Hoboken’s Ol’ Blue Eyes defined twentieth-century pop singing
Francis Albert Sinatra (1915–1998), the Chairman of the Board, rose from Italian immigrant Hoboken to swing-era fame with Harry James in 1939, then bobby-soxer idolatry on Columbia. Albums from The Voice to Sands and Jobim sessions made phrasing itself a star vehicle.
Sinatra was the only child of a Genoese mother, Dolly, and a Sicilian father, Marty, born in a Hoboken tenement weighing a hefty 13.5 pounds with the help of forceps. Dolly was a forceful figure in local Democratic politics whom biographers credit with shaping his self-confidence; Marty, an illiterate former bantamweight boxer, rose to captain in the fire department and hoped his son would study engineering. Instead the boy idolised Bing Crosby, got a ukulele for his 15th birthday, lasted 11 months at business school and worked as a delivery boy and shipyard riveter while singing in clubs. He never learned to read music.
His break came in 1935, when Dolly talked a trio into letting him join their audition for the Major Bowes Amateur Hour. As the Hoboken Four they won with 40,000 votes and a six-month touring contract. After his first solo recording in March 1939, Harry James signed him for $75 a week, but by November he had jumped to Tommy Dorsey's band at $125.
Dorsey became a father figure; Sinatra copied his perfectionism, even his hobby of toy trains, and later said the only two people who ever scared him were his mother and Dorsey. He cut more than 40 songs in his first year, and I'll Never Smile Again topped the charts. Breaking free was costly, because his contract gave Dorsey 43% of his lifetime earnings. The dispute was settled in August 1942, amid unproven newspaper rumours that the mobster Willie Moretti had pressured Dorsey, and the two men never made peace.
He built a second career on screen, winning an Oscar for From Here to Eternity in 1953 and starring in The Manchurian Candidate. Honours followed: 13 Grammys, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997.
Source: Frank Sinatra
