One of America’s greatest icons would have turned 100 years old tomorrow. I hesitate to say musical icons or performing icons or acting icons, because such adjectives barely scratch the surface of who Frank Sinatra was and what he still means to people. Singer, actor, lover, fighter, hero… he was all those things and more. And of course he did it his way.
I don’t think there’s anything I’m going to add to the great Sinatra lexicon today on my two-bit blog that hasn’t been stated already. There are more biographies and documentaries about Frank Sinatra than perhaps anyone else, with the possible exceptions of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Unlike those two men (the latter of whom he may have actually made President), Sinatra lived to old age, and plied his trade right up until the end. He entertained for kings and queens and common folk, and for every generation from bobby soxers to millenials. In fact, through the magic of recorded music and film, of course he still entertains today in our new century, as he will in his new century that begins tomorrow.
Someone once said Frank Sinatra pretty much ruined it for everyone who ever wanted to stand in front of a band and sing. Yup. You’re going to be compared to Sinatra and fall short.
Will there ever be anyone like him? Not a chance. Quite simply there are too many people trying to be famous these days for any one of them to have as much market share as Sinatra did in his early days. Overall I suppose this is a good thing—that so many people now can crawl out of the factories and the coal mines and pursue art—but that dilution produces only a smattering of success across a larger group. Sinatra came up in the era in which most people did work in coal mines and factories, and only the truly talented crawled out. One became famous by performing in front of actual people… and being great at it.
And he kept it up for six decades.
For a long time I considered Frank Sinatra my ultimate idol in all respects. In recent years I’ve realized that one’s true idols should be those one knows and sees up close, but that was the thing about Sinatra: I felt as though I did know him. It’s a cliché but it’s true: every performance was a glimpse into the life of Frank Sinatra. As the man himself said, “When I sing, I’m honest.”
A few weeks ago I went to a party to celebrate Frank Sinatra’s centennial. A birthday party. For someone we didn’t know and had been dead for almost 20 years. Yup. This was the power of Frank Sinatra.
Italians have a saying: cent’anni. Literally it means 100 years, but has the context of 100 years of health and goodness, etc. For Frank Sinatra it certainly has been cent’anni, and for nearly all of that, he’s brought cent’anni to all of us as well.
Here’s to cent’anni more.
