Frank Sinatra Biography
Although Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) long ago attained iconic status as America’s most influential—and most mythologized—pop vocalist, his musical roots lie in jazz and swing. Those influences are apparent in Sinatra’s early work as vocalist in Tommy Dorsey’s massively popular orchestra, and in his 1940s solo recordings, which laid the musical groundwork for his monumental later achievements.
Hoboken, New Jersey’s most famous native began singing in public in his teens. He got his first break in 1935, when he joined the local vocal group the Hoboken Four, with whom he took first prize on the radio talent show Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour. In 1939, Sinatra won a high-profile spot in Harry James’ big band. But an offer from superstar bandleader Tommy Dorsey led to Sinatra singing with Dorsey’s orchestra beginning in the following year. In 1940 alone, Sinatra released more than forty songs with Dorsey, including “I’ll Never Smile Again,” which topped the pop charts for twelve weeks that summer. By 1941, Sinatra topped the male-vocalist polls in both Billboard and Down Beat, and his stardom was threatening to eclipse that of his boss. He cut his first sessions under his own name in January 1942, and by the end of the year he had left the Dorsey band to pursue his solo career fulltime.
Sinatra’s emergence as a solo artist was greeted by unprecedented hysteria from his growing legion of teenage female fans, whose frenzied crowd scenes previewed the mania that would greet Elvis Presley and the Beatles in subsequent decades. In June 1943, Sinatra began a highly successful and very prolific nine-year run with Columbia Records, for which he would record such memorable numbers as “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “Nancy (with the Laughing Face),” “The Coffee Song,” “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” 1946 saw the release of Sinatra’s first full-length album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, and the debut of his own weekly radio show. During the same period, Sinatra made several film appearances, usually in lightweight roles in musical comedies, although he also was featured in the 1945 short The House I Live In, an Academy Award-winning plea for racial tolerance.
By the early ’50s, Sinatra’s career had stalled, but it was reborn with his Oscar-winning dramatic role in the film From Here to Eternity. That breakthrough performance jump-started his career decisively. Sinatra, of course, would go on to achieve iconic multi-media superstardom, and would undergo a long and legendary musical evolution in the process. But the seeds of his musical greatness were planted during his days with Tommy Dorsey and his early Columbia solo recordings.
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