Sinatra [antikvár]

FRANK SINATRA: THE VOICE by Alain Silver Frank Sinatra's voice has arguably been heard more often than that of any other person in the history of sound recording. As an icon in the 1990s, Sinatra was at once eminence grise, the godfather of pop, and a performer with the same assurance as the rail-thin young man who had won an amateur singing context six decades earlier Long before he was chairman of the board, Frank Sinatra was a child of the jazz age and its freewheeling approach to life. In the course of a meteoric rise from singing waiter to the world's first pop star, whose appeal ranged from bobbysoxers to society matrons as he made 'Swoonatra' a phenomenon, Sinatra relied on his own version of keeping it simple: "I'm not one of those complicated, mixed-up cats. I'm not looking for the secret to life or the answer to life. I just go on from day to day taking what comes." As an entertainer Sinatra was both a visionary and a pragmatist, a prototype for the 20th-century man. While many stars in one creative discipline have had crossover success in another, only a handful have ever attempted (let alone equaled) the accomplishments of Frank Sinatra as a singer, actor, producer of albums and motion pictures, philanthropist, lothario, and even film director "Let's face it," said Bing Crosby, the crooner who inspired the young Frank, "Sinatra is the king. He's a very sharp operator, and has a keen appreciation of what the public wants." In fact, as a man who professed that "you have to scrape bottom to appreciate life and start living again," Sinatra understood that determination was the bedrock of any achievement. So it might be more accurate to say that it was, first, always about what Sinatra and not the public wanted and, second, it was about him selling band leaders, studio chiefs, impresarios, and ultimately the audience on the fact that they wanted it too. While Sinatra did not always succeed at whatever he decided to try, his failures were few. In 1952, when facing damage to his vocal cords that could possibly end his singing career, Sinatra fought against long odds to win the part of Maggio in From Here to Eternity. "His fervor. "You've got to love living, because dying is a pain in the ass." PORTRAIT (1951) Frank Sinatra