THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, BABY!

I was like seven or eight the first time i heard of the guy from Hoboken. Was when making his second comeback with the O'l Blue Eyes is Back special in 1973, that my family gathered around the box. "He's old!" my mother said, as if she was talking about some old neighbour coming back to town after a long trip. I didn't know from were they knew him. How little i knew...

My father use to hear a station called Stereo Lima 100 when driving me to school and there Frankie was heard quite often. There i understood why they treat him in such a familiar way. Why did they like him so much. Later i realiced he was an actor as well (at seven, watching The Pride and Passion I only could recognice Sophia Loren, not even Cary Grant!) and I Remember been very impressed by his acting skills in The Man With the Golden Arm (the same movie that made me fall in love with Kim Novak) and later, when i was a teen, with From Here to Eternity and not so many years ago with The Manchurian Candidate (actually one of my favorite movies of all time). But of course is the man and his music, with his almost dangerous but suave style, his macho on tuxedo attitude, his Rat-Pack Las Vegas nights during that now mythical fifties-sixties period, the man that nicknamed President Kennedy "Chicky Baby", the man that when Scorsese asked the guys from The Band about gruppies they happily answered that they "got more pussy then Sinatra"(which means Alotta, but Alotta Vagina), the man that dated every single Hollywood Goddess i could only dream about. And who knows if there was a second reason why Marilyn went everywhere with her Sinatra records collection. Well, let's face it, i wish, for a day or so, i was in that alternate universe where Frank Albert plays Don Vito Corleone or Harry Callahan (is the same universe where Lon Chaney plays The Monster in Frankenstein. Not a better, but an alternate one).

When i mention him in a conversation and everybody says sure yes "New York, New York and Strangers in the Night" (nobody does not know who he is) too many people tells me he was a bastard but i never could care less not because he wasn't sometimes (as the next guy can be)but because they are just like parrots repeating the only thing they've heard.
It's almost weird to hear that he died in 1998, so many years ago because he is more alive then most of the singers that are still trying to make a living on Earth.

I found very gratefull of him naming composers and every single guy that made the arragements (Cole Porter, Johhny Mercer, Neal Hefti, Billy May, Jimmy Webb,Don Costa, Nelson Riddle, Quincy Jones) for his tunes time after time, all the time. I like him when he makes fun of his early film carrier (Higher and Higher, anyone?) or when in the middle 60's he
is pretending or trying to understand the new young culture or the triumph of civil rights.
For some reason i prefer to hear him in old vinyl records then on shinny CDs or MP3, somehow it suits him better. But now that i got this 10 DVDs collection of his shows and I'm enjoying every single minute of it i can't complain (and i am on the 7th disc right now).
Have to mention a couple of his films before i finish this entry because they made me feel happy everytime i watch them and there's been times i've been selfprescribing their view to chin up myself. Guys and Dolls and specially 1956, High Society (with Grace Kelly, Crosby and Satchmo).

And finally, I wanna confess here that i never ever drink alone at home in my life. The exceptions to the rule being the times i watch one of these shows. Gotta have at least one sip of something. Blame The Voice, not the booze.