This year has seen the celebrations of the Sinatra Centenary
marking one hundred years since the birth of Francis Albert Sinatra in, as
every quizzer knows, Hoboken, New Jersey.
Sinatra's meteoric rise to worldwide stardom happened over just a few months between the autumn of 1942
and the spring of 1943 and coincided with the Golden Age of US radio.
Frank's musical ambitions were set a decade earlier in 1933
after watching a well-known crooner in concert. "I saw Bing Crosby tonight
and I've got to be a singer", he told his parents. Most of his early performances
were in local talent contests but by September 1935 he made his first broadcast
whilst singing as part of The Hoboken
Four. The show, at New York's Capitol Theatre, was carried by one of the
local radio stations.
His time with the singing group was brief and he was soon back
to touring the clubs and theatres. But he realised that he'd only make the big
time with radio exposure so he'd offer to sing for free whenever a station had
a vacant spot. WNEW provided him with a number of opportunities but seemingly
only WAAT in Newark paid him a fee - the 70 cents bus fare home.
His break came when he filled a vacancy for a singer and
compere at the Rustic Club, a local roadhouse on Route 9W in Alpine, New
Jersey. Quickly building up a repertoire of songs and a neat line in audience
repartee, Frank's shows were wired into the local stations. The Rustic Club's
management relished the publicity and upped his weekly wage from $15 to $25.
Those early broadcasts proved invaluable. In the summer of
1939 Benny Goodman's former trumpeter, Harry James, was establishing a new band
and was looking for a vocalist. Hearing one of the Rustic Club shows James
asked who this kid was. Young Frank was signed up just days later. His first
performance with Harry James was on 30 June and he cut his first record just a fortnight
later.
Sinatra's time with James was brief, by January 1940 he'd been poached by Tommy Dorsey and was
touring, recording and regularly appearing on the radio. With Dorsey he honed
his craft and learnt his distinctive
musical phrasing, though he was still unnamed on the records they released with
their generic credit to "with vocal chorus". Ambitious to the last he
eventually flew the Dorsey coop in September 1942.
It was Marnie Sachs at Columbia Records who found Sinatra
his first solo break, a twice weekly slot on CBS titled Songs by Sinatra. Next he was the "Added Extra
Attraction" on the bill of a New Year's Eve Benny Goodman show at the
Paramount Theatre in New York. The screams that greeted the scrawny young
singer stopped Goodman in his tracks. A star was born. It was the start of the
infamous bobby-soxers period. Time
magazine proclaimed that "not since the days of Rudolph Valentino has
American womanhood made such unabashed public love to an entertainer".
The impact of the Paramount shows, which eventually ran for
a recording-breaking eight weeks, was immediate. In January he negotiated a
film contract with RKO and was then signed up to replace Barry Wood on the
weekly networked Saturday night concert show, Your Hit Parade. By February the programme had doubled its
audience.
Sinatra's fame was also spreading across the Atlantic. He'd
first appeared on BBC radio in 1940 when it broadcast a recording of a Harry
James show. But in 1944 the General Forces Programme relayed a joint production
with NBC called Atlantic Spotlight
that featured Frank. From December 1944 to May 1945 the BBC also carried the Your Hit Parade shows, though it just
billed them under the name of the show's musical director as Mark Warnow and his Orchestra.
By 1947 Frank was earning $12,000 a programme even though
his career was now on the wane. The mainly Republican press laid into Sinatra;
they frowned upon politically committed stars, his private life came under the
spotlight, especially his dalliances with actresses like Lana Turner, and there
were verbal and physical punch-ups. Even his radio appearances were coming
under fire with Metronome describing
them as "alternately dull, pompous and raucous". He gave up the shows
in May 1949 fed up with both the songs he was given to sing and the style in
which he had to sing them.
Frank starred in a
number of other US radio shows in the early 1950s, these are listed in
this Wikipedia entry. Meanwhile, in the way that Sinatra would continue to make
several comebacks during his lifetime, by 1953 his fortunes had revived: he
signed up with Capitol Records and established his superb musical relationship
with Nelson Riddle and Billy May and there was a successful tour of Britain.
That British concert tour led to a couple of appearances
that summer on the Light Programme's Show
Band Show as well as an interview with David Jacobs on his Radio Luxembourg
show Portrait of a Star - David
recalls this meeting in All or Nothing At
All below. Apart from a 1954 disc jockey show on NBC that seems to the end
of Frank's radio career. After that its programmes about the man himself, some
concert recordings and film reviews and soundtracks (see the BBC's Movie-Go-Round for instance).
I mention all this as tonight on BBC Radio 2 Paul Gambaccini
explores Sinatra's US radio career in Frank and the Golden Era of Radio. It's part of a season of Sinatra Centenary programmes to be broadcast between now and the middle of December.
From my own archive I've chosen three programmes:
Firstly, on the occasion of Frank's 70th birthday, comes
this appraisal of his life and career from American novelist and screenwriter
Clancy Sigal, All or Nothing at All.
It aired on BBC Radio 4 on 8 December 1985.
Secondly a programme presented by the British DJ that knew
the man himself, David Jacobs. This is the first edition of a 13-part series
titled Frank Sinatra: The Voice of the
Century. It was broadcast on 4 October 1998.
And finally all I have of a 3-part series written and
presented by Benny Green, Sinatra! A Man
and his Music. This was first broadcast in December 1985 but my recording
comes from a November 1986 repeat.
Reference: Frank Sinatra by John Howlett (Plexus, 1980)
