Frank Sinatra is the voice of an entire generation and his songs have undoubtedly resonated in all American homes and across the Atlantic for several decades. We don’t count the records or films that Frank Sinatra has to his credit, and which have undoubtedly left their mark, still being today’s points of reference in the world of music and cinema.
Life of Frank Sinatra
Origins
Frank Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey. The only child of Italian immigrants, he received a radio from his mother that introduced him to music and in particular to Bing Crosby. His father owned a bar and young Frank started performing there. Driven by his passion for song, he left school at the age of 15 and tries his luck at various clubs and radio shows.
Five years later, he joined the amateur band The Hoboken Four, with whom he played in the Rustic Cabin saloon restaurant, some of whose concerts were broadcast on New York Radio. In 1939 he married Nancy Barbato and was hired by trumpeter Harry James to join his Baltimore orchestra and record ten titles.
A year later he became the lead singer of The Pied Pipers, with whom he recorded a hundred titles, before joining the big band of Tommy Dorsey, with whom he appeared for the first time at the cinema in Ralph Murphy’s Las Vegas Nights (1941).
Solo career
However, he left the Dorsey Orchestra in 1942 to pursue a solo career. At the end of the year he knew the triumph by performing at the Paramount Theater in New York. The following year, he first starred in a film with Tim Whelan’s Love and Swing.
In the 1940s, success came everywhere for Frank Sinatra, who began both to appear more and more on television and to make films with the great Gene Kelly. In 1951 he married actress Ava Gardner, who would help him continue his acting career and to whom he dedicated the song I’m a Fool to Want You (1951).
From the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, Frank Sinatra was at the height of his career and multiplied the big hits, including I’ve Got You Under My Skin (1956), Strangers in the Night (1966) and even My Way (1968), cover of the song Comme d’habitude by Claude François.
As we have said, Frank Sinatra in those years was the biggest star of the American scene. Surrounded by a formidable band of old friends – the famous Rat Pack (Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop), “The Voice” embodied the America of that time. A complex, hedonistic and bright America, like the neon lights of the casinos and the Palm Springs sun. Also a twilight America, where entertainment mixes well with politics and the mafia, of which Sinatra is accused of being a part and to which he owes his success.
Farewell and back to stage
At 56, the singer made his first farewell from the stage before returning in 1973. He recorded seven more albums until 1994, the last of which was dedicated to duets with other great singers, such as Charles Aznavour, Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli. He last performed on stage in 1995, before sinking into dementia.
Frank Sinatra suffered a first heart attack in 1997 before succumbing to a second heart attack on May 14, 1998 in Los Angeles.
Sinatra’s funeral was celebrated on the afternoon of May 20, in the Catholic Church of Beverly Hills, in the presence of 400 friends including Jack Nicholson and Sophia Loren. He was buried alongside his parents in Cathedral City’s small cemetery, Desert Memorial Park, under a simple rectangular stone headstone, engraved with The best is yet to come, the title of one of his major successes.
The legacy of Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra has tackled virtually every musical style throughout his career. He has dabbled so much with blues, swing and jazz, but also twist, bossa-nova and even disco! After spending more than 60 years of his life in music, Frank Sinatra also had the opportunity to share the stage with other great musicians and singers of his time, from Louis Armstrong to Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett. A talent that is even more incredible when it is known that he was born with a perforated eardrum and therefore had hearing problems. A kind of Beethoven of the twentieth century!
Frank Sinatra’s long career in music and film has made him a legendary artist. Winner of numerous awards in his life, he has won 13 Grammy Awards and several film awards, including an Oscar and Golden Globes.
To his credit he also has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, both for his work in music and in film and television.
In his career, Frank Sinatra will have sold more than 150 million albums. Aside from Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Michael Jackson, few other singers can boast of having sold so many records. And have that heritage!
His memory and his enormous legacy carry on with his children and $ 200 million net worth.
Frank Sinatra had three children with his first wife, Nancy Barbato. Among them, Nancy Sinatra followed his father’s footsteps by becoming a singer, with whom he recorded in particular the duet Something Stupid. While Frank Sinatra Jr. tried to sing before becoming a conductor. He has also directed his father’s musicians from 1988 until his last concert.
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