Sinatra, Frank (actually, Francis Albert)

Sinatra, Frank (actually, Francis Albert), renowned American singer and actor; b. Hoboken, N. J., Dec. 12, 1915; d. Los Angeles, May 14, 1998. Maintaining his appeal from the height of the Swing Era until his death nearly 60 years later, Sinatra dominated popular music for much of the 20th century. He was universally acknowledged as the paramount interpreter of the American popular song, which he rendered in a pure baritone that employed knowing, exquisitely enunciated phrasing. His personal approach to singing delivered popular music from the frothy, light-hearted style of the 1920s and 1930s to the darker, more complex sounds of the 1950s and beyond. He led the evolution of the Big Band Era into the singer-dominated period of the later 1940s and withstood the emergence of rock ′n′ roll with a series of 1950s albums that permanently revived interest in the major songwriters of the 1920s and 1930s. Long after rock had become synonymous with popular music, he continued to perform and record successfully. Of the 150 chart singles he scored as a solo artist between 1942 and 1980, his most successful were “Oh! What It Seemed to Be,” “Five Minutes More,” and a duet with his daughter Nancy Sinatra, “Somethin’ Stupid”; of his 79 chart albums between 1946 and 1998, the biggest hits were Nice ′n′ Easy, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, and Come Fly with Me.

Sinatra was the son of Anthony Martin Sinatra, a fireman, and Natalie Garaventi Sinatra. He sang in the glee club at his high school, then dropped out in his senior year to become a singer. In September 1935 he appeared on Major Bowes’s Original Amateur Hour radio series as part of the vocal group The Hoboken Four. The group won the amateur contest and toured with the Bowes troupe. Sinatra began to study singing with vocal coach John Quinlan. In the mid-1930s, he performed on local radio and got a job as a singing waiter and master of ceremonies at the Rustic Cabin, a roadhouse in Englewood, N. J., from which radio broadcasts were made. On Feb. 4, 1939, he married Nancy Barbato. They had three children. Two of them, Nancy Sandra Sinatra (b. June 8, 1940) and Franklin Wayne Sinatra, known as Frank Sinatra Jr. (b. Jan. 10, 1944), became singers. Frank and Nancy Sinatra divorced Oct. 29, 1951.

Sinatra was hired by Harry James in June 1939 to be the male singer in his recently formed big band. He made his first recordings on July 13, 1939. None of the records he made with James were hits at the time they were first released. The James band struggled through 1939, and at the end of the year Sinatra received an offer from the more successful Tommy Dorsey to join his band. He made his debut with Dorsey in January 1940. The first Dorsey recording on which he was featured that became a success was “You’re Lonely and I’m Lonely” (music and lyrics by Irving Berlin), which reached the hit parade in June. In July, “I’ll Never Smile Again” (music and lyrics by Ruth lowe), on which Sinatra sang with the vocal group The Pied Pipers, became a #1 hit for Dorsey. In 1982 the recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Sinatra sang lead vocals on four more Top Ten hits with Dorsey in 1940 and, sometimes with The Pied Pipers and Dorsey’s female singer Connie Haines, on eight Top Ten hits in 1941, among them “This Love of Mine,” for which he wrote the lyrics to music by Sol Parker and Henry Sanicola. He also performed on Dorsey’s various network radio programs, notably the Fame and Fortune show of 1940–41. He made his film debut singing “I’ll Never Smile Again” with Dorsey in Las Vegas Nights, released in March 1941.

While still with Dorsey, Sinatra made a solo recording on Jan. 19, 1942, that included a version of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” which became his first chart record. Nevertheless, he continued to record with Dorsey until the onset of the musicians’ union recording ban on Aug. 1, 1942, and sang on two more Top Ten hits before he left Dorsey for a solo career in September, at the time a highly unusual step. In October he launched a 15-minute radio series, Songs by Sinatra, on CBS that ran through the end of 1942. Booked as a support act to Benny Goodman at the Paramount Theatre in N.Y., beginning New Year’s Eve, 1942, he created a sensation, with teenager girls lining up for blocks and swooning during his performances. Before the end of the eight-week run, he was a star. Meanwhile, his recording with Dorsey of “There Are Such Things” (music and lyrics by Stanley Adams, Abel Baer, and George W. Meyer) had been released, and it hit #1 in January 1943, selling a million copies.

Sinatra became a regular on the radio series Your Hit Parade in February 1943, staying with the show until the end of 1944. In April he was seen in the motion picture Reveille with Beverly, singing “Night and Day,” his first featured film appearance. He added a third radio series in June, performing on Broadway Bandbox through October, after which he again appeared on Songs by Sinatra through December. As the recording ban continued, record companies began to reissue earlier recordings, resulting in more Sinatra hits: “All or Nothing at All” (music by Arthur Altman, lyrics by Jack Lawrence), recorded and released in 1939 by Harry James, was reissued with Sinatra’s name billed in front of James’s; it reached the charts in June 1943, hitting the Top Ten and selling a million copies. “In the Blue of the Evening” (music by Alfred A. D’Artega, lyrics by Tom Adair), recorded and released in 1942 by Dorsey with Sinatra on lead vocals, was reissued and went to #1 in August 1943.

Sinatra himself, meanwhile, had signed to Columbia Records and, using a temporary loophole in the recording ban (that closed after the union protested), recorded several sessions employing only a cappella backing. These sessions brought him five Top Ten hits between August 1943 and March 1944, the most popular of which was “You’ll Never Know” (music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon).

Sinatra went to Hollywood, where he made his film acting debut (albeit playing himself) in RKO’s Higher and Higher, released in December 1943. In January 1944 he replaced his Songs by Sinatra radio series with the weekly half-hour program The Frank Sinatra Show; it ran for a year and a half. He had a more substantial role in his second RKO film musical, Step Lively, released in July 1944, then signed to MGM. With the recording ban lifted in the fall of 1944, he returned to the recording studio in November and cut a version of “White Christmas” (music and lyrics by Irving Berlin) that became a Top Ten, million-selling hit, the second most successful rendition of the song after Bing Crosby’s. He went on to score nine Top Ten hits in 1945, the most popular being “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)” (music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn) in March. On screen he sang, acted, and danced beside Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh, released in July, which became one of the biggest box office hits of the year. In September he returned to radio with a weekly series again called Songs by Sinatra that ran through June 1947.

Sinatra scored eight Top Ten hits during 1946, including two that reached #1: “Oh! What It Seemed to Be” (music and lyrics by Bennie Benjamin, George David Weiss, and Frankie Carle) and “Five Minutes More” (music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn). In March his album The Voice of Frank Sinatra also topped the charts. In December he appeared in the climax of the Jerome Kern film biography Till the Clouds Roll By, singing “OI’ Man River” (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II). He had another five Top Ten hits in 1947, including the #1 “Mam’selle” (music by Edmund Goulding, lyrics by Mack Gordon), and his album Songs by Sinatra reached the Top Ten. He starred in the film musical It Happened in Brooklyn, released in March. In September he returned to Your Hit Parade, performing on the show regularly during the 1947—48 and 1948–49 seasons.

A second recording ban kept Sinatra out of the recording studio for most of 1948, and he scored only one Top Ten hit during the year, an a cappella version of “Nature Boy” (music and lyrics by Eden Ahbez) in June. He also reached the Top Ten on the album charts with Christmas Songs by Sinatra. He appeared in two film musicals, The Miracle of the Bells in March and The Kissing Bandit in November. By 1949 it was clear that Sinatra’s career was in decline, but he still scored three Top Ten hits during the year, the most successful of which was “Some Enchanted Evening” (music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) in July. He appeared in two MGM musicals, Take Me Out to the Ball Game in March and Our Town in December, and he launched a new, 15-minute weekday radio series, Light-Up Time, that ran during the 1949–50 season.

Sinatra had another three Top Ten hits in 1950, including his version of “Goodnight Irene” (music and lyrics by Lead Belly), on which he was accompanied by the Mitch Miller Orch. Miller, Columbia’s new recording executive, encouraged Sinatra to record more of the novelty material then popular, a move the singer resisted. Meanwhile, he branched out into television, launching the hour-long musical variety series The Frank Sinatra Show in October 1950. It ran two seasons, ending in April 1952. Also in October 1950 he began the weekly radio series Meet Frank Sinatra, on which he served as a disc jockey. It ran through July 1951.

Sinatra reunited with Harry James for his final Top Ten hit on Columbia, “Castle Rock” (music by Al Sears, lyrics by Ervin Drake and Jimmy Shirl), in September 1951. He married actress Ava Gardner on Nov. 7, 1951. They divorced on July 5, 1957. In December 1951, RKO belatedly released Double Dynamite, a film Sinatra had shot in 1948. In March 1952 he appeared in the Universal feature Meet Danny Wilson, but the year marked the nadir of his career: for the first time he failed to score a Top Ten hit; he parted ways with his record company; his television series ended; and he was without a radio show or a film contract. He then scored a dramatic comeback.

Signing to Capitol Records, Sinatra returned to the Top Ten with “I’m Walking Behind You” in June 1953. In August he appeared in a non-starring, non-singing, dramatic role in the film From Here to Eternity; it was one of the year’s biggest box office hits, and he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He returned to radio with two new series, the weekly Rocky Fortune, a drama in which he played a detective, running from October 1953 to March 1954, and another 15-minute, twice-weekly musical program, The Frank Sinatra Show, which ran from November 1953 to July 1955. In February 1954 his recording career was revitalized in earnest with the single “Young-at-Heart” (music by Johnny Richards, lyrics by Carolyn Leigh), which reached the Top Ten and sold a million copies, and the Top Ten LP Songs for Young Lovers, the first of his thematically selected concept albums, on which he revived the songs of such writers as Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, and Cole Porter in contemporary arrangements by Nelson Riddle. With Riddle, he scored another Top Ten single, the movie theme “Three Coins in the Fountain” (music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn) in July, and another Top Ten LP in September with Swing Easy!, a more up-tempo collection.

His career back on track, Sinatra found success on records, on television, and in film in 1955. In January he starred in a movie named after his recent hit, Young at Heart. A single released in April, “Learnin’ the Blues” (music and lyrics by Dolores Vicki Silvers), hit #1, and his album of ballads In the Wee Small Hours, released in May, also topped the charts. (It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984.) In June he had a non-singing, co-starring role in Not as a Stranger, one of the top box office hits of the year. In September he appeared in a TV musical version of the Thornton Wilder play On the Town, singing “Love and Marriage” (music by James Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn), which became a Top Ten hit. He earned an Emmy Award nomination for Best Male Singer. In November he appeared in the movie version of the Frank Loesser musical Guys and Dolls, which became the highest grossing film of 1956. In December his film The Tender Trap generated a Top Ten hit in the title song, “(Love Is) The Tender Trap” (music by Van Heusen, lyrics by Cahn). Also released in December was The Man with the Golden Arm, a dramatic film in which Sinatra played a recovering drug addict. It earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

Continuing to alternate ballad and up-tempo albums, Sinatra released Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! in March 1956; it reached the Top Ten and went gold. In August he co-starred with Bing Crosby in Cole Porter’s musical version of the play The Philadelphia Story: High Society, one of the year’s biggest box office hits. October saw the release of the single “Hey! Jealous Lover” (music and lyrics by Sammy Cahn, Kay Twomey, and Bee Walker), which became a Top Ten hit, and in November Capitol released the hits compilation This Is Sinatra!, which reached the Top Ten and went gold. Sinatra’s next ballad album, Close to You, became a Top Ten hit upon release in February 1957. It was followed three months later by the up- tempo A Swingin’ Affair!, a #1 hit, and in September by the ballad album Where Are You?, which reached the Top Ten.

Meanwhile, Sinatra co-starred in the dramatic film The Pride and the Passion, one of the year’s box office hits, released in June. In September his appearance in The Joker Is Wild generated the Top Ten hit “All the Way” (music by James Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn), and in October he starred in a movie version of the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, another box office hit accompanied by a Top Ten soundtrack album. That same month he launched another TV series, again called The Frank Sinatra Show, but it lasted only one season. Thereafter, he never attempted another series, though he made many television specials. He ended the year with the million-selling seasonal album A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra.

“Witchcraft” (music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Carolyn Leigh) became a Top Ten hit for Sinatra in February 1958. Released concurrently, Come Fly with Me, an up-tempo album of songs relating to travel, entered the charts, where it peaked at #1. Another hits collection, This Is Sinatra, Vol. Two, was released in April and made the Top Ten, and the ballad album Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, released in September, topped the charts and went gold. His recordings earned Sinatra five nominations at the first Grammy Awards: Album of the Year for both Come Fly with Me and Only the Lonely, Record of the Year for “Witchcraft,” and Best Vocal Performance, Male, for the songs “Come Fly with Me” (music by James Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn) and “Witchcraft.”

Sinatra’s next up-tempo album, Come Dance with Me!, was released in January 1959. It reached the Top Ten and went gold, earning him Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Vocal Performance, Male. He also reached the Top Ten during the year with the compilation album Look to Your Heart and the ballad album No One Cares. Though he had begun to sing less frequently in his movies, he performed “High Hopes” (music by James Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn) in the July 1959 release A Hole in the Head. His single made the Top 40 and earned a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year.

Sinatra’s first appearance in a full-fledged movie musical in two and a half years came in March 1960 with Cole Porter’s Can-Can, which was one of the biggest box office hits of the year with a Top Ten soundtrack album. Sinatra’s next regular album broke the formula of alternating ballad and up-tempo collections: Nice ′n′ Easy, released in August, contained midtempo songs. It became a long-running #1 hit and went gold, and its title track (music by Lew Spence, lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman) made the singles charts. The album earned Sinatra Grammy Award nominations for Album of the Year and Best Vocal Performance, Album, Male, and the single was nominated for Record of the Year and Best Vocal Performance, Single or Track, Male, and Best Performance by a Pop Single Artist.

As his contract with Capitol Records neared completion, Sinatra determined to found his own record company, and he did his first sessions for what became Reprise Records in December 1960 while still owing recordings to Capitol. The result was a series of overlapping releases: six newly released albums during 1961, all of which reached the Top Ten. On Capitol there was Sinatra’s Swingin’ Session!!! in January, the hits collection All the Way in March, and Come Swing with Me! in July; on Reprise, Ring-a-Ding Ding! in April, Sinatra Swings in July, and / Remember Tommy, an album of remakes of Tommy Dorsey hits, in October. The first single release on Reprise was “The Second Time Around,” which reached the charts in February and won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. Another five Sinatra albums appeared in 1962, but only one, Sinatra and Strings on Reprise, made the Top Ten.

Having finished his commitment to Capitol, Sinatra was able to focus on his Reprise releases, and he hit the Top Ten with all three of his 1963 albums: Sinatra-Basie backed by Count Basie and His Orch., in January; The Concert Sinatra, which, despite its title, was a studio-recorded album of show tunes arranged by Nelson Riddle, in June; and Sinatra’s Sinatra, featuring new versions of some of Sinatra’s more popular Capitol recordings, a gold album released in September. Sinatra sold Reprise to Warner Bros., which retained him as a recording artist.

Sinatra returned to the Top Ten of the LP charts with the March 1964 release Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, and Other Academy Award Winners. His most music-filled film release in years was the comedy Robin and the 7 Hoods, released in August, in which he was accompanied by Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Bing Crosby.

Sinatra had disdained the emergence of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, but in the mid-1960s he adapted himself to the lighter aspects of contemporary music and launched a publicity campaign to mark his 50th birthday on Dec. 12, 1965, with surprisingly successful results. Sinatra ’65, an album compiling stray tracks recorded between 1963 and 1965 and including four recent chart singles, hit the Top Ten in August 1965. That month Sinatra released The September of My Years, a ballad album containing reflections on aging. When its single, “It Was a Very Good Year” (music and lyrics by Ervin Drake) became a Top 40 hit, the LP vaulted into the Top Ten, earning a gold record and winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. “It Was a Very Good Year” won Sinatra a Grammy for Best Vocal Performance, Male.

Sinatra had meanwhile marked his birthday with a television special, A Man and His Music, in November 1965, and a similarly titled double album on which he described his career and re-recorded many of his songs. The TV show won an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Program; the album reached the Top Ten, went gold, and won the 1966 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Meanwhile, he continued to make nonmusical films. He produced and directed the World War II drama None but the Brave, released in February 1965, and starred in another war story, Von Ryan’s Express, released in June, which was among the top moneymakers of the year.

Sinatra’s career renaissance continued in 1966 with the release of the single “Strangers in the Night” (music by Bert Kaempfert, lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder) in April; the song hit #1 and sold a million copies, as did the subsequent LP of the same title. “Strangers in the Night” won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Vocal Performance, Male. Sinatra married for a third time, to actress Mia Farrow, on July 19, 1966, but the marriage lasted only two years, ending in divorce on Aug. 16, 1968. Sinatra at the Sands, a live album made with Count Basie, was released in August and went gold. Sinatra changed pace with the bluesy, boasting single “That’s Life” (music and lyrics by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon), released in November. It hit the Top Ten, as did the gold-selling That’s Life album that followed in December.

Sinatra’s daughter Nancy had launched a successful singing career, and the two recorded a duet, “Somethin’ Stupid” (music and lyrics by C. Carson Parks), released in March 1967. It hit #1, sold a million copies, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Record of the Year. Also released in March was the album Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim, a duet record of sambas. It earned Grammy nominations for Album of the Year and Best Vocal Performance, Male. The Brazilian singer/songwriter also joined Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald on the television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim. Broadcast Nov. 13, 1967, it was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical or Variety Program. Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits!, gathering together his recent singles successes, was released in August 1968 and sold a million copies. Cycles, on which Sinatra essayed songs written by such contemporary writers as Joni Mitchell and Jimmy Webb, appeared in December and earned a gold record.

In March 1969, Sinatra released “My Way” (music by Claude François and Jacques Revaux, English lyrics by Paul Anka), with a retrospective lyric written for him. Reaching the Top 40, it became his signature song, earning a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male, and anchoring a Top Ten, gold-selling album of the same name. He sang it along with other songs on his Nov. 5, 1969, television special Sinatra, which was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Variety or Musical Program.

Notwithstanding his successes of the 1960s, Sinatra announced his retirement in the spring of 1971. But it lasted only until the fall of 1973, when he returned to action with an album and a television special both entitled Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back; the LP went gold. But while he made occasional albums, television specials, and films, thereafter Sinatra devoted himself primarily to live performing, appearing in concert all over the world and especially in Las Vegas. On July 11, 1976, he married Barbara Jane Blakeley Marx, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life.

Sinatra’s first new studio album in six years was Trilogy: Past, Present, Future, released in March 1980. An ambitious triple-LP, it found him re-recording old favorites, interpreting recent standards (among them “Theme from N.Y., N.Y.”[music by John Kander and Fred Ebb], which became a Top 40 single and another signature song), and undertaking a newly written song cycle by Gordon Jenkins. The set went gold and earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year, and “Theme from N.Y., N.Y.” was nominated for Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male.

Sinatra continued to give concerts throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. His 75th birthday in 1990 was marked by the release of several multidisc retrospective albums, including the gold-selling The Capitol Years and The Reprise Collection, the latter also going gold in a single-disc version, Sinatra Reprise—The Very Good Years. Sinatra re-signed to Capitol Records in 1993 and released Duets, re-recording some of his best-known songs with such partners as Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, and Bono of U2. The album was a multimillion-seller and was followed by a million-selling sequel, Duets II, in 1994, which featured Lena Home, Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond, and Linda Ronstadt, among others. It won the 1995 Grammy Award for Traditional Pop Performance. Sinatra retired from performing in 1995. He died of a heart attack in 1998 at 82.

Writings

Tips on Popular Singing (N.Y., 1941).

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—William Ruhlmann