charts.
The Capitol singles compilation This Is Sinatra!, released in November, hit
the Top Ten and went gold. Sinatra began 1957 by releasing Close to You,
a ballad album with accompaniment by a string quartet, in February. It hit
the Top Five, followed in May by A Swingin' Affair!, which went to number
one, and another ballad album, Where Are You?, a Top Five hit after release
in September. He was also represented in the LP charts in November by the
soundtrack to his film Pal Joey (based on a Rodgers & Hart musical),
which hit the Top Five, and by the seasonal collection A Jolly Christmas
From Frank Sinatra, which eventually was certified platinum. The Joker Is
Wild, another of his 1957 films, featured the Cahn-Van Heusen song "All the
Way," which became a Top Five single. In October, he returned to prime time
television with another series called The Frank Sinatra Show, but it lasted
only one season, and subsequently he restricted his TV appearances largely
to specials (of which he made many).
In February 1958, Sinatra reached the Top Ten with "Witchcraft," his last
single to perform that well for the next eight years. That month, Capitol
released Come Fly with Me, a travel-themed rhythm album, which hit number
one. The year's ballad album, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, released
in September, also topped the charts, and it went gold. In between, Capitol
released the compilation This Is Sinatra, Vol. 2, which hit the Top Ten.
1959 followed a similar pattern. Come Dance With Me! appeared in January
and became a gold-selling Top Ten hit. It also won Sinatra Grammy Awards
for Album of the Year and for vocal performance. Look to Your Heart, a compilation,
was released in the spring and reached the Top Ten. And No One Cares, the
year's ballad collection, appeared in the summer and just missed topping
the charts. Sinatra gradually did less singing in his movies of the '50s,
which is why they are given less attention here. But in March 1960, he appeared
in a movie version of Cole Porter's musical Can-Can, and the resulting soundtrack
album hit the Top Ten. Meanwhile, Sinatra was beginning to think about the
approaching end of his Capitol Records contract and to enter the studio less
frequently for the company. His next regular album was a year in coming,
and when it did, Nice 'n' Easy was a mid-tempo collection, breaking his pattern
of alternating fast and slow albums. The wait may have caused pent-up demand;
the album spent many weeks at number one and went gold. Although Sinatra
had not yet completed his recording commitment to Capitol, he began in December
1960 to make recordings for his own label, which he called Reprise Records.
As a result, record stores were deluged with five new Sinatra albums in 1961:
in January, Capitol had Sinatra's Swingin' Session!!!; in April, Reprise
was launched with the release of Ring-a-Ding Ding!; in July, Reprise followed
with Sinatra Swings the same week that Capitol released Come Swing with Me!;
and in October, Reprise had I Remember Tommy..., an album of songs Sinatra
had sung with the Tommy Dorsey band. There was also the March compilation
All the Way on Capitol, making for six releases in one year. Remarkably,
they all reached the Top Ten. Meanwhile, Reprise's first single, "The Second
Time Around," a song written by Cahn and Van Heusen for Bing Crosby, won
Sinatra the Grammy for Record of the Year. By 1962, the market was glutted.
Capitol released its last new Sinatra album, Point of No Return, as well
as a compilation, and Reprise put out three new LPs, but only Reprise's Sinatra
& Strings reached the Top Ten. In 1963, however, all three Reprise releases,
Sinatra-Basie, The Concert Sinatra, and the gold-selling Sinatra's Sinatra,
made the Top Ten. The onset of the Beatles in 1964 began to do to the LP
charts what Elvis Presley had done to the singles charts in 1956, but Sinatra
continued to reach the Top Ten with his albums of the mid-'60s, albeit not
as consistently. Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, and Other Academy Award
Winners hit that ranking in May 1964, as did Sinatra '65 in August 1965.
That same month, Sinatra mounted a commercial comeback by emphasizing his
own advancing age. Nearing 50, he released September of My Years, a ballad
collection keyed to the passage of time. After "It Was a Very Good Year"
was drawn from the album as a single and rose into the Top 40, the LP took
off for the Top Five and went gold. It was named 1965 Album of the Year at
the Grammy Awards, and Sinatra also picked up a trophy for best vocal performance
for "It Was a Very Good Year."
In November 1965, Sinatra starred in a retrospective TV special, A Man and
His Music, and released a corresponding double-LP, which reached the Top
Ten and went gold. It won the 1966 Grammy for Album of the Year. Sinatra
returned to number one on the singles charts for the first time in 11 years
with the million-selling "Strangers in the Night" in July 1966; the song
won him Grammys for Record of the Year and best vocal performance. A follow-up
album named after the single topped the LP charts and went platinum. Before
the end of the year, Sinatra had released two more Top Ten, gold-selling
albums, Sinatra at the Sands and That's Life, the latter anchored by the
title song, a Top Five single. In April 1967, Sinatra was back at number
one on the singles charts with the million-selling "Somethin' Stupid," a
duet with his daughter Nancy. By the late '60s, even Sinatra had trouble
resisting the succeeding waves of youth-oriented rock music that topped the
charts. But Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits!, a compilation of his '60s singles
successes released in August 1968, was a million-seller, and Cycles, an album
of songs by contemporary writers like Joni Mitchell and Jimmy Webb, released
that fall, went gold. In March 1969, Sinatra released "My Way," with a lyric
specially crafted for him by Paul Anka. It quickly became a signature song
for him. The single reached the Top 40, and an album of the same name hit
the Top Ten and went gold. In the spring of 1971, at the age of 55, Sinatra
announced his retirement. But he remained retired only until the fall of
1973, when he returned to action with a new gold-selling album and a TV special
both called Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back. In this late phase of his career, Sinatra
cut back on records, movies, and television in favor of live performing,
particularly in Las Vegas, but also in concert halls, arenas, and stadiums
around the world. He refrained from making any new studio albums for six
years, then returned in March 1980 with a three-LP set, Trilogy: Past, Present,
Future. The most memorable track from the gold-selling set turned out to
be "Theme From New York, New York," the title song from the 1977 movie, which
Sinatra's recording belatedly turned into a standard. By the early '90s,
the CD era had inaugurated a wave of box set reissues, and the 1990 Christmas
season found Capitol and Reprise marking Sinatra's 75th birthday by competing
with the three-disc The Capitol Years and the four-disc The Reprise Collection.
Both went gold, as did Reprise's one-disc highlights version, Sinatra Reprise
-- The Very Good Years. Sinatra himself, meanwhile, while continuing to tour,
had not made a new recording since his 1984 LP L.A. Is My Lady. In 1993,
he re-signed to Capitol Records and recorded Duets, on which he re-recorded
his old favorites, joined by other popular singers ranging from Tony Bennett
to Bono of U2 (none of whom actually performed in the studio with him). It
became his biggest-selling album, with sales over 3,000,000 copies, and was
followed in 1994 by Duets II, which won the 1995 Grammy Award for Traditional
Pop Performance.
Sinatra finally retired from performing in his 80th year in 1995. He later
died of a heart attack at 82. Anyone will be astonished at the sheer extent
of Sinatra's success as a recording artist over 50 years, due to the changes
in popular taste during that period. His popularity as a singer and his productivity
has resulted in an overwhelming discography. Its major portions break down
into the Columbia years (1943-1952), the Capitol years (1953-1962), and the
Reprise years (1960-1981), but airchecks, film and television soundtracks,
and other miscellaneous recordings swell it massively. As a movie star and
as a celebrity of mixed reputation, Sinatra is so much of a 20th century
icon that it is easy to overlook his real musical talents, which are the
actual source of his renown. As an artist, he worked to interpret America's
greatest songs and to preserve them for later generations. On his recordings,
his success is apparent. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Whether he was called "The Voice," "Ol' Blue Eyes," or "The Chairman of the
Board," Frank Sinatra's nicknames all conveyed the adulation and respect
reserved for a man who was commonly thought of as the best American popular
singer of the twentieth century. Sinatra's voice, whether manifested in song
or the spoken word, caressed the ears of many a listener for over five decades.
Sinatra's legacy--countless songs and over seventy films--continue to ensure
him the kind of popularity that has reached beyond the grave to elevate him
past the status of mere icon to cultural institution.
Born Francis Albert Sinatra on December 12, 1915, Sinatra grew up poor in
Hoboken, NJ. After working for a newspaper, he organized "The Hoboken Four,"
a singing group. He got his first break when he won first prize on radio's
"Major Bowes Amateur Hour," and went on to perform in nightclubs and on radio.
Sinatra then landed the job of vocalist with the Harry James band, and later
switched to Tommy Dorsey's big band orchestra. It was during his tenure with
Dorsey's band that Sinatra made his first two films in uncredited roles as
a singer in the band in Las Vegas Nights (1941) and Ships Ahoy (1942).
In 1942 Sinatra's attempt to become a solo artist met with great success,
especially in the hearts, minds, and ears of many American women and girls,
who flocked to his performances with a fervor that would two decades later
be replicated with the arrival of the Beatles. Soon Sinatra was the "dream-date"
idol of millions of American girls and, for several years, was enormously
popular on stage, radio, records and in nightclubs. To complement to his
popularity as a singer, Sinatra began acting, playing in a number of light
musical films throughout the 1940s. His first real acting role came in Higher
and Higher (1943); other notable films from this period in his career are
Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949), costarring Gene Kelly and Esther Williams,
and Out on the Town, also made in 1949 and co-starring Kelly, who also co-directed
the picture with Stanley Donen.
Sinatra suffered a career setback in 1952 when his vocal cords hemorrhaged
and he was dropped by MCA, the monolithic talent agency. Having established
a shaky screen career, he fought back and landed the role of Maggio in From
Here to Eternity (1953) after begging Columbia for the part and then agreeing
to take it for a mere $8,000. His performance won him the 1954 Best Supporting
Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe, and in the process resuscitated his faltering
career. Sinatra appeared in several more movies, receiving a 1956 Best Actor
Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award (BAFTA) for his portrayal of
a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). In addition, he took
home a Golden Globe for his performance in Pal Joey (1957). Soon Sinatra
was back on top as a performer, earning the nickname "The Chairman of the
Board."
Sinatra continued to do frequent film work, making a screen appearance with
his Rat Pack colleagues Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and
Joey Bishop in Ocean's Eleven (1960). Most notably, Sinatra gave a subtle,
troubled portrayal of the haunted Captain Bennet Marco in John Frankenheimer's
Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate. His last role was as an aging
detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). Sinatra also appeared on various
television shows through the through the 1980s and went on to have hit records
as late as the early '90s. His four wives included actresses Ava Gardner
and Mia Farrow, and he fathered actor-singers Frank and Nancy Sinatra, as
well as another daughter, Tina. Sinatra died of a heart attack on May 14,
1998 in Los Angeles, CA. He is buried in Palm Springs, CA. ~ All Movie Guide