On May 14, 1998, twenty-five years ago, the world fell silent at the departure of Frank Sinatra. The life of a dazzling singer, one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century with a career of 60 years, was extinguished. The news broke late that afternoon and, although expected, shook the world.
He died at age 82, of a massive heart attack. Frank Sinatra had serious health problems. He had been diagnosed with bladder cancer, and suffered serious respiratory problems that had generated pneumonia that added to a state of advanced senile dementia.
A few days before he died, in one of those increasingly rare moments of lucidity, he told his wife Barbara Marx: "I am losing." He lived his transition to the afterlife with the tranquility of a player who knows that every favorable streak at some point is cut.
Frank Sinatra, the symbol of the "crooner", an unforgettable singer.
New York and Las Vegas
Although he died at his home in Palm Springs, Los Angeles, much of his stories were woven between New York and the casinos and hotels of Las Vegas, where he perhaps felt more comfortable than in his own home.
On the day of his death and in his recognition, the lights of the Las Vegas Strip were turned off while casinos in Nevada and Atlantic City suspended their games for a minute as a farewell to a noble friend. "For Frank," said the speakers in each of the arcades.
Now, The Voice was a man who had lived a long and intense life. Personally, especially intense: he abused drink, cigarettes, some substances and with an almost tangible emotionality, both angry and cried with striking ease, two indissoluble faces of his character.
In the Hollywood years he was the leader of the so-called Rat Pack where Humphrey Bogart, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Judy Garland, Peter Lawford and David Niven militated and that shook his contemporaries with their excesses. They were the enfant terrible of the show.
Frank Sinatra and his wife Nancy, leaving a Hollywood nightclub, in 1946. AP Photo
To love, desire and pain
Sinatra essentially sang about love, desire, hope and pain and all these stories were sung to a world of strangers as if it were a group of close friends. He knew how to reach the hearts of each of his listeners. That charisma wrapped in a unique talent made him a star who crossed fashions over six decades.
The only ones who can compare with his fame were Elvis Presley and The Beatles.
He became a popular music star in the early '40s; teenagers went into a frenzy just by seeing it, something that two decades later with the Beatles would be common currency and perhaps a dramatization of those states of hysteria.
He was the first sex symbol in the United States. Despite his setbacks and that precarious emotional stability, he maintained his interpretive quality and that intoxicating ease that bought audiences.
As a singer he had his greatest influence on Bing Crosby and defined better than anyone the profile of the crooner that took him from almost a secondary role to an unprecedented role. He was a stylist, an artist who embraced modernity to his advantage, as when he used amplification to be well above the sound of the orchestra and to be able to develop that intimacy with the audience. He didn't want to raise his voice, but to get closer to the listener.
Frank Sinatra and the look that made him the favorite of teenage girls in the U.S. Photo AP
Over the years we discovered the Sinatra actor, intense, touching who played complex, difficult, tortured characters. He was a close friend of President John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, also a fellow gangster. Idol of both rich people and the common man. Sometimes he behaved like a bad-tempered bully, and sometimes he showed that facet of sincere, cheerful generosity.
More intuitive than rigorous, Sinatra did not stick excessively to rehearsals whether with his orchestra or for a scene in a film. Where perhaps he became a perfectionist like nowhere else was in the recording studio. In that space he did not conceive mistakes.
According to Bill Martin, one of his pianists, he recorded up to 14 takes of a song until it was as he wanted. By the way, Sinatra recorded more than 1200 songs, of which about 130 were real hits, sold 150 million records and participated in about 50 films.
Despite forceps, excellent hearing
Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915, in the neighborhood of Hoboken, New Jersey, in a traumatic birth in which they had to use forceps and that caused problems in the left eardrum and a scar behind that ear.
Son of Italian parents, Natalina, born in Genoa and Antonino, Sicilian. She was a midwife (she was arrested for performing abortions) and affiliated with the Democratic Party and he, a firefighter, bantamweight boxer and owner of a bar that served at night. A middle-class Catholic family with very strong ties within the Italian community of New Jersey and we know what that can indicate.
From a very young age he was passionate about music; She dropped out of high school shortly before finishing to pursue a career in singing. The '30s were years of radio and talent shows. Great artists emerged from those "tournaments" that had the audience itself as a jury and, precisely, one of those contests allowed Sinatra to start his career.
In August 1935, the vocal group Hoboken Four, which included Frank, won Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour and toured with Bowes' group. After that experience, he returns home and takes a job as a singing waiter at the Rustin Cabin restaurant in Inglewood, which had a radio in the premises from which music was transmitted and where he sang from time to time.
Frank Sinatra, the microphone and the lectern. A postcard of the "crooner".
Trumpeter Harry James, who had parted ways with Goodman's orchestra was hunting for a singer for his new Big Band, heard him, found him, and hired him for his orchestra. It was 1939.
On July 13, 1939, Sinatra made his first recordings with James' orchestra, which would be just a springboard in his career. Four months later he accepted the offer of trombonist Tommy Dorsey, who led one of the most important and busy big bands in New York, Chicago and the Midwest of the United States.
The natural quality of his voice and that sweeping charm were chiseled in Dorsey's orchestra where he learned that particular way of breathing and connecting skillfully with each song. From the trombone he took his way of phrasing and the handling of silences, a valuable tool in his expressiveness.
The turn of the decade was important for Sinatra's professional life, as he was one of those who defined the so-called Age of Singing. It was based on what existed and which was a rich American Songbook, with compositions by Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers.
The Voice reinterpreted that material in an intimate, sophisticated, and compelling way, because it had the talent to convey those stories. A repertoire that was in the heart of the American public, but interpreted in a modern way in which the listener came alive in the protagonist.
Sinatra knew how to eliminate the distance between himself and his audience. The shows seemed to turn into intimate chats in the living room.
He spent two and a half years with Dorsey and 16 of his Top Ten recordings, including the legendary I'll Never Smile Again, which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
But what had to happen happened and Frank ended up eclipsing Dorsey, a musician of quite bad temper, who jealously imposed increasingly harsh conditions on his contract that ended up tiring the rising star.
When it was time to separate; Sinatra had a newly signed contract at Columbia that freed him from Dorsey.
Another version, which would not be wrong, points out that Willie Moretti, one of the bosses of the New Jersey mafia and artistic godfather of The Voice, approached the trombonist's house and when the time came he put a revolver to his head and said: "You let him go or I'll kill you." One of the most compelling arguments Dorsey will ever hear.
Anyway, Dorsey far from being offended by Sinatra's departure was right in his comment: "You could feel the excitement that ran through the auditorium when that young man stood up to sing Stardust."
The first successes
In 1942, already started his solo career recorded two hits Night and Day and There Are Tales Things, with which he reached two number ones in sales and there is no radio in which they do not put those songs.
During these initial years, as sales and popularity rise, earlier recordings with Harry James began to appear, such as All or Nothing at All, or with Tommy Dorsey, In The Blue of The Evening. Everyone takes advantage of the talent of this unsurpassed singer.
The emotion that Sinatra achieved in the public was consolidated concert by concert, album by album. One of the key moments in the construction of his myth was the cold night of December 30, 1942, at the Paramount Theater, in Times Square, New York.
A special gala dedicated to the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, was completely overshadowed with Frank Sinatra, the Bobby Soxers (teenagers) as soon as he took the stage entered a collective hysteria that exploded the theater.
From this concert, La Voz became a phenomenon of teenagers, from whom he had to escape through the back door on each occasion. A year later, on October 13, 1943, in the same theater, some 40,000 fans collapsed the streets in search of tickets.
Thenfan clubs seemed like and radio contracts multiplied, such as the successful Frank Sinatra Show. In 1943, Sinatra renewed his record contract with Columbia for one million dollars. A figure until then insurmountable.
Towards the mid-40s he began his interest in politics, an aspect that was always present on his horizon and faithful to the preaching of his mother makes an important contribution to the campaign of the Democratic Party and adds his support to President Roosevelt.
But in that life of musical successes there were also problems and Frank showed a problematic side, since he exhibited a deceptive sentimental fidelity that ended up being discovered and causing serious problems to his career.
Married in 1939 with Nancy Barbato, with whom he had three children, Nancy, Frank and Tina, in the mid-'40s he began to have or know affairs with different women.
His slip-ups with Lana Turner and Marylin Maxwell are known, which leave public opinion in shock. Sinatra sold a happy family image with his wife and three children, typically Italian and Catholic. Public opinion did not forgive him and began a decline in his artistic life, his songs ceased to interest and his films passed without pain or glory.
Sinatra's star darkens. He falls in love with the actress Ava Gardner and tired of the roles with photographers and admirers, where every so often he came to the hands, divorces Barbara on November 1, 1951 and marries Ava on the 7th of the same month. In the poll of Downbeat magazine that year he is in fifth place as best singer.
Reborn by becoming an actor
Bing Cosby Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra, in the 1956 film "High Society."
As a Phoenix he was reborn, but not from his voice, but with his performance in the film From Here to Eternity (1953), where he plays the long-suffering soldier Angelo Maggio in an unsurpassed role and with which he wins the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. We discovered in Sinatra a dramatic actor as believable as when he sings.
Hollywood mythology tells that Sinatra was convinced that he should be the one to embody the character of Maggio in that film and not only sacrificed a good part of his cachet, but moved all his influences, even Ava Gardner interceded with producer Fred Zinnemann to give him that role and he succeeded.
Two years later he competed with Marlon Brandon at the Oscars for his role in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), where he plays Frankie Machine, an ex-convict addicted to heroin who struggles to recover and find an honest livelihood.
Marlon Brando (Sky) and Frank Sinatra (Nathan), in the classic "Guys and Dolls".
He filmed as a protagonist in a few years eleven films, including musicals, along with Rita Hayworth, Grace Kelly, Tony Curtis, Dean Martin, Shirley McLaine and Kim Novak, with whom he had an affair.
Now it was time to return to music. Alan Livingston recalls that when in 1953 he announced the hiring of Sinatra for the Capital label he received only disapproving looks in the board. "To them he was a finished artist," he said.
However, Sinatra managed to recompose himself and become an idol again thanks to the director and arranger Nelson Riddle who knew how to adapt the songs of a known repertoire to the needs of The Voice.
Two years later, in 1955, Time magazine said with Sinatra on the cover: "Today, it's the best thing in show business. On the verge of turning forty, he embarked on a second career that promises to be even brighter than the first."
After the failed marriages with Barbato and Gardner. he married Mia Farrow, a marriage that lasted only two years, and then Barbara Marx, ex-wife of actor, comedian and screenwriter Zeppo Marx, with whom he was 22 years, until his death.
Kirk Douglas and Frank Sinatra at a costume party in Paris in 1959.
He had romances and affairs with countless women, including Lauren Bacall and Angie Dickinson. In this aspect, we could consider Sinatra as a person who could not be alone, without a partner and something was played in that aspect so that he did not miss the opportunity to be accompanied.
His time in Buenos Aires
Frank Sinatra and a gesture of affection for Palito Ortega, who brought him to Argentina.
It was one of the most promoted visits in the history of the show in Buenos Aires.
Sinatra arrived in August 1981 and his stay is remembered not so much for the quality of his shows as for the economic break that produced Palito Ortega, who became a producer in those years. They were ten days in the city and Sinatra, with 65 years, accompanied by his wife Barbara, made two concerts at Luna Park and three shows at the Libertador Hall of the Sheraton Hotel at $ 1000 admission.
Those were years of the military dictatorship and the meeting with Roberto Viola, in charge of the government, aroused natural suspicions.
In reality, Sinatra, rightly or wrongly, was linked to different organizations, none of which to brag about. He was said to be a member of the mob, to work for the CIA, to be a delegate to Republican President Ronald Reagan on some matters; In short, nothing verifiable, although there were plenty of clues of relative seriousness for these assumptions.
His days in Buenos Aires passed quietly, smoothly, savoring Angelín's mozzarella pizzas and with performances within the expected, a well-adjusted orchestra and Sinatra with trade taking care of what was left of his voice, although his charisma intact.
Frank Sinatra, with dictator Roberto Viola, when La Voz visited Argentina.
Closely guarded by his bodyguards, Sinatra gave more the feeling of a politician than that of a singer back from all the criticism or bullets, in this case.
The balance of Sinatra's presentations was left with a strong negative balance in the economic. Palito had to sell even the car to pay for the contract. The biggest problem encountered by production was the strong devaluations of the peso that characterized the management of the Minister of Economy, Lorenzo Sigaut, which although it lasted less than a year devalued the peso by 225%.
The final act
Sinatra stood out as one of the great singers of all time. His softly golden timbre, his way of breathing the melody and his elegant diction were supported by an enormous magnetism. When the winds changed he made famous versions of Presley, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel songs, although all taken to his terrain, that of the agile or melancholic ballad.
Also in his sixty-year career there were retirements, such as that of June 1971 and returns, such as that of 1973, which were hitting his popularity and that in the manner of Presley, led him to take refuge in Las Vegas.
Frank Sinatra retired at age 80, with a career of 60.
He retired at the age of 80, in 1995, with a concert at the Shrine, in Los Angeles, with Ray Charles and Little Richard as guests. He was a man of mild manners and a captivating look that could not quite hide a tough guy, made in show business.
He made historical, definitive versions of some songs, such as My Way and New York, New York, which showed two aspects of his character: his determination and the eternal love for his city.
Sports journalist
One of Frank Sinatra's passions throughout his life was sports; even The Voice once dreamed of a career as a sports journalist and even worked as an editor at a small New Jersey newspaper, the Jersey Hudson Observer.
However, he was closer to his ambition when in 1971 he covered with press card and photographer for Life magazine the fight of the century between heavyweights Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier with photo and everything on the cover.
Under my skin
One of Sinatra's signature songs was I've Got You Under My Skin, composed by Cole Porter in 1936 for the musical Born To Dance.
The Voice sang it for the first time in 1946 within the medley Easy To Love, on the radio, however, the definitive seal put it in 1955 when he sang it with a somewhat more agile swing with a Big Band, directed by Nelson Riddle, lover of Ravel's music and that are perceived in the modern arrangements of the theme.
WD
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