10 Things to Know about Frank Sinatra

by Dr. Paul Merkley

In this Music Appreciation 101 Blog series, we dive into the music of Frank Sinatra. Here are 10 things about him which you may find worthwhile to know:

1. Like other Italian-American crooners (.e.g Tony Bennett), Sinatra grew up listening to Italian bel canto opera on the radio with his parents, and this had a big influence on his singing style.

2. Frank eased into each note, with a tiny swell of sound. Some of his friends joked that he 'mooed' like a cow. In fact each syllable has a tiny crescendo, so that it is loudest in the middle, and other crooners did the same.

3. Liza Minelli is another example of that kind of enunciation, which we call the crooner style.

4. Sinatra was a singer, not a song writer, and some of the songs that are thought of as his signature songs were originally performed by someone else.

5. Liza Minelli was the first to sing 'New York, New York,' on film, before Sinatra made it his own.

6. 'My Way' is thought of as a Sinatra song, but originally it was a French romantic song. Paul Anka heard it while on vacation in France, and liked it so much he bought the rights, intending to perform it himself. But when he had dinner with Sinatra, the latter said he was going to give up singing, so Anka thought he should write one more song for him, and translated the French love song into English with a bit of a mobster attitude ('I did it MY WAY'). Now it is known as an iconic Sinatra song.

7. Sinatra's first serious engagement was as the lead singer in the Tommy Dorsey band. Dorsey was a trombonist with beautiful tone and excellent breath control. Sinatra imitated his phrasing.

8. It soon became time for Sinatra to move on as a soloist, but Dorsey was reluctant to part with his star and let him out of his contract. Did Cuban mobster Lucky Luciano have someone make Dorsey an offer he could not refuse? Who knows?

9. Sinatra's voice suffered from being overworked. He had to take a break from singing and it was not clear that he would recover his beautiful tone.

10. But he did, and if he had to lower the pitch a bit on some songs, he nevertheless continued giving excellent and memorable performances.

Dr. Paul Merkley is the co-founder of Seniors Junction and a retired professor of musicology from the University of Ottawa. He has a PhD in Musicology from Harvard University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.