Frank: The Voice (117 page)

12
“He sounded somewhat”:
George T. Simon, “The Sinatra Report,”
Billboard
, Nov. 20, 1965.

13
“I’ll never forget”:
Levinson,
Trumpet Blues
, p. 76.

14
“the torchy ballads”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 49.

15
“Here comes the night”:
Lyrics from “Here Comes the Night,” words by Frank Loesser, music by Hilly Edelstein and Carl Hohengarten (New York: Paramount Music, 1939).

16
“half a love”:
Lyrics from “All or Nothing At All,” words and music by Jack Lawrence and Arthur Altman (New York, Leeds Music, 1940).

17
“an institute you can’t”:
Lyrics from “Love and Marriage,” words by Sammy Cahn, music by James Van Heusen (New York: Barton Music, 1955).

  
1.
At virtually the same moment, Jack Kapp, the brilliant but tunnel-visioned producer who single-handedly created Bing Crosby’s recording career, was pushing Crosby, hard, to abandon his scat-singing ways for a more commercially palatable vocal style. Kapp won, Bing became an enormously wealthy musical demigod, and we lost a great jazz artist. Tommy Dorsey, it might be argued, possessed his own inner Jack Kapp.

  
2
“He could do something”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 42.

  
3
“the Dorsey band”:
Ibid., p. 108.

  
4
“the greatest melodic”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 80.

  
5
“Have you heard”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 110.

  
6
“Yes, I remember”:
Douglas-Home,
Sinatra
, p. 23.

  
7
“Fame and fortune”:
Tommy Dorsey–Frank Sinatra: The Song Is You
(RCA, 1994). Set of five compact discs.

  
8
“On a night like this”:
Lyrics from “Marie,” words and music by Irving Berlin (New York: Irving Berlin, 1928).

  
9
“Hell, if we don’t”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 111.

10
“learned a lot from Harry”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 75.

11
“he dozed”:
Ibid., p. 74.

12
“The bus pulled”:
Levinson,
Trumpet Blues
, p. 79.

13
“The first time”:
Jo Stafford, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2006.

14
“The only problem”:
Jo Stafford, interview with Michael Feinstein,
Ballad of the Blues
(Feinery, 2003). Compact disc.

15
“Never even heard”:
Ibid.

16
“Frank really loved”:
Ibid.

17
“Sinatra knew this”:
Daniel Okrent, “A Season of Song: Saint Francis of Hoboken,”
Esquire
, Dec. 1987.

18
“Well, see”:
Stafford, discussion.

19
“Young”:
Ibid.

20
“I want you”:
Tormé,
Traps, the Drum Wonder
, p. 53.

  
1.
He was in a Chicago studio with the band just days after he joined Dorsey, recording “The Sky Fell Down” and “Too Romantic.”

  
2
“I can still”:
Jo Stafford, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2006.

  
3
“For maybe”:
Frank Sinatra, interview with Sidney Zion, Yale University, April 15, 1986.

  
4
“Once, Sinatra”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 88.

  
5
“Tommy was a very”:
Douglas-Home,
Sinatra
, p. 24.

  
6
The producer George:
George Avakian, in discussion with the author, Oct. 2006.

  
7
“I used to watch”:
Summers and Swan,
Sinatra
, p. 65.

  
8
“Tommy sometimes”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 86.

  
9
“You can have”:
Stafford, discussion.

10
“I was never”:
Sinatra, interview.

11
“calisthenics for the throat”:
Summers and Swan,
Sinatra
, p. 66.

12
“Frank can hold”:
Ibid.

13
“The audience wouldn’t”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 114.

14
“He had something”:
Ibid.

15
“When I say”:
Ibid., p. 115.

16
“It was at the Meadowbrook”:
Ibid., p. 119.

17
“I take a sheet”:
Steve Wynn, from “Remembering Frank Sinatra,”
USA Weekend
, May 4, 2008.

18
“Go ahead, do your thing”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 53.

19
“When you sing”:
Stafford, interview.

20
“He wound it up”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 90.

21
“Just call out”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 125.

22
“Next thing I know”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 91.

23
“I’ll never smile again”:
Lyrics from “I’ll Never Smile Again,” words and music by Ruth Lowe (New York: Sun Music, 1939).

  
1.
He would finish it, in a way, forty years later, when, his voice crackling with age and emotion, he recorded a monumentally powerful version of “Soliloquy,” on
Sinatra 80th: Live in Concert
.

  
2.
The name of the city had very different connotations in the early 1940s, when Las Vegas was still a sleepy desert burg with sand on the streets and hitching posts for horses, from what it would have fifteen or twenty years later, when Sinatra, with the help of organized crime, had turned the town into, well … 
Vegas
.

  
3.
Jean Bach knew Sinatra before he wore those floppy bow ties, and believes she knows where he got the idea: her. She used to sew ties like that for her husband,
Shorty Sherock, she said. “I remember this particular print, I thought Shorty was brave to wear it—and he came home one day, and he’d been in the elevator at the Brill Building, and Frank got on and looked at Shorty and menacingly said, ‘Who wrote the lyrics to that tie?’ And the next thing we know, we saw photographs of him with a kind of artist-looking bow tie” (Bach, in discussion with the author, March 30, 2006).

  
4
“Dad was in”:
Nancy Sinatra,
American Legend
, p. 43.

  
5
“I hated missing”:
Frank Sinatra, interview with Sidney Zion, Yale University, April 15, 1986.

  
6
“Frank would tap”:
Summers and Swan,
Sinatra
, p. 69.

  
7
“It must have been”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 56.

  
8
“Tommy Dorsey came”:
Ed Kessler, in discussion with the author, May 2006.

  
9
“They were in”:
Ibid.

10
“I remember him”:
Ibid.

11
“they got at it”:
Jo Stafford, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2006.

12
“went at each other”:
Tormé,
Traps, the Drum Wonder
, p. 62.

13
“I can live”:
Ibid., p. 63.

14
“coldly efficient”:
Ibid.

15
“If Tommy Dorsey”:
Cahn,
I Should Care
, p. 131.

16
“Nothing meant anything”:
Levinson,
September in the Rain
, p. 114.

17
“I kept thinking”:
Sinatra, interview.

18
“All they wanted”:
E. J. Kahn, “The Voice,”
New Yorker
, Nov. 9, 1946.

19
“This boy’s going”:
Wilson,
Sinatra
, p. 31.

20
“a shy boy”:
Summers and Swan,
Sinatra
, p. 58.

21
“Match me”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 111.

22
“I used to stand”:
Hanna,
Sinatra
, p. 16.

23
“He was hanging”:
Connie Haines, in discussion with the author, Jan. 2006.

  
1.
As would be another important Sinatra arranger, Quincy Jones.

  
2.
And, a couple of years later, it would be
hasta la vista
to Lana. The way was paved one night during that same fateful January 1942, when Sinatra stopped in at the brand-new, star-studded L.A. nightclub Mocambo (palm fronds, cockatoos in cages), where he once again encountered the gorgeous Ava Gardner, nineteen and newly married to Mickey Rooney. When Rooney “introduced” her to the singer—both she and Sinatra remembered, but failed to mention, the earlier meeting at MGM—Sinatra said, flirtatiously, “Why didn’t I meet you first?” She blushed at the inside joke, and both filed away the compliment (Server,
Ava Gardner
, p. 174).

  
3.
Sinatra had registered for the draft in December 1940 but, as a married father, was granted a deferment. The loophole protected him from the draft—but not the contempt of much of the public and many men in uniform—until the fall of 1943, when the deferments were ended and he was reclassified 1-A. Shortly afterward, to nationwide hoots, he was reclassified yet again, to 4-F, for a punctured eardrum.
In August 1942, after Lana Turner impulsively married a Hollywood wannabe named Steve Crane (who, it would inconveniently turn out, was already married at the time), a heartbroken Buddy Rich enlisted in the Marines and left Dorsey.

  
4.
Although Hoboken lives on robustly in his dentalization of the
t
’s in the lyric: “I hear music when I look at you/A beautiful theme of ev’ry dream I ever knew.” His pronunciation of “beautiful” sounds like something that might come out of the mouth of a sensitive gunsel in an old Warner Brothers gangster picture.

  
5.
In appearance and bearing, Goodman was almost Dorsey’s Jewish counterpart:
bespectacled, tough, egomaniacal. Musically, though, he was deeper and more virtuosic: Goodman was esteemed as both a classical and a jazz musician. In the late 1940s, as Dorsey continued to wax sentimental, Goodman even developed an interest in bebop.

  
6
“Lucky Strike green”:
Jones,
From Here to Eternity
, pp. 754–55.

  
7
“almost tubercular”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 60.

  
8
“Frank was not like”:
Shaw,
Twentieth-Century Romantic
, p. 30.

  
9
“He was so excited”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 151.

10
“Frank sat on a stool”:
Summers and Swan,
Sinatra
, p. 73.

11
“Lana was the love”:
Tormé,
Traps, the Drum Wonder
, p. 74.

12
“Now, in the story”:
Frank Sinatra, interview with Sidney Zion, Yale University, April 15, 1986.

13
“He’s such a damn”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 152.

14
“I gotta do it”:
Ibid., p. 155.

15
“I was sitting with Sinatra”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 110.

16
“Tommy was a good”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 155.

17
“I’ll wake each”:
Lyrics from “Just as Though You Were Here,” words by Edgar De Lange, music by John B. Brooks (New York: Yankee Music, 1942).

18
“The curtains drawn”:
Nancy Sinatra,
My Father
, p. 35.

19
“[Tommy] said, ‘No’ ”:
Sinatra, interview.

20
“Let him go”:
Wilson,
Sinatra
, p. 35.

21
“Don’t worry”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 156.

22
“After tonight”:
Tommy Dorsey,
The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing: Centennial Collection
(RCA, 2005). Set of three compact discs.

23
“Well, Frank”:
Ibid.

24
“was literally crying”:
Summers and Swan,
Sinatra
, p. 74.

25
“I hope you fall”:
Nancy Sinatra,
American Legend
, p. 51.

26
“I was now free”:
Sinatra, interview.

27
“this skinny kid”:
Shaw,
Twentieth-Century Romantic
, p. 40.

28
“He said, ‘What are you’ ”:
Sinatra, interview.

29
“I was in New York”:
Nancy Sinatra,
My Father
, p. 44.

30
“There were about five”:
Ibid., p. 45.