The Final Curtain: Sinatra Dies at 82

The May 15, 1998 obit I wrote for the Austin American Statesman

“It's Sinatra's world,” Dean Martin used to say. ``We just live in it.''

Francis Albert Sinatra, who died of a heart attack Thursday night at age 82, was a larger-than-life figure, often regarded as the greatest pop singer of the century. His appeal spanned six decades, from his origins as a bobby-soxer idol during World War II to his “Main Event” concerts of the '70s, '80s and '90s. He was, simply, the Voice.

He was also the Chairman of the Board for the respect he commanded from a cast of high-profile cronies tagged the Rat Pack, as well as from fans from all classes of society. A master of timing and phrasing, Sinatra's smooth and elastic baritone infused his songs of adult relationships with the hard edge of truth, and as Sinatra transformed himself from idealistic crooner to world-weary saloon singer, he mirrored America's loss of innocence.

The skinny, blue-eyed kid from Hoboken, N.J. presaged the mass pandemonium of rock 'n' roll when he drew hysterical crowds to New York's Paramount Theatre in the '40s. In the '50s he pioneered the album concept with several brilliant mood pieces on Capitol Records; then in 1966, Sinatra knocked the Beatles out of the top spot with “Strangers in the Night.'' In 1979, a 63-year-old Sinatra recorded ``New York, New York,'' giving the capital of the world its anthem for the ages.

Thanks to the current lounge music revival, Sinatra's music has remained in vogue. Two albums of '90s duets with such varied admirers as U2's Bono, Willie Nelson, Barbra Streisand, Jimmy Buffett and Anita Baker both debuted in the Billboard top 10. “Rock 'n' roll people love Frank Sinatra because (he's) got what we want: swagger and attitude,'' Bono said, when presenting “the Big Bang of Pop'' with a Grammy Legend award in 1994.

Through it all, Sinatra epitomized romance, introspection and the confident swing of life. His motto was “Living well is the best revenge,'' and in his quest for the good life Sinatra became the lounge lizard king, crossing the intersection of the highball and the high life without looking back. His persona matched his work to the point that he and his music are inseparable.

After seeing Sinatra in concert for the first time at Monte Carlo in 1955, producer Quincy Jones said, ``I've never seen a performer who had the audience so in the palm of his hand and who was so aware of it.''

Jones described the opening of the concert, when the band played “Fly Me to the Moon'' and Sinatra let the instrumental intro roll for several minutes as he visited with ringsiders and took his time getting onstage. ``I thought, `Man, he'd better hurry,''' Jones said in a 1989 interview. ``It's going to look real bad if these people stop clapping, and he hasn't gotto the stage yet.

”But Sinatra knew those people weren't going to stop clapping until he started singing. He finally stepped up to the mike, and the crowd was applauding, but instead he lit a cigarette,'' Jones said. ``Man, that was the coolest!''

The brash confidence that fueled his live shows sometimes took a sinister turn offstage, however. Sinatra often made headlines for his bad-tempered, expletive-filled tirades against the press and such enemies-of-the-moment as Elvis Presley, whom Sinatra termed a degenerate when the rock 'n' roll explosion looked to make Sinatra's style of crooning obsolete. His career was also clouded by associations with such mob kingpins as Sam Giancana and Lucky Luciano.

A shoestring synopsis of his career says a lot -- and almost nothing about Frank Sinatra. He was born Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, N.J., the only child of Dolly and Martin Sinatra. In his teens, the stick-thin Frankie decided to become a singer when he discovered that he could mimic his hero Bing Crosby. He was also turned on by the interpretive powers of Billie Holiday. Aftera short stint as one of the Hoboken Four, Sinatra took a job as a singing waiter in 1937 at the Rustic Cabin in Alpine, N.J. It was there that he was discovered and hired by bandleader Harry James.

After two relatively undistinguished years with James, Sinatra was hired away by Tommy Dorsey, whose band was one of the hottest in the country. Sinatra developed much of his trademark timing and phrasing under Dorsey's often tyrannical tutelage. What's more, Sinatra honed his remarkable breath control by watching Dorsey play trombone every night. When Sinatra asked his boss why it seemed that he never took a breath during long solos, the bandleader showed him how he sneaked air in through the corner of his mouth.

Sinatra's No. 1 songs with the Dorsey band included ``There Are Such Things'' and ``I'll Never Smile Again,'' and when he left Dorsey to go solo in 1942, the hits came even faster. He also branched out into movies with Step Lively (1944) and Anchors Aweigh (1945). Rejected by the military because of a punctured eardrum, Sinatra became a bigger American hero during World War II than a Medal of Honor winner: The girls sure didn't swoon like that for Audie Murphy.

In the late '40s, Sinatra's style of romantic crooning was on the wane and his record sales plummeted. Eventually, he was dropped by Columbia Records , and his relationship with actress Ava Gardner, whom he married after divorcing first wife Nancy in 1950, was tumultuous. But Sinatra rebounded spectacularly in 1953, winning the best supporting actor Oscar for From Here to Eternity and moving to Capitol Records, where his brilliant “saloon song'' period would begin.

Reeling from his failed marriage to Gardner, Sinatra and his stable of songwriters and arrangers (especially Nelson Riddle) made music that was starkly beautiful and achingly sad. Such albums as Where Are You, No One Cares, Only the Lonely and In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning construct blue moods that eventually become uplifting because there's just so much compassion in the air.

After eight stunning years at Capitol, Sinatra left to start his own label, Reprise, which was subsidized and distributed by Warner Bros. The great work continued, especially on 1965's September of My Years, although Sinatra's perfectionism slipped a little in the Reprise years.

Texan Jimmy Bowen produced Sinatra's Strangers in the Night and That's Life albums and said in a 1993 interview that the feisty Frank didn't like to do more than one or two takes on each vocal track. Bowen remembered butting heads with the singer over whether he should do one more take on the bluesy “That's Life.''

”Frank told me, in no uncertain terms, that I didn't know what I was talking about; then he stormed off,'' Bowen said. “But he came back about 10 minutes later and yelled, ‘One time! Let's go!' Then he just launched into the song, and that's the take that we kept.''

Nobody could sing with as much clarity and empathy as Sinatra, which is why he usually assumed possession of songs like ``I Get a Kick out of You,'' ``All of Me,'' ``At Long Last Love,'' ``I've Got a Crush on You'' and ``Night and Day,'' which had all been sung previously by other artists. His forte was standards written by the likes of Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, but in the '60s, when he was married to 21-year-old actress Mia Farrow, Sinatra embraced the youth culture and started recording songs written by younger writers. One the mainstays of his act in later years was Beatle George Harrison's ``Something.''

”I think one of the things that drew me to Sinatra was his taste in songs,'' said Austin's Scott Sayers, who was president of Sinatra's fan club from 1976 to 1982. ``His music is the American songbook, and Ialways felt, on the occasions that I met him, that we had that in common. We both love great songs. One of his greatest attributes was in the way he interpreted those great songs.''

No cover of a song so completely carried Sinatra's stamp as ``My Way,'' an old French tune given new lyrics by Paul Anka. The story of perseverance and purpose was Sinatra's story. You could tell by the way he sang it.

Sinatra's final tour took him to the Fair Park Music Hall in Dallas on Sept. 29, 1994. It was something of a sad and nervous show, with Sinatra fumbling lyrics to songs he'd sung a thousand times before and repeating jokes. But at the same time it was a powerful performance because inside that slight, skittery man was the Voice that had soothed a million broken hearts and fueled many more nights of revelry.

When he started in on ``My Way,'' the stillness was resounding. It was almost as if the audience wanted Sinatra's voice to carry, and so they all stopped breathing. When it came time to belt in satisfied defiance, the old, weathered legend gathered up every drop of juice he had and sang: ``Yes, there were times I'm sure you knew/When I bit off more than I could chew/Through it all when I had doubt/I chewed it up and spit it out/I faced it all and I stood tall/And did it my way.''

The crowd leapt to its feet as if pulled by the sheer magnetism of the moment, and Sinatra gave a feeble wave and crept slowly toward the wings. Orchestra leader Frank Sinatra Jr. put out his hand to offer assistance, but Frank Sr. just shushed him away. The confidence twinkled like a memory of 1955 , and even as Sinatra moved at a starkly mortal pace, he knew those people wouldn't stop standing and cheering until he could no longer hear them.