What do you think?
Rate this book
Frank: The Voice
Bestselling author James Kaplan redefines Frank Sinatra in a triumphant new biography that includes many rarely seen photographs.
Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentiÂeth century—infinitely charismatic, lionized and notoriÂous in equal measure. But despite his mammoth fame, Sinatra the man has remained an enigma. As Bob Spitz did with the Beatles, Tina Brown for Diana, and Peter Guralnick for Elvis, James Kaplan goes behind the legend and hype to bring alive a force that changed popular culture in fundamental ways.
Sinatra endowed the songs he sang with the explosive conflict of his own personality. He also made the very act of listening to pop music a more personal experience than it had ever been. In The Voice , Kaplan reveals how he did it, bringing deeper insight than ever before to the complex psyche and turÂbulent life behind that incomparable vocal instrument. We relive the years 1915 to 1954 in glistening detail, experiencing as if for the first time Sinatra’s journey from the streets of Hoboken, his fall from the apex of celebrity, and his Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity . Here at last is the biographer who makes the reader feel what it was really like to be Frank Sinatra—as man, as musician, as tortured genius.
Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentiÂeth century—infinitely charismatic, lionized and notoriÂous in equal measure. But despite his mammoth fame, Sinatra the man has remained an enigma. As Bob Spitz did with the Beatles, Tina Brown for Diana, and Peter Guralnick for Elvis, James Kaplan goes behind the legend and hype to bring alive a force that changed popular culture in fundamental ways.
Sinatra endowed the songs he sang with the explosive conflict of his own personality. He also made the very act of listening to pop music a more personal experience than it had ever been. In The Voice , Kaplan reveals how he did it, bringing deeper insight than ever before to the complex psyche and turÂbulent life behind that incomparable vocal instrument. We relive the years 1915 to 1954 in glistening detail, experiencing as if for the first time Sinatra’s journey from the streets of Hoboken, his fall from the apex of celebrity, and his Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity . Here at last is the biographer who makes the reader feel what it was really like to be Frank Sinatra—as man, as musician, as tortured genius.
800 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 2010
396 people are currently reading
2920 people want to read
About the author
James Kaplan
38Ìýbooks83ÌýfollowersJames Kaplan has been writing noted biography, journalism, and fiction for more than four decades. The author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman, the definitive two-volume biography of Frank Sinatra, he has written more than one hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, from Arthur Miller to Larry David.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 279 reviews
August 1, 2023
from 1955 to 1959 frank sinatra recorded four of the greatest and saddest albums of all time with four of the greatest album covers ever printed. check 'em out:
1955. In the Wee Small Hours:
1957. Where Are You?:
1958. Only the Lonely:
1959. No One Cares:
ranging from the lush & melancholy to the almost unbearably bleak, this is the finest collection of ballads, saloon songs, and torch songs sung by the greatest crooner of all time.
kaplan's biography stops a year before this remarkable string of albums: his book tracks sinatra's rise through the early and mid 40s, his ruinous fall at the end of that decade, and his resurrection in 1952/3 after winning an oscar for from here to eternity and partnering up with genius musical arranger nelson riddle. and there's all kinds of fun, gossipy stuff along the way: fights with reporters, singers, managers, lawyers, journalists; fucks with lana turner, ava gardner, and thousands other anonymous starlets; drinks till the wee small hours with actors, mobsters, crooners, restauranteurs, zillionaires... and all that stuff is great. kaplan infuses it with the novelist's sense of purpose and drama and is pretty brutal about what a motherfucker frank could be -- but what makes this a special book is the attention kaplan pays to sinatra the artist. sure, kaplan delves deep into the technical aspects -- sinatra's particular genius in phrasing, reading songs lyrics as poetry, etc -- but more interesting is how kaplan tackles (as best as words can hope to untangle the ineffable majesty of pure musical feeling) that thing, that ghost, that shade, that x-factor sinatra possessed. kaplan quotes a reviewer for the london times who attempts to get at it:
Here is an artist who, hailing from the most rowdy and self-confident community the world has ever known, has elected to express the timidity that can never be wholly driven out of the boastfullest heart. To a people whose idea of manhood is husky, full-blooded and self-reliant, Sinatra has dared to suggest that under the crashing self-assertion, man is still a child, frightened and whimpering in the dark.
yes! it is very much that sad, existential quality that lies at the heart of much of frank's artistic genius. the swing numbers are terrific, his readings of the classics have become the standard, but, for me, it's sinatra's ability to convey the longing, sadness, and fear inherent to the human condition that separates frank from the rest (particularly at a time when popular music wasn't really all that much about exposing existential despair).
it's who he was by nature. as much as frank played at being (and eventually became a parody of) the tough-guy saloon-singing, new-jersey-bruiser he was an incredibly complex & sensitive guy exploding with the temperament of the miserable artist. after ava gardner left him for that spanish bullfighter frank was more of a drunken, suicidal wreck than usual. frank, afraid to be alone, moved a friend into his beverly hills apartment. here's jules styne's recollection of those months alone with frank:
I walk into the living room and it's like a funeral parlor. There are three pictures of Ava in the room and the only lights are three dim ones on the pictures. Sitting in front of them is Frank with a bottle of brandy. I say to him, "Frank, pull yourself together." And he says, "Go ahead, leave me alone." Then he paces up and down and says, "I can't sleep, I can't sleep."� Then he paces up and down some more and maybe he reads, and he doesn't fall asleep until the sun's up.
in an attempt to re-engage life, frank has friends over for poker. a friend recalls:
He went into the den, opened a bottle, and started drinking alone. There's Frank drinking a toast to a picture of Ava with a tear running down his face. All of a sudden we hear a crash. He had taken the picture, frame and all, and smashed it. Then he had picked up the picture, ripped it into little pieces, and thrown it on the floor. So we go back to the game and a little while later Sammy (Cahn) goes back to Frank, and there he is on his hands and knees picking up the torn pieces of the picture and trying to put it back together again. Well, he gets all the pieces together except the one for the nose. He becomes frantic looking for it, and we all get down on our hands and knees and try to help him.
All of a sudden the doorbell rings. It's a deliver boy with more liquor. So Frank goes to the back door to let him in, but when he opens it, the missing piece flutters out. Well, Frank is so happy, he takes off his gold wrist watch and gives it to the delivery boy.
alright, enough.
if you're not already sold, just watch this.
the 15 seconds b/t 2:30 - 2:45 are just fuuuuuucking haunting.
1955. In the Wee Small Hours:
1957. Where Are You?:
1958. Only the Lonely:
1959. No One Cares:
ranging from the lush & melancholy to the almost unbearably bleak, this is the finest collection of ballads, saloon songs, and torch songs sung by the greatest crooner of all time.
kaplan's biography stops a year before this remarkable string of albums: his book tracks sinatra's rise through the early and mid 40s, his ruinous fall at the end of that decade, and his resurrection in 1952/3 after winning an oscar for from here to eternity and partnering up with genius musical arranger nelson riddle. and there's all kinds of fun, gossipy stuff along the way: fights with reporters, singers, managers, lawyers, journalists; fucks with lana turner, ava gardner, and thousands other anonymous starlets; drinks till the wee small hours with actors, mobsters, crooners, restauranteurs, zillionaires... and all that stuff is great. kaplan infuses it with the novelist's sense of purpose and drama and is pretty brutal about what a motherfucker frank could be -- but what makes this a special book is the attention kaplan pays to sinatra the artist. sure, kaplan delves deep into the technical aspects -- sinatra's particular genius in phrasing, reading songs lyrics as poetry, etc -- but more interesting is how kaplan tackles (as best as words can hope to untangle the ineffable majesty of pure musical feeling) that thing, that ghost, that shade, that x-factor sinatra possessed. kaplan quotes a reviewer for the london times who attempts to get at it:
Here is an artist who, hailing from the most rowdy and self-confident community the world has ever known, has elected to express the timidity that can never be wholly driven out of the boastfullest heart. To a people whose idea of manhood is husky, full-blooded and self-reliant, Sinatra has dared to suggest that under the crashing self-assertion, man is still a child, frightened and whimpering in the dark.
yes! it is very much that sad, existential quality that lies at the heart of much of frank's artistic genius. the swing numbers are terrific, his readings of the classics have become the standard, but, for me, it's sinatra's ability to convey the longing, sadness, and fear inherent to the human condition that separates frank from the rest (particularly at a time when popular music wasn't really all that much about exposing existential despair).
it's who he was by nature. as much as frank played at being (and eventually became a parody of) the tough-guy saloon-singing, new-jersey-bruiser he was an incredibly complex & sensitive guy exploding with the temperament of the miserable artist. after ava gardner left him for that spanish bullfighter frank was more of a drunken, suicidal wreck than usual. frank, afraid to be alone, moved a friend into his beverly hills apartment. here's jules styne's recollection of those months alone with frank:
I walk into the living room and it's like a funeral parlor. There are three pictures of Ava in the room and the only lights are three dim ones on the pictures. Sitting in front of them is Frank with a bottle of brandy. I say to him, "Frank, pull yourself together." And he says, "Go ahead, leave me alone." Then he paces up and down and says, "I can't sleep, I can't sleep."� Then he paces up and down some more and maybe he reads, and he doesn't fall asleep until the sun's up.
in an attempt to re-engage life, frank has friends over for poker. a friend recalls:
He went into the den, opened a bottle, and started drinking alone. There's Frank drinking a toast to a picture of Ava with a tear running down his face. All of a sudden we hear a crash. He had taken the picture, frame and all, and smashed it. Then he had picked up the picture, ripped it into little pieces, and thrown it on the floor. So we go back to the game and a little while later Sammy (Cahn) goes back to Frank, and there he is on his hands and knees picking up the torn pieces of the picture and trying to put it back together again. Well, he gets all the pieces together except the one for the nose. He becomes frantic looking for it, and we all get down on our hands and knees and try to help him.
All of a sudden the doorbell rings. It's a deliver boy with more liquor. So Frank goes to the back door to let him in, but when he opens it, the missing piece flutters out. Well, Frank is so happy, he takes off his gold wrist watch and gives it to the delivery boy.
alright, enough.
if you're not already sold, just watch this.
the 15 seconds b/t 2:30 - 2:45 are just fuuuuuucking haunting.
August 14, 2020
"He was, and always would be, the loneliest son of a bitch he knew."
When you're an American traveling in other countries, you get some funny perspectives on what people think of the States (geography that knows NYC, LA, and between them a mere several-hour drive; the Eminem-loving Damascus cabbie), but when you're asked to sum up America in some cultural or historical icon, nothing throws itself faster to the front of your head than Sinatra.
In a way, Frank encapsulates the mythos of America in a way other pop icons don't: a goddamn son of a bitch, Italian-American, no good at school, a good heart, awfully needy, a bastard who championed minorities, insecure, often self-righteous, and with an unearthly talent. Not above rubbing elbows with the mob or the Kennedys, Oscar-winner, Ava Gardner's husband, and so on.
All this is covered here and more. Kaplan takes a no-holds-barred approach, an unapologetic but properly reverent biography of this singular cat. All the shit is here, and all the sweetness. Sinatra's marriage, kids, his many, many affairs, his suicide attempts, and, most importantly, the music.
The book (Volume I of II) ends right around his resurgence in early 1954, his first Capitol album and the Oscar for From Here to Eternity, but getting to that point is a dark, dark slog through Frank's ups and downs. Of course, he'll come across as a no-good bum, but that voice!
When you're an American traveling in other countries, you get some funny perspectives on what people think of the States (geography that knows NYC, LA, and between them a mere several-hour drive; the Eminem-loving Damascus cabbie), but when you're asked to sum up America in some cultural or historical icon, nothing throws itself faster to the front of your head than Sinatra.
In a way, Frank encapsulates the mythos of America in a way other pop icons don't: a goddamn son of a bitch, Italian-American, no good at school, a good heart, awfully needy, a bastard who championed minorities, insecure, often self-righteous, and with an unearthly talent. Not above rubbing elbows with the mob or the Kennedys, Oscar-winner, Ava Gardner's husband, and so on.
All this is covered here and more. Kaplan takes a no-holds-barred approach, an unapologetic but properly reverent biography of this singular cat. All the shit is here, and all the sweetness. Sinatra's marriage, kids, his many, many affairs, his suicide attempts, and, most importantly, the music.
The book (Volume I of II) ends right around his resurgence in early 1954, his first Capitol album and the Oscar for From Here to Eternity, but getting to that point is a dark, dark slog through Frank's ups and downs. Of course, he'll come across as a no-good bum, but that voice!
February 9, 2011
This is the first volume of a two parter. It ends just after Sinatra wins an oscar for “From Here to Eternity� and ressurects a stagnant career. Kaplan is still working on the second part. Kaplan apparently took his cue from Gary Giddens’s two parter on Bing Crosby. He alludes to Giddens’s work several times. Frank is well written and thoroughly researched. Probably the best of the four Sinatra bios (I’ve also read several books that pertain more to Sinatra’s music) I’ve read although I read Earl Wilson’s Sinatra bio so long ago that I really don’t remember it. I disliked Kitty Kelley’s book. Her Sinatra was a one dimensional lout and much of her info is open to question, although Kaplan does use her as a source at times. Tamborelli’s book was good but Kaplan goes a little deeper and delves into Sinatra’s music more than previous bios have done. Will Friedwald’s book “The Song is You� is really the volume for those interested in Sinatra’s music, but it is commendable that Kaplan addresses it as well as he does. Kelley and Tamborelli really don’t go into what a comsumate artist Sinatra was, concentrating more on the show business and or sensationalistic aspects of his career.
January 2, 2024
This book has been sitting on my to-read pile for quite a while because it was given to me and I’ve never been a big Sinatra fan. After reading this I like Sinatra even less, but what a fantastic book!
Kaplan walks you through the first half of Sinatra’s life - his childhood with a powerful mother, his early days in music, his marriages to Nancy Barbato and Ava Gardner, and his Academy Award for From Here to Eternity. Book two (Sinatra: The Chairman) will pick up where this one left off.
Kaplan is a masterful storyteller. An example - the book is divided up into five “acts,� and the ending of Act 3 and the beginning of Act 4 are the same story, in the middle of a moment in Sinatra’s kitchen, working almost like an immediately resolved cliffhanger. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like that in non-fiction before, and it was breathtaking (and well-placed - the moment in the kitchen is a hinge that moves into a new “act� in Sinatra’s life).
These books are a lot like Peter Guralnick’s two-volume Elvis biography, which I love. But in Guralnick’s books you are cheering for Elvis, riding the highs and feeling the lows. In this book, Sinatra is not a villain exactly, but you don’t like him. Kaplan knows this and leaves you the space to root against him, never trying to convince you that he’s something he’s not.
A few notes:
- To tell the story of Frank Sinatra, Kaplan has to tear down a lot of the conventional wisdom around him. He spends a lot of time refuting his daughter Nancy’s book among others, and he references a lot of primary sources (I’m definitely going to have to read the Giddins Bing Crosby books now), but he never does it in a way that breaks up the storytelling. To be this well researched and footnoted, it is a very smooth book.
- Nancy Barbato Sinatra is the hero of this book, by a mile. She comes across as abused but never a victim. She positively glows in Kaplan’s storytelling. It’s almost as if Kaplan has a crush on her. Heck, I almost have a crush on her.
- Sinatra had one of the very first (if not the first) album, and it was called that because you could only get a certain amount of music on one record, and if you wanted to put out several songs it meant several discs, necessitating an album to hold them all in.
- Kaplan separates fact from fiction in The Godfather’s portrayal of the Frank Sinatra-like character getting sprung from his record contract.
- During World War 2 Sinatra was loved by all the girls but absolutely hated by all the men. He was a draft dodger during a very popular war, and it’s a miracle his reputation made it out alive. His relationship with the men of the armed services - from their anger in the press about his avoiding service all the way up to a post-war tour to see them and cheer them up - was the most interesting part of the book.
Kaplan walks you through the first half of Sinatra’s life - his childhood with a powerful mother, his early days in music, his marriages to Nancy Barbato and Ava Gardner, and his Academy Award for From Here to Eternity. Book two (Sinatra: The Chairman) will pick up where this one left off.
Kaplan is a masterful storyteller. An example - the book is divided up into five “acts,� and the ending of Act 3 and the beginning of Act 4 are the same story, in the middle of a moment in Sinatra’s kitchen, working almost like an immediately resolved cliffhanger. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like that in non-fiction before, and it was breathtaking (and well-placed - the moment in the kitchen is a hinge that moves into a new “act� in Sinatra’s life).
These books are a lot like Peter Guralnick’s two-volume Elvis biography, which I love. But in Guralnick’s books you are cheering for Elvis, riding the highs and feeling the lows. In this book, Sinatra is not a villain exactly, but you don’t like him. Kaplan knows this and leaves you the space to root against him, never trying to convince you that he’s something he’s not.
A few notes:
- To tell the story of Frank Sinatra, Kaplan has to tear down a lot of the conventional wisdom around him. He spends a lot of time refuting his daughter Nancy’s book among others, and he references a lot of primary sources (I’m definitely going to have to read the Giddins Bing Crosby books now), but he never does it in a way that breaks up the storytelling. To be this well researched and footnoted, it is a very smooth book.
- Nancy Barbato Sinatra is the hero of this book, by a mile. She comes across as abused but never a victim. She positively glows in Kaplan’s storytelling. It’s almost as if Kaplan has a crush on her. Heck, I almost have a crush on her.
- Sinatra had one of the very first (if not the first) album, and it was called that because you could only get a certain amount of music on one record, and if you wanted to put out several songs it meant several discs, necessitating an album to hold them all in.
- Kaplan separates fact from fiction in The Godfather’s portrayal of the Frank Sinatra-like character getting sprung from his record contract.
- During World War 2 Sinatra was loved by all the girls but absolutely hated by all the men. He was a draft dodger during a very popular war, and it’s a miracle his reputation made it out alive. His relationship with the men of the armed services - from their anger in the press about his avoiding service all the way up to a post-war tour to see them and cheer them up - was the most interesting part of the book.
May 11, 2016
James Kaplan has penned what is one of the most spectacular biographies I've ever read. A rabid Sinatra fan; it was thrilling for me to discover lots of things I hadn't learnt about Ol Blue Eyes :) definitely can't wait to read book 2 :)
February 13, 2022
Frank’s singing ended up being one of the big reasons, the big band era was replaced by the “age of the solo vocalist�. Before the microphone, singing was the art of projection; the microphone allowed a new style, the soft croon, where the singer could lay back and sound more intimate and next to you. Bing Crosby and Sinatra were the new sound and were marketed to the white public. Crosby and Sinatra sounded effortlessly like themselves. Sinatra realized quickly that his instrument was his microphone. Soon he had a car, PA equipment and music charts of songs, he just needed to work on his voice which was thin and high. He would have to work hard to get his voice down in his chest. His first success was winning a contest as part of the Hoboken Four.
Sinatra hated being photographed from the left; he had a large scar and a cauliflower ear which would usually be retouched as a result of a traumatic birth. He had an abusive mom, Dolly, who once pushed him down a flight of stairs, rendering him unconscious. Dolly’s erratic behavior taught him to trust no one. Dolly’s sense of entitlement was passed on to her son. He was 5� 7 ½� tall would often wear lifts in his shoes to appear 5� 9�. He worked hard hours singing when young, “Many’s the time I worked all night for nothing.� “I worked on one basic theory, stay active, get as much practice as you can.�
Apparently, Frank had a large member; Ava Gardner once said, “There’s only ten pounds of Frank, but there are one hundred and ten pounds of cock.� Billie Holiday “lived in the lyric, made you ache its ache, while skipping around the music’s beat like some kind of goddess of the air, landing just where she pleased.� Frank learned from Billie to sing the lyrics as if he really meant them, and his career took off. He told the audience a story and he never sang a song publicly without really understanding the words completely, first. You wanted it to sound like you were making up a story there and then. (actor James Garner, once said, “I just pretend I’m saying it for the very first time.�)
Someone wanted Frank to change his name to Frankie Satin; “If I had did that�, he said, “I’d be working cruise ships today.� His first hit was “All of Nothing at All� with Harry James. In 1939, the Palomar (where Benny Goodman got big) burns to the ground. When Frank was with Tommy Dorsey, they were playing nine shows a day and then would ride all night. Frank learned breath control by watching Dorsey, who had it in spades. It turns out Dorsey would sneak breaths through a pin hole sized space hidden by his left hand. Frank worked hard to sing through phrases without taking a breath, which he thought would help the phrasing). Jo Stafford says the stories I heard of Sinatra getting great at many swimming laps underwater to increase lung capacity were all myth. Darn. I guess if that were true, Tom Cruise would be a great singer (holding his breath for six minutes for Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation) and so would Kate Winslet (holding her breath under water for seven minutes and 14 seconds for Avatar 2).
Frank’s first charting song was Polka Dots and Moonbeams (1940). Frank would carry lyrics around like poems, with no music on them. “I am trying to understand the point of view of the person behind the words. Then I start speaking, not singing the words so I can experiment and get the right inflections.� “When I get with the orchestra, I sing the words without a microphone first, so I can adjust the way I’ve been practicing to the arrangement. I’m looking to fit the emotion behind the song that I’ve come up with to the music.� Back then, a tough request in Dorsey’s band was to play “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes� from memory; one time the audience requested it and it ended up Frank singing it a cappella after the pianist cut out during the crazy middle section. Sinatra leaves Dorsey in 1942.
Frank was first drawn to Hollywood and making pictures because for him Hollywood had the best-looking women (a lifelong fascination of his). His career came first, and later on, for a while, Ava Gardner was more important. To sing with Columbia, Frank had to leave RCA where he was, with Dorsey. Frank loved the way a string section would surround his voice like a vase. Frank was the first band singer to really go off on his own; he felt if he didn’t leave soon, one of his competitors would, and they would have the real head start. Frank’s agent studied speakers who riveted their audience, like FDR, Churchill, Father Coughlin and Hitler. He thought if they can seed clouds to make it rain, why not “seed� a concert to make the audience go nuts. He told Frank to caress the mic as though it were a woman. He hired an ambulance to sit outside the theatre for dramatic reasons (in case a bobbysoxer fainted during the performance). Back then radio was king, no TV to compete with.
In this book, Frank comes off as easy to provoke (“Anything could set him off�), skirt chaser, almost always looking for a better-looking woman. Large parts of the book are family stories with wife #1 (Nancy) or surprisingly childish fighting stories with wife #2 (Ava Gardner). When Frank’s career lulls before the Capitol recordings take off, he tries to commit suicide. Frank’s gig at the Riobamba shows adults he’s not just for screaming girls. His new fans talked about the “caress of his voice.� Louis B. Mayer was once a scrap-metal salvager from Minsk. RKO means Radio-Keith -Orpheum).
Columbia Records refused to release Billie Holiday’s version of Abel Meeropol’s “Strange Fruit�. Politically, Frank starts off progressive in the 30’s quoting Henry Wallace to friends, then he’s an FDR fan, then “his politics veered sharply to the right in the late 1960’s.� Neither John Wayne, nor Frank Sinatra served in WWII; John Wayne got a total free pass from soldiers, while Frank was hated, because he was openly Italian and (at the time) liberal. US liberals and conservatives still lament the end of the corrupt Batista regime in Cuba; even though before Castro American mafiosi would boldly hold their conferences at the Hotel Nacional in Havana. Castro educating doctors to help people around the globe is bad (the threat of a good example), while Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Vito Genovese were successful role models for US foreign policy (as Noam wrote about). These gangsters loved Frank.
In 1948, The LP (album) makes its debut at Columbia. Each record side now lasted four times longer than a 78 had. Now long pieces didn’t have to be cut in the middle to fit. Frank’s first record in this 10� format was Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra. Frank read current top books like “Diary of Anne Frank�, John Hersey’s “Hiroshima�, or “Kon-Tiki� by Thor Heyerdahl.
This book was filled with lots of stories of excessive drinking, fucking around, getting angry or vindictive, being insanely jealous or childish, and highly defensive behavior. There were hundreds of sentences of profanity said by either Ava or Frank, which I didn’t repeat because they were too plain and unimaginative. I’m a huge Sinatra fan (and Jimmy Scott) and so felt I should read this 700+ page monster at some point. I think this book was written by a non-musician for non-musicians; I expected some great quote of Frank’s on vocal warmups, tone production, rubato, phrasing or determinants in the rate of vocal exhalation, but this book had few musical pearls of Francis wisdom. Good book.
Sinatra hated being photographed from the left; he had a large scar and a cauliflower ear which would usually be retouched as a result of a traumatic birth. He had an abusive mom, Dolly, who once pushed him down a flight of stairs, rendering him unconscious. Dolly’s erratic behavior taught him to trust no one. Dolly’s sense of entitlement was passed on to her son. He was 5� 7 ½� tall would often wear lifts in his shoes to appear 5� 9�. He worked hard hours singing when young, “Many’s the time I worked all night for nothing.� “I worked on one basic theory, stay active, get as much practice as you can.�
Apparently, Frank had a large member; Ava Gardner once said, “There’s only ten pounds of Frank, but there are one hundred and ten pounds of cock.� Billie Holiday “lived in the lyric, made you ache its ache, while skipping around the music’s beat like some kind of goddess of the air, landing just where she pleased.� Frank learned from Billie to sing the lyrics as if he really meant them, and his career took off. He told the audience a story and he never sang a song publicly without really understanding the words completely, first. You wanted it to sound like you were making up a story there and then. (actor James Garner, once said, “I just pretend I’m saying it for the very first time.�)
Someone wanted Frank to change his name to Frankie Satin; “If I had did that�, he said, “I’d be working cruise ships today.� His first hit was “All of Nothing at All� with Harry James. In 1939, the Palomar (where Benny Goodman got big) burns to the ground. When Frank was with Tommy Dorsey, they were playing nine shows a day and then would ride all night. Frank learned breath control by watching Dorsey, who had it in spades. It turns out Dorsey would sneak breaths through a pin hole sized space hidden by his left hand. Frank worked hard to sing through phrases without taking a breath, which he thought would help the phrasing). Jo Stafford says the stories I heard of Sinatra getting great at many swimming laps underwater to increase lung capacity were all myth. Darn. I guess if that were true, Tom Cruise would be a great singer (holding his breath for six minutes for Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation) and so would Kate Winslet (holding her breath under water for seven minutes and 14 seconds for Avatar 2).
Frank’s first charting song was Polka Dots and Moonbeams (1940). Frank would carry lyrics around like poems, with no music on them. “I am trying to understand the point of view of the person behind the words. Then I start speaking, not singing the words so I can experiment and get the right inflections.� “When I get with the orchestra, I sing the words without a microphone first, so I can adjust the way I’ve been practicing to the arrangement. I’m looking to fit the emotion behind the song that I’ve come up with to the music.� Back then, a tough request in Dorsey’s band was to play “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes� from memory; one time the audience requested it and it ended up Frank singing it a cappella after the pianist cut out during the crazy middle section. Sinatra leaves Dorsey in 1942.
Frank was first drawn to Hollywood and making pictures because for him Hollywood had the best-looking women (a lifelong fascination of his). His career came first, and later on, for a while, Ava Gardner was more important. To sing with Columbia, Frank had to leave RCA where he was, with Dorsey. Frank loved the way a string section would surround his voice like a vase. Frank was the first band singer to really go off on his own; he felt if he didn’t leave soon, one of his competitors would, and they would have the real head start. Frank’s agent studied speakers who riveted their audience, like FDR, Churchill, Father Coughlin and Hitler. He thought if they can seed clouds to make it rain, why not “seed� a concert to make the audience go nuts. He told Frank to caress the mic as though it were a woman. He hired an ambulance to sit outside the theatre for dramatic reasons (in case a bobbysoxer fainted during the performance). Back then radio was king, no TV to compete with.
In this book, Frank comes off as easy to provoke (“Anything could set him off�), skirt chaser, almost always looking for a better-looking woman. Large parts of the book are family stories with wife #1 (Nancy) or surprisingly childish fighting stories with wife #2 (Ava Gardner). When Frank’s career lulls before the Capitol recordings take off, he tries to commit suicide. Frank’s gig at the Riobamba shows adults he’s not just for screaming girls. His new fans talked about the “caress of his voice.� Louis B. Mayer was once a scrap-metal salvager from Minsk. RKO means Radio-Keith -Orpheum).
Columbia Records refused to release Billie Holiday’s version of Abel Meeropol’s “Strange Fruit�. Politically, Frank starts off progressive in the 30’s quoting Henry Wallace to friends, then he’s an FDR fan, then “his politics veered sharply to the right in the late 1960’s.� Neither John Wayne, nor Frank Sinatra served in WWII; John Wayne got a total free pass from soldiers, while Frank was hated, because he was openly Italian and (at the time) liberal. US liberals and conservatives still lament the end of the corrupt Batista regime in Cuba; even though before Castro American mafiosi would boldly hold their conferences at the Hotel Nacional in Havana. Castro educating doctors to help people around the globe is bad (the threat of a good example), while Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Vito Genovese were successful role models for US foreign policy (as Noam wrote about). These gangsters loved Frank.
In 1948, The LP (album) makes its debut at Columbia. Each record side now lasted four times longer than a 78 had. Now long pieces didn’t have to be cut in the middle to fit. Frank’s first record in this 10� format was Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra. Frank read current top books like “Diary of Anne Frank�, John Hersey’s “Hiroshima�, or “Kon-Tiki� by Thor Heyerdahl.
This book was filled with lots of stories of excessive drinking, fucking around, getting angry or vindictive, being insanely jealous or childish, and highly defensive behavior. There were hundreds of sentences of profanity said by either Ava or Frank, which I didn’t repeat because they were too plain and unimaginative. I’m a huge Sinatra fan (and Jimmy Scott) and so felt I should read this 700+ page monster at some point. I think this book was written by a non-musician for non-musicians; I expected some great quote of Frank’s on vocal warmups, tone production, rubato, phrasing or determinants in the rate of vocal exhalation, but this book had few musical pearls of Francis wisdom. Good book.
June 3, 2015
Added 5/1/15. (This book was first published in 2010.)
5/2/15 - I listened to the unabridged audio of this book. It's disappointing to hear the downside of Sinatra's life. I'd rather remember him for all the enjoyment he gave us with his great talent. It seems it's always the first wives of celebrities who get the short end of the stick. Celebrities like Sinatra are subject to too much temptation.
At any rate, I'm reliving the days when the teenagers screamed and swooned when Sinatra sang. The book says that that phenomenon was manipulated by Sinatra's publicity people. What started as an innocent thing was turned into what became a huge publicity stunt.
It's interesting to hear about Sinatra's early days with the Dorsey band. Sinatra eventually revolutionized the music industry with his singing style. But he had his ups and downs.
5/2/15 - I listened to the unabridged audio of this book. It's disappointing to hear the downside of Sinatra's life. I'd rather remember him for all the enjoyment he gave us with his great talent. It seems it's always the first wives of celebrities who get the short end of the stick. Celebrities like Sinatra are subject to too much temptation.
At any rate, I'm reliving the days when the teenagers screamed and swooned when Sinatra sang. The book says that that phenomenon was manipulated by Sinatra's publicity people. What started as an innocent thing was turned into what became a huge publicity stunt.
It's interesting to hear about Sinatra's early days with the Dorsey band. Sinatra eventually revolutionized the music industry with his singing style. But he had his ups and downs.
July 22, 2019
When I think of Frank Sinatra the words of the song, “Fly me to the moon,� float into my mind, taking me back to my parents house as a kid.
Too bad Frank, didn’t share the fond memories. I did as a child. Scarred at birth by forceps, a doctor tossing him on a counter, leaving him to die, while giving his full attention to his mother. His start at life was not good.
His voice was his escape, his golden ticket and the man seemed to be on the verge of complete happiness, but his choices and his ego, knocked him backwards each time he came close to a happy ending. I wonder if he ever really found what he was looking for, if he ever really found the peace and happiness he deserved.
Too bad Frank, didn’t share the fond memories. I did as a child. Scarred at birth by forceps, a doctor tossing him on a counter, leaving him to die, while giving his full attention to his mother. His start at life was not good.
His voice was his escape, his golden ticket and the man seemed to be on the verge of complete happiness, but his choices and his ego, knocked him backwards each time he came close to a happy ending. I wonder if he ever really found what he was looking for, if he ever really found the peace and happiness he deserved.
November 27, 2011
I have always liked Sinatra's singing but didn't know much of his life beyond the Rat Pack image. I became interested to know more about him after seeing a couple of his films recently, and was intrigued by this book because it looks in detail at his early career, which I knew little about.
It's certainly a dramatic story, telling how the brilliant but troubled singer originally rose to fame as idol of the Bobbysoxers. He then saw his career plummet during his disastrous marriage to Ava Gardner, even making a series of suicide attempts, but clawed his way back to the top with his Oscar-winning role in 'From Here to Eternity'. The book ends with him clutching that Oscar - and with most of his best-known albums and films still to come. (Kaplan is currently working on volume two.)
Much of the time it is a fascinating read, especially when Kaplan discusses recording sessions, the contributions of the various musicians, and Sinatra's interpretations of particular songs. I was able to listen to many of these recordings online as I read, and now have several albums I need to buy!
However, to my mind the book comes unstuck at times when Kaplan (who is also a novelist) leaves the facts behind and tries to get into people's heads. He sometimes veers into writing sub-Chandler hardboiled prose, imagining conversations and even people's thoughts. Some of these sections also come across as rather sexist - surely we don't need a description of what a group of young girl fans in a hot theatre might have smelt like. I also suspect the whole relationship with Gardner might come across differently if seen from her angle rather than his. So maybe my four-star rating is a bit generous, but I have lived and breathed this book over the past week and can't really give any less.
It's certainly a dramatic story, telling how the brilliant but troubled singer originally rose to fame as idol of the Bobbysoxers. He then saw his career plummet during his disastrous marriage to Ava Gardner, even making a series of suicide attempts, but clawed his way back to the top with his Oscar-winning role in 'From Here to Eternity'. The book ends with him clutching that Oscar - and with most of his best-known albums and films still to come. (Kaplan is currently working on volume two.)
Much of the time it is a fascinating read, especially when Kaplan discusses recording sessions, the contributions of the various musicians, and Sinatra's interpretations of particular songs. I was able to listen to many of these recordings online as I read, and now have several albums I need to buy!
However, to my mind the book comes unstuck at times when Kaplan (who is also a novelist) leaves the facts behind and tries to get into people's heads. He sometimes veers into writing sub-Chandler hardboiled prose, imagining conversations and even people's thoughts. Some of these sections also come across as rather sexist - surely we don't need a description of what a group of young girl fans in a hot theatre might have smelt like. I also suspect the whole relationship with Gardner might come across differently if seen from her angle rather than his. So maybe my four-star rating is a bit generous, but I have lived and breathed this book over the past week and can't really give any less.
August 17, 2013
One of the biggest problems of this biography, it's -as it says on the front cover- "reads like a romance".
The fact is, that- for me at least- I want facts when I read a biography. That's the whole purpose for me! And the facts in this one are few between all the gossip, reference to other Sinatra's biographies and a lot of romanticized information that NO ONE could ever know, like: "And then, Sinatra thought...", or "Sinatra was alone at home, looked through the window while smoking a cigarette"...
Also, when it comes to Ava Gardner, the book turns into her own biographie. Full of information that I couldn't care less, and had nothing to do with Sinatra...
And before buying this you must also know that this biography stops right when he get's his Oscar, when he's 30-something. So it covers less than the half of his life...
I only gave it 2 stars, because his story by itself is interesting. But James Kaplan was not made for biographies...
The fact is, that- for me at least- I want facts when I read a biography. That's the whole purpose for me! And the facts in this one are few between all the gossip, reference to other Sinatra's biographies and a lot of romanticized information that NO ONE could ever know, like: "And then, Sinatra thought...", or "Sinatra was alone at home, looked through the window while smoking a cigarette"...
Also, when it comes to Ava Gardner, the book turns into her own biographie. Full of information that I couldn't care less, and had nothing to do with Sinatra...
And before buying this you must also know that this biography stops right when he get's his Oscar, when he's 30-something. So it covers less than the half of his life...
I only gave it 2 stars, because his story by itself is interesting. But James Kaplan was not made for biographies...
June 18, 2012
Interesting book to review. It has a tremendous amount of detailed information about Frank Sinatra. For me, that was a positive and a negative. Having detailed info is good, but I finally got tired of reading that much detail. If I were a huge Sinatra fan who wanted to learn as much as possible about Sinatra, I would feel differently about the amount of detailed info in the book.
While the author includes a ton of info about the part of Sinatra's life the book focuses on, the book addressed only the first 39 years of his life. He lived to be 82. The author may have a two-volume biography in mind. I don't want that amount of detail.
While the author includes a ton of info about the part of Sinatra's life the book focuses on, the book addressed only the first 39 years of his life. He lived to be 82. The author may have a two-volume biography in mind. I don't want that amount of detail.
July 27, 2014
The worst biography I have ever read and perhaps the worst book I have read. Buried under clichés, blatant stereotypes, crude language, and riddled with inane comments, what was Doubleday thinking. Less than zero, Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ needs to establish negative star ratings for books like this.
January 3, 2025
An extremely readable first volume of a two-parter Sinatra biography. This volume covers his life and career up to 1954, tracing his birth and adolescence; early years with Harry James and Dorsey; his career slump toward the late 40's; and his career revival in '54 with his Oscar winning movie role.
I don't tend to read biographies, and so I can't comment on if this is standard, but, among its many merits, the main drawback of this book is its novelistic quality. While it lends the text a fluidity and neatness of narrative, it strays often into conjecture and maybe occasionally too-tidy scenes.
This quality is not overbearing, though, and in equal measure to the many moments in which Kaplan manages to divine Sinatra's thoughts and feelings in random moments, Kaplan shows clear command of historical material and assesses previous writing soberly. It makes one feel that even in his digressions, Kaplan probably has an accurate angle on the situation.
Sinatra himself comes out looking like a pretty detestable person here. Not because of any unique spin on Kaplan's part, but because Sinatra is basically childish, emotionally unregulated, and often very abusive. But it isn't all bad: there are moments of undeniable warmth from Sinatra, and this makes me recall the affection I have for him in spite of overwhelmingly poor qualities (an affection which is very tempered mind you). It is also worth noting how well Kaplan depicts the Milieu in which Sinatra runs too: the likes of Dorsey, Gardner, Bogart, Shaw -- all of whom make it perhaps more understandable why Sinatra was, put flatly, often insane.
A great first volume, and I look forward to reading the second.
I don't tend to read biographies, and so I can't comment on if this is standard, but, among its many merits, the main drawback of this book is its novelistic quality. While it lends the text a fluidity and neatness of narrative, it strays often into conjecture and maybe occasionally too-tidy scenes.
This quality is not overbearing, though, and in equal measure to the many moments in which Kaplan manages to divine Sinatra's thoughts and feelings in random moments, Kaplan shows clear command of historical material and assesses previous writing soberly. It makes one feel that even in his digressions, Kaplan probably has an accurate angle on the situation.
Sinatra himself comes out looking like a pretty detestable person here. Not because of any unique spin on Kaplan's part, but because Sinatra is basically childish, emotionally unregulated, and often very abusive. But it isn't all bad: there are moments of undeniable warmth from Sinatra, and this makes me recall the affection I have for him in spite of overwhelmingly poor qualities (an affection which is very tempered mind you). It is also worth noting how well Kaplan depicts the Milieu in which Sinatra runs too: the likes of Dorsey, Gardner, Bogart, Shaw -- all of whom make it perhaps more understandable why Sinatra was, put flatly, often insane.
A great first volume, and I look forward to reading the second.
May 19, 2021
Frank Sinatra Part I.
This is a biography of Frank Sinatra from birth to the night he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for From Here To Eternity. It reads like a fan book in the beginning but takes on depth as Sinatra marries Ava Gardner. Sinatra had to improve his singing voice and was not a natural singer. His idol was Perry Como. He married young and rejected his wife as he became a bigger star. His second marriage to Ava Gardner was a disaster from the beginning to end but they loved each other. I found the rise, fall and ultimate rise to superstar status fascinating. I look forward to reading the second book.
This is a biography of Frank Sinatra from birth to the night he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for From Here To Eternity. It reads like a fan book in the beginning but takes on depth as Sinatra marries Ava Gardner. Sinatra had to improve his singing voice and was not a natural singer. His idol was Perry Como. He married young and rejected his wife as he became a bigger star. His second marriage to Ava Gardner was a disaster from the beginning to end but they loved each other. I found the rise, fall and ultimate rise to superstar status fascinating. I look forward to reading the second book.
July 12, 2021
The voice - frank sinatra
I had no idea Frank lived such a turbulent lonely life. I picked this book up because I read Sammy Davis Jr book and he talked alot about Sinatra so that is what piqued my interest.
However, this book was full of gems I never would have known about Sinatra.
It was an interesting read. A bit lengthy, but good.
I had no idea Frank lived such a turbulent lonely life. I picked this book up because I read Sammy Davis Jr book and he talked alot about Sinatra so that is what piqued my interest.
However, this book was full of gems I never would have known about Sinatra.
It was an interesting read. A bit lengthy, but good.
June 13, 2023
Fantastic first part of an epic, riveting biography on one helluva complicated, arrogant, frustrating, complex, brilliant, insufferable, egotistical, insecure, scared and broken, triumphant, and immensely talented person.
Don't be scared off by the length of the book - every sentence is worth it!
Don't be scared off by the length of the book - every sentence is worth it!
December 9, 2012
James Kaplan covers Frank Sinatra from his birth in 1915 to his Academy Award in 1954. Much of the research is from other published biographies (of which there are many) but, this is not meant to be a documentary biography. These 700+ riveting pages are meant to develop the complex personality and character of Frank Sinatra. The style of Kaplan's prose fits his subject. It wouldn't work for a bio of Lincoln or Pavarotti, but it suits Sinatra to a tee.
Besides an interpretive look at the familiar stories and issues, there is a lot here that was new to me, and probably new to others. Not that I've been following Frank that closely, but I did not know of his birth mark, his mother's occupation, his suicide attempts or that he had seen a psychiatrist. I presume, since his death, those who would never have spoken up in his life have put these things on record for history's sake.
Kaplan covers Frank's early family life, pressures, and rise to fame. He shows the scrappiness he learned or inherited from his mother. He describes how Hearst and other right wing media outlets slammed him for his politics (they portrayed him as a communist), alleged mob connections (and indirectly his Italian ethnicity) and non-enlistment for WW2. Just about everyone slammed him for his messy personal life.
While the Ava Gardner story has been covered many times, this is the most detailed treatment I know of and also the only one that I know of to lay out how toxic it was. These two large size personalities stoked by alcohol, promiscuity and the resulting jealousy, Ava's soaring career and Frank's declining prospects devolved into argument and physical abuse.
Even if there were no Ava, you can see how Frank was not cut out to be a family man. Kaplan shows how he did and didn't fulfill his responsibilities as a father and how Nancy (Sr.) survived and adjusted to the divorce. Kaplan has facts that counter what may be wishful thinking in daughter Nancy's reminiscences. The presentation is both straightforward and empathetic. Kaplan gives you insight into the pressures and intensity.
As I'm writing this I'm listening to old Sinatra tunes. Through the index I can go back and re-read about when and how they were recorded. Kaplan notes when the songs have relevance to Sinatra's life at the time. For some there are aesthetic observations or critiques. You'll get a new appreciation for one of Sinatra's later signature tunes "That's Life". The chapter "Icarus" shows a long, humiliating "shot down in May."
My only complaint is the photos. Kaplan describes photos in a way you want to see them. Not all of them are included in the book, such as Sinatra entering Cuba with "the" brief case or the telling pre-split photo of Frank and Nancy. The photos that are included are all good and add to the text, although the page placement isn't always exact. On p. 66 there is Sinatra's mug shot from his 1938 arrest. The author notes his air of confidence, I note an uncanny resemblance to the young Mick Jagger.
It is very fast reading, because you can't put it down. There is no hint of a volume 2 or 3, but this will certainly be anticipated by anyone who reads this book.
Besides an interpretive look at the familiar stories and issues, there is a lot here that was new to me, and probably new to others. Not that I've been following Frank that closely, but I did not know of his birth mark, his mother's occupation, his suicide attempts or that he had seen a psychiatrist. I presume, since his death, those who would never have spoken up in his life have put these things on record for history's sake.
Kaplan covers Frank's early family life, pressures, and rise to fame. He shows the scrappiness he learned or inherited from his mother. He describes how Hearst and other right wing media outlets slammed him for his politics (they portrayed him as a communist), alleged mob connections (and indirectly his Italian ethnicity) and non-enlistment for WW2. Just about everyone slammed him for his messy personal life.
While the Ava Gardner story has been covered many times, this is the most detailed treatment I know of and also the only one that I know of to lay out how toxic it was. These two large size personalities stoked by alcohol, promiscuity and the resulting jealousy, Ava's soaring career and Frank's declining prospects devolved into argument and physical abuse.
Even if there were no Ava, you can see how Frank was not cut out to be a family man. Kaplan shows how he did and didn't fulfill his responsibilities as a father and how Nancy (Sr.) survived and adjusted to the divorce. Kaplan has facts that counter what may be wishful thinking in daughter Nancy's reminiscences. The presentation is both straightforward and empathetic. Kaplan gives you insight into the pressures and intensity.
As I'm writing this I'm listening to old Sinatra tunes. Through the index I can go back and re-read about when and how they were recorded. Kaplan notes when the songs have relevance to Sinatra's life at the time. For some there are aesthetic observations or critiques. You'll get a new appreciation for one of Sinatra's later signature tunes "That's Life". The chapter "Icarus" shows a long, humiliating "shot down in May."
My only complaint is the photos. Kaplan describes photos in a way you want to see them. Not all of them are included in the book, such as Sinatra entering Cuba with "the" brief case or the telling pre-split photo of Frank and Nancy. The photos that are included are all good and add to the text, although the page placement isn't always exact. On p. 66 there is Sinatra's mug shot from his 1938 arrest. The author notes his air of confidence, I note an uncanny resemblance to the young Mick Jagger.
It is very fast reading, because you can't put it down. There is no hint of a volume 2 or 3, but this will certainly be anticipated by anyone who reads this book.
November 7, 2015
As with most other popular culture icons, biographers examine the National Enquirer tabloid style details about Frank, and what is not to like with that approach? Mafia ties, tons of women, excessive drinking, tragedy and triumph and more tragedy and triumph. None truly explore how his talent worked, his psychological motivations and needs, as well as what made the man tick.
This biography is the first to do that. The lurid details are here, especially in the section dealing with Ava Gardner (crazy love indeed, they were absolutely obsessed with each other) but also the deep physical and psychological scars of a childhood in Hoboken, the twisted mental aftershocks of his early family life, the long slow steady obsessive climb towards superstardom including rivalries with Dorsey and Bing Crosby, the famine years when popular fashion left him behind, and the desperate climb back to relevancy, begging (as Johnny Fontaine - the supposed Sinatra stand-in in The Godfather) for a role he was born to play in From Here To Eternity. He somehow manages to do so, and we leave Frank at the end of this book, having just won the Oscar for that role, suddenly relevant again but not for singing, permanently cut off from the love of his life, Ava Gardner, and still wanting to revive his singing career.
What sets this apart from other biographies, and why I do indeed give it five stars, is that not only does it cover all of the bases with a significantly higher level of respect and sympathy for its subject than other books, but Kaplan actually explores Frank's VOICE and how he used that instrument in a distinct and unusual way. He refers to the recordings, noting the evolution of his voice into the rich baritone the world has come to now, but explores phrasing, inflection, the tender caresses of notes and diction, and the intelligence Frank brought to bear with his recordings. THAT is the root of Frank's genius, that he sang songs as a great actor would deliver their lines, as if they were spontaneously singing to YOU on the other side of the speaker. Despite the reservations of many critics and readers, this - along with the sequel Sinatra: The Chairman - is likely to remain the definitive biography of Frank SInatra, and for the exploration of his art, we should be grateful.
This biography is the first to do that. The lurid details are here, especially in the section dealing with Ava Gardner (crazy love indeed, they were absolutely obsessed with each other) but also the deep physical and psychological scars of a childhood in Hoboken, the twisted mental aftershocks of his early family life, the long slow steady obsessive climb towards superstardom including rivalries with Dorsey and Bing Crosby, the famine years when popular fashion left him behind, and the desperate climb back to relevancy, begging (as Johnny Fontaine - the supposed Sinatra stand-in in The Godfather) for a role he was born to play in From Here To Eternity. He somehow manages to do so, and we leave Frank at the end of this book, having just won the Oscar for that role, suddenly relevant again but not for singing, permanently cut off from the love of his life, Ava Gardner, and still wanting to revive his singing career.
What sets this apart from other biographies, and why I do indeed give it five stars, is that not only does it cover all of the bases with a significantly higher level of respect and sympathy for its subject than other books, but Kaplan actually explores Frank's VOICE and how he used that instrument in a distinct and unusual way. He refers to the recordings, noting the evolution of his voice into the rich baritone the world has come to now, but explores phrasing, inflection, the tender caresses of notes and diction, and the intelligence Frank brought to bear with his recordings. THAT is the root of Frank's genius, that he sang songs as a great actor would deliver their lines, as if they were spontaneously singing to YOU on the other side of the speaker. Despite the reservations of many critics and readers, this - along with the sequel Sinatra: The Chairman - is likely to remain the definitive biography of Frank SInatra, and for the exploration of his art, we should be grateful.
September 30, 2014
This is a pretty recent book. I think it came out in 2010. It covers Frank Sinatra's life up to the moment of the 1953 Oscar ceremony, when he awaited the verdict on his nomination as Best Supporting Actor for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. (I won't tell you if he won or not.)
Chances are you have an opinion about the man and an opinion about the music. James Kaplan's book goes into great detail about Sinatra's climb.
What I came away with was a sense of how dependent entertainers were on newspaper columnists in the mid-twentieth century. More to the point, this book shows Sinatra at the mercy of Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, who weren't so much columnists as mouthpieces for the movie studios. Parsons and Hopper acted as social police.
I don't think there is a 21st-century equivalent of Walter Winchell, but he could ruin an entertainer with a keystroke. Sinatra battled, quite literally, with a minor version of Winchell, a scold named Lee Mortimer, who took Sinatra to court in the 1940s over an ambush Sinatra seems to have arranged. That is, a physical beating at a restaurant. I forget who won the case, but Kaplan has included a great photo of Mortimer in the courtroom, hand on hip, staring at Sinatra, who may or may not know he's being stared at. We see Sinatra in the foreground, seeming to lean his head on the surface of a desk, a wary expression on his face. The caption is: "Pure hatred."
This book essentially makes the case that Frank Sinatra overcame significant odds in becoming the cultural touchstone we know. A profound insecurity was one obstacle. Add to it the prejudice against Italian-Americans when he was coming up, the entertainment world's insistence on an appearance of sexlessness, and the Mob's grip on the music industry and you'll see that Sinatra was struggling to be heard. He made things extremely difficult for himself, but he was fighting for his art. Difficulties would have found him if he hadn't had a desire for self-expression. But that very desire is what made him contribute that inimitable sound so many have imitated and so few have ever matched.
Chances are you have an opinion about the man and an opinion about the music. James Kaplan's book goes into great detail about Sinatra's climb.
What I came away with was a sense of how dependent entertainers were on newspaper columnists in the mid-twentieth century. More to the point, this book shows Sinatra at the mercy of Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, who weren't so much columnists as mouthpieces for the movie studios. Parsons and Hopper acted as social police.
I don't think there is a 21st-century equivalent of Walter Winchell, but he could ruin an entertainer with a keystroke. Sinatra battled, quite literally, with a minor version of Winchell, a scold named Lee Mortimer, who took Sinatra to court in the 1940s over an ambush Sinatra seems to have arranged. That is, a physical beating at a restaurant. I forget who won the case, but Kaplan has included a great photo of Mortimer in the courtroom, hand on hip, staring at Sinatra, who may or may not know he's being stared at. We see Sinatra in the foreground, seeming to lean his head on the surface of a desk, a wary expression on his face. The caption is: "Pure hatred."
This book essentially makes the case that Frank Sinatra overcame significant odds in becoming the cultural touchstone we know. A profound insecurity was one obstacle. Add to it the prejudice against Italian-Americans when he was coming up, the entertainment world's insistence on an appearance of sexlessness, and the Mob's grip on the music industry and you'll see that Sinatra was struggling to be heard. He made things extremely difficult for himself, but he was fighting for his art. Difficulties would have found him if he hadn't had a desire for self-expression. But that very desire is what made him contribute that inimitable sound so many have imitated and so few have ever matched.
June 27, 2012
This is really the story of how Frankie became Frank. Whereas other Sinatra tomes go through his entire life or just focus on the music, James Kaplan has pulled the reader into Francis Albert's beginnings up until Ava's goodbye. We get a deepened look at the man who changed song, along with some sweet asides about the songwriters, the conductors, and the loves of The Voice's rise-fall-rise before he took off into the stratosphere.
It all started with Mama Dolly. Abortionist, midwife, neighborhood politico. She was the one who shaped young Frankie, made him into the man he became, which isn't exactly Mr. Cool. Through his relentless quest to be better than Der Bingle, to his alienation of much of Hollywood, past his pursuit of Ava Gardner, to his sudden comeback, we get a solid picture of what made this guy the best of the best of the best.
There is a good section of the book devoted to Ava Gardner, of whom I had little interest or knowledge of before I read this, but now I want to know more about her. In my view, that means Kaplan did his job. It's also obvious that the author loves music, as evidenced when he suddenly describes some of Frankie's earlier songs and, especially, as the bowties disappear and the fedora and lamp post take over.
Sinatra was a lifelong Dodger fan, so I felt heartened to know that his favorite color scheme was orange and black...the colors of the Giants (it's worth another hour or so just to read Kaplan's notes/sources section).
Book Season = Summer (when the swinging begins)
It all started with Mama Dolly. Abortionist, midwife, neighborhood politico. She was the one who shaped young Frankie, made him into the man he became, which isn't exactly Mr. Cool. Through his relentless quest to be better than Der Bingle, to his alienation of much of Hollywood, past his pursuit of Ava Gardner, to his sudden comeback, we get a solid picture of what made this guy the best of the best of the best.
There is a good section of the book devoted to Ava Gardner, of whom I had little interest or knowledge of before I read this, but now I want to know more about her. In my view, that means Kaplan did his job. It's also obvious that the author loves music, as evidenced when he suddenly describes some of Frankie's earlier songs and, especially, as the bowties disappear and the fedora and lamp post take over.
Sinatra was a lifelong Dodger fan, so I felt heartened to know that his favorite color scheme was orange and black...the colors of the Giants (it's worth another hour or so just to read Kaplan's notes/sources section).
Book Season = Summer (when the swinging begins)
July 29, 2012
Frank Sinatra makes good copy. Just ask Kitty Kelley, Pete Hamill and a host of other biographers who have charted the transformation of the small-fry singing sensation from Hoboken, N.J., into an international star. Excuse the hackneyed phrasing, but the style of James Kaplan's ambitious yet pedestrian tome is infectious.
A fresh approach this is not. Although he does add some worthy research to the story, Kaplan relies heavily on the previous Sinatra biographies, while indulging in clichés such as describing the young Frankie as a boy who could not "punch his way out of a paper bag."
Kaplan begins his biography with an epigraph from Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, clearly signaling that this is a serious biography along the lines of what Gary Giddons has done for Bing Crosby and Peter Guralnick for Elvis Presley. But Kaplan cannot write with either writer's grace or critical skills.
This detail-laden biography, which ends in 1954, is a kind of compendium, when what is needed is a more rigorous rinsing out of stories already familiar to Sinatra fans. And Kaplan enjoys retelling certain stories even when he cannot vouch for them.
For those just beginning their seminar on Sinatra, reading Kaplan is a good start. But Sinatra still awaits his best biographer.
January 26, 2016
I read the second book of Kaplan's two-part Sinatra bio first. Having done this, I think if you haven't read either book you should read The Voice first if you want to better appreciate it. Reading first, I found I enjoyed this book more because I found this era of Sinatra's life more interesting. In The Voice, there's so much to muddle through and it's not all happy. To me the book didn't really start rolling until he met Ava, and right when it gets to a pivotal moment in his life, the book's over.
If you're really that interested in Frank's first thirty years, pick it up. You may appreciate The Chairman more for it.
If you're really that interested in Frank's first thirty years, pick it up. You may appreciate The Chairman more for it.
January 10, 2016
James Kaplan's "Frank: The Voice" offers an intimate portrait of a truly weird human being, a portrait as deep as anything you might read in an Ancient Greek tragedy. Sinatra's life was intertwined with the lives of major entertainment figures like Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Louis B. Mayer, and of course Ava Gardner, as well as Mafiosi, and politicians. This book offers a panoply of life in mid-twentieth-century America.
I'd read two previous Sinatra books: Kitty Kelley's "His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra" and "The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin'" by Bill Zehme. The Zehme book, as the title suggests, is a light-hearted guide to gentleman's style, as mentored by Frank.
The Kitty Kelley book filled me with revulsion. The Frank in those pages is a creep, more of a tabloid headline, and a social climber desperate for fame, than a worthy artist. Two anecdotes from the Kelley book stand out: how badly Sinatra treated his friend and songwriter, Jimmy Van Heusen (the Norman Rockwell painting anecdote) and how badly Sinatra treated Humphrey Bogart's wife, and then widow, Lauren Bacall.
Kelley mocks Sinatra's Hoboken accent and his elocution lessons. Kelley quotes someone who knew young Frank "He spoke with deze dem and dose diction. He had a terrible New Jersey accent, but it didn't show in his singing. It's like the Japanese who sing English and sound just like us. If you can string it out into syllables, it will sound right, and that's what Frank did, I guess." Kelley also mocked the indecipherable Southern accent Ava Gardner had when she first arrived in Hollywood, and her autobiographical statement about "picking bugs off of tobacco plants." Kelley quoted an MGM producer who dismissed Gardner as a profitable no-talent. "She can't act, she can't talk, but she's a terrific piece of merchandise."
In short, the Kelley book reflects one major stream in the American response to Sinatra. Sinatra, in the Kelley book and in the mind of many Americans, was a sleazy upstart with all the wrong pedigree: he was from New Jersey, a contemptible state, he was Italian-American, his mother was a sometime abortionist. Trash.
James Kaplan's "Frank: The Voice" leaves Kelley's bio, and all contemptuous dismissals or trivialization of Sinatra, in the dust. Anyone interested in Sinatra and indeed in twentieth century American popular culture will want to read this book. It is probably the most detailed, well researched biography of Sinatra that we will ever have.
As I read the book's final pages, tears flowed down my cheeks. Though I was mere pages away from completing the book, and eager to do so, I had to close it and turn away and think about many things.
I was astounded by this. The book had made me feel as if Sinatra were a fellow human. Given how extreme Sinatra's biography is, and how loathsome his behavior all too often was, that Kaplan was able to wring tears from me was a remarkable accomplishment. To see the humanity in a remote character is a profound accomplishment of good writing.
Kaplan keeps his sentences short and easy to understand. He eschews big words, and mocks one writer for apparently using a thesaurus. Kaplan's style is almost pulp fiction, it is almost film noir, but it is not that artistically ambitious. Rather, it is the rat-a-tat-tat style of who-what-when-where-why journalism. Whether he is describing Sinatra doing something cruel, kind, or self-destructive � like slitting his own wrist � Kaplan just reports what happened, and makes almost no attempt to embellish, analyze or moralize. At first, I found Kaplan's lack of literary ambition off-putting; I love beautiful writing. By the end of the book, though, the mere accumulation of facts themselves was moving enough for me. I didn't need pretty prose.
There are many dirty words in this book. It opens with a description of Sinatra's childhood home, "Guinea Town," as "s - - - - flecked." Kaplan interjects the name of God as an expletive, and he uses the f word. We all know why. Sinatra spoke this way, as did his milieu.
Sinatra screwed around. Epic screwing around. Screwing around while single, while married, while his friends were in the next room. He used fans, fellow megastars, and prostitutes � "blond, brunette, and brown sugar" � in singles, doubles, and with friends. He thus hurt the women he loved and it's undeniable that he hurt himself. Frank loved Ava; Ava dumped Frank, so she said, because she knew he could not be faithful.
Kaplan makes zero attempt to plumb the moral depths of this ravenous, epic screwery. I kept craving that � I really wanted to hear someone say, "This level of debauchery may sound appealing but it causes much human suffering. What was going on with Frank that he needed cheap hookers when he was married to the most beautiful woman in the world?" But Kaplan never raises the question. He does, though, describe Frank's relationship with the shrink his friends forced on him after one of his multiple suicide attempts.
Kaplan details Frank's early years as the alternately abused and spoiled son of Dolly Sinatra, a local mover and shaker, and silent ne'er do well Marty. Frank was emotionally unstable, oversexed, and immature from the start. He was also talented and ambitious. His early career as a singer was meteoric.
And then it all came crashing down. Sinatra was hugely talented, and, when it came to his art, very hard working. Suddenly, none of that mattered. Professional blow followed professional blow. As much as you might hate Sinatra the creep, you can't help but admire Sinatra the dogged artist who refused to give up when maybe only his first wife, Nancy Barbato, still believed in him. And you can't help but think that maybe you had been too judgmental of that friend whose life went south. It can happen to the best of us, no matter how hard we try.
At the same time that Sinatra's professional life was crashing, he was falling in love with, divorcing his wife for, marrying and feuding with MGM film star Ava Gardner. Their affair is out of a bestselling novel or a Broadway play.
The received story is that Frank and Ava was one of the great love affairs of the twentieth century. To me it read like cockroaches mating. They drank. They smoked. They fought, sometimes physically. They cheated on each other. They publicly humiliated each other. He was utterly obsessed with her. The image of him drinking alone with her photograph, tearing up the photograph, then getting on his knees to put the pieces back together, then mourning because he could not find her nose, then rejoicing when a delivery boy bringing more booze stirred up a breeze that brought the nose floating down, then Frank giving the delivery boy the gold watch he was wearing � it's operatic.
I hated Ava Gardner while reading this book. Her great asset was her beauty, and she did nothing to earn that � it was an accident of birth. Unlike Sinatra, she had no art she cared about. Kaplan quotes her as saying that her favorite thing to do was "nothing." That's all too believable. Gardner comes across as a selfish, shallow, non-entity, just a bundle of selfish and temporary appetites spun together in an all-too-attractive form. She doesn't even rise to the level of being interestingly evil.
The one person I could like is Nancy Barbato Sinatra, Frank's first wife. I don't know if in real life she was the saint she is depicted as here, but in all the partying, successes, failures, show business, Mafia ties and politics herein, she is the one "fixed foot," the one stable, human, loving presence. The event that made me cry in the final pages involved Nancy Barbato Sinatra and a St. Genesius medal. Nancy's gesture, in a world of Hollywood fakery, is human, and truly exemplary of the word "love."
We care about Frank Sinatra, primarily, because of his singing career. Kaplan spins on a dime and goes from lurid accounts of smashups, abortions, and orgies to delicate, aesthetically detailed analyses of Sinatra's key songs. I've listened to a lot of Sinatra, and Kaplan's commentary illuminates these songs for me in new ways. After reading his analysis of Sinatra's 1954 "Songs for Young Lovers" recording of "A Foggy Day in London Town," I had to listen to the song five times in a row in order to fully appreciate the book's comments.
In addition to a soap opera bio and a sensitive appreciation of an artist's output, Kaplan's book gets Sinatra's ethnicity, and America's frequent hostility to Sinatra's ethnicity, home state of New Jersey, and his blue collar roots exactly right. Kaplan has combed the press contemporaneous with Sinatra's life. Powerful journalists were quite open about denigrating Sinatra for being Italian and for being a New Jersey parvenu who had no right to America's riches, economic, social, or erotic. Kaplan places Sinatra's genuine and important support for Civil Rights in this context.
"Frank: The Voice" is 800 pages long. Never have I cared less about the length of a book. It is only part one of Kaplan's bio. It ends with Sinatra winning the Academy Award for "From Here to Eternity."
I'd read two previous Sinatra books: Kitty Kelley's "His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra" and "The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin'" by Bill Zehme. The Zehme book, as the title suggests, is a light-hearted guide to gentleman's style, as mentored by Frank.
The Kitty Kelley book filled me with revulsion. The Frank in those pages is a creep, more of a tabloid headline, and a social climber desperate for fame, than a worthy artist. Two anecdotes from the Kelley book stand out: how badly Sinatra treated his friend and songwriter, Jimmy Van Heusen (the Norman Rockwell painting anecdote) and how badly Sinatra treated Humphrey Bogart's wife, and then widow, Lauren Bacall.
Kelley mocks Sinatra's Hoboken accent and his elocution lessons. Kelley quotes someone who knew young Frank "He spoke with deze dem and dose diction. He had a terrible New Jersey accent, but it didn't show in his singing. It's like the Japanese who sing English and sound just like us. If you can string it out into syllables, it will sound right, and that's what Frank did, I guess." Kelley also mocked the indecipherable Southern accent Ava Gardner had when she first arrived in Hollywood, and her autobiographical statement about "picking bugs off of tobacco plants." Kelley quoted an MGM producer who dismissed Gardner as a profitable no-talent. "She can't act, she can't talk, but she's a terrific piece of merchandise."
In short, the Kelley book reflects one major stream in the American response to Sinatra. Sinatra, in the Kelley book and in the mind of many Americans, was a sleazy upstart with all the wrong pedigree: he was from New Jersey, a contemptible state, he was Italian-American, his mother was a sometime abortionist. Trash.
James Kaplan's "Frank: The Voice" leaves Kelley's bio, and all contemptuous dismissals or trivialization of Sinatra, in the dust. Anyone interested in Sinatra and indeed in twentieth century American popular culture will want to read this book. It is probably the most detailed, well researched biography of Sinatra that we will ever have.
As I read the book's final pages, tears flowed down my cheeks. Though I was mere pages away from completing the book, and eager to do so, I had to close it and turn away and think about many things.
I was astounded by this. The book had made me feel as if Sinatra were a fellow human. Given how extreme Sinatra's biography is, and how loathsome his behavior all too often was, that Kaplan was able to wring tears from me was a remarkable accomplishment. To see the humanity in a remote character is a profound accomplishment of good writing.
Kaplan keeps his sentences short and easy to understand. He eschews big words, and mocks one writer for apparently using a thesaurus. Kaplan's style is almost pulp fiction, it is almost film noir, but it is not that artistically ambitious. Rather, it is the rat-a-tat-tat style of who-what-when-where-why journalism. Whether he is describing Sinatra doing something cruel, kind, or self-destructive � like slitting his own wrist � Kaplan just reports what happened, and makes almost no attempt to embellish, analyze or moralize. At first, I found Kaplan's lack of literary ambition off-putting; I love beautiful writing. By the end of the book, though, the mere accumulation of facts themselves was moving enough for me. I didn't need pretty prose.
There are many dirty words in this book. It opens with a description of Sinatra's childhood home, "Guinea Town," as "s - - - - flecked." Kaplan interjects the name of God as an expletive, and he uses the f word. We all know why. Sinatra spoke this way, as did his milieu.
Sinatra screwed around. Epic screwing around. Screwing around while single, while married, while his friends were in the next room. He used fans, fellow megastars, and prostitutes � "blond, brunette, and brown sugar" � in singles, doubles, and with friends. He thus hurt the women he loved and it's undeniable that he hurt himself. Frank loved Ava; Ava dumped Frank, so she said, because she knew he could not be faithful.
Kaplan makes zero attempt to plumb the moral depths of this ravenous, epic screwery. I kept craving that � I really wanted to hear someone say, "This level of debauchery may sound appealing but it causes much human suffering. What was going on with Frank that he needed cheap hookers when he was married to the most beautiful woman in the world?" But Kaplan never raises the question. He does, though, describe Frank's relationship with the shrink his friends forced on him after one of his multiple suicide attempts.
Kaplan details Frank's early years as the alternately abused and spoiled son of Dolly Sinatra, a local mover and shaker, and silent ne'er do well Marty. Frank was emotionally unstable, oversexed, and immature from the start. He was also talented and ambitious. His early career as a singer was meteoric.
And then it all came crashing down. Sinatra was hugely talented, and, when it came to his art, very hard working. Suddenly, none of that mattered. Professional blow followed professional blow. As much as you might hate Sinatra the creep, you can't help but admire Sinatra the dogged artist who refused to give up when maybe only his first wife, Nancy Barbato, still believed in him. And you can't help but think that maybe you had been too judgmental of that friend whose life went south. It can happen to the best of us, no matter how hard we try.
At the same time that Sinatra's professional life was crashing, he was falling in love with, divorcing his wife for, marrying and feuding with MGM film star Ava Gardner. Their affair is out of a bestselling novel or a Broadway play.
The received story is that Frank and Ava was one of the great love affairs of the twentieth century. To me it read like cockroaches mating. They drank. They smoked. They fought, sometimes physically. They cheated on each other. They publicly humiliated each other. He was utterly obsessed with her. The image of him drinking alone with her photograph, tearing up the photograph, then getting on his knees to put the pieces back together, then mourning because he could not find her nose, then rejoicing when a delivery boy bringing more booze stirred up a breeze that brought the nose floating down, then Frank giving the delivery boy the gold watch he was wearing � it's operatic.
I hated Ava Gardner while reading this book. Her great asset was her beauty, and she did nothing to earn that � it was an accident of birth. Unlike Sinatra, she had no art she cared about. Kaplan quotes her as saying that her favorite thing to do was "nothing." That's all too believable. Gardner comes across as a selfish, shallow, non-entity, just a bundle of selfish and temporary appetites spun together in an all-too-attractive form. She doesn't even rise to the level of being interestingly evil.
The one person I could like is Nancy Barbato Sinatra, Frank's first wife. I don't know if in real life she was the saint she is depicted as here, but in all the partying, successes, failures, show business, Mafia ties and politics herein, she is the one "fixed foot," the one stable, human, loving presence. The event that made me cry in the final pages involved Nancy Barbato Sinatra and a St. Genesius medal. Nancy's gesture, in a world of Hollywood fakery, is human, and truly exemplary of the word "love."
We care about Frank Sinatra, primarily, because of his singing career. Kaplan spins on a dime and goes from lurid accounts of smashups, abortions, and orgies to delicate, aesthetically detailed analyses of Sinatra's key songs. I've listened to a lot of Sinatra, and Kaplan's commentary illuminates these songs for me in new ways. After reading his analysis of Sinatra's 1954 "Songs for Young Lovers" recording of "A Foggy Day in London Town," I had to listen to the song five times in a row in order to fully appreciate the book's comments.
In addition to a soap opera bio and a sensitive appreciation of an artist's output, Kaplan's book gets Sinatra's ethnicity, and America's frequent hostility to Sinatra's ethnicity, home state of New Jersey, and his blue collar roots exactly right. Kaplan has combed the press contemporaneous with Sinatra's life. Powerful journalists were quite open about denigrating Sinatra for being Italian and for being a New Jersey parvenu who had no right to America's riches, economic, social, or erotic. Kaplan places Sinatra's genuine and important support for Civil Rights in this context.
"Frank: The Voice" is 800 pages long. Never have I cared less about the length of a book. It is only part one of Kaplan's bio. It ends with Sinatra winning the Academy Award for "From Here to Eternity."
August 17, 2017
Sinatra: a complicated figure, as every person is when looked at under a microscope. A man with many talents and many fears, many accomplishments and many shortcomings. Unparalleled singer, irresponsible husband, unbalanced actor, scandalous celebrity. An American legend, in the truest sense.
Kaplan's biography, divided into two books, covers every aspect of Sinatra's life, from his musical and film careers to his family life and failed relationships to his personal struggles and mommy issues. The author writes with flair, sometimes threatening to overstep his boundaries by mixing fact with speculation, but never being aggressively assertive in his narrative. From the very first chapter, it's clear that this is an epic story, and as such, it will be told in a grand fashion. However, since this book (once again, part 1 of 2) only covers half of Sinatra's life, it never fully hits the glorious heights that it hints at, instead meandering around a climax, a catharsis, much like the meandering of the singer's life itself.
However, this incompleteness doesn't detract from the research and effort put into this volume. This is a long, sprawling biography of an extremely interesting man, and it just so happens to be written by an author capable of telling a great story with his writing. I wasn't a Frank Sinatra fan when I picked this book up, just a lover of stories, and I loved this story.
Kaplan's biography, divided into two books, covers every aspect of Sinatra's life, from his musical and film careers to his family life and failed relationships to his personal struggles and mommy issues. The author writes with flair, sometimes threatening to overstep his boundaries by mixing fact with speculation, but never being aggressively assertive in his narrative. From the very first chapter, it's clear that this is an epic story, and as such, it will be told in a grand fashion. However, since this book (once again, part 1 of 2) only covers half of Sinatra's life, it never fully hits the glorious heights that it hints at, instead meandering around a climax, a catharsis, much like the meandering of the singer's life itself.
However, this incompleteness doesn't detract from the research and effort put into this volume. This is a long, sprawling biography of an extremely interesting man, and it just so happens to be written by an author capable of telling a great story with his writing. I wasn't a Frank Sinatra fan when I picked this book up, just a lover of stories, and I loved this story.
May 10, 2021
I devoured this. It starts off shakily, and leans too much on secondary sources, but it's an awful lot of fun, and Kaplan writes unusually well about the music. The rest is speculation, supposition, half-truths, Freudian leaps, diversions dealing with supporting characters, and even a few facts, bundled together in a breathless, chatty style. And where versions of key incidents do diverge, the author does make a fair go of getting at the truth. This volume ends with Sinatra's Oscar win in 1954, the remainder of the story dealt with in a second book. I'll be reading that one too. While the subject was, at the end of a day, an arsehole, he couldn't half sing, and a life of triumphs and tantrums makes for an enjoyable read.
July 12, 2021
This volume of Kaplan's Sinatra biogs takes Ole Blue Eyes from birth to his Academy Award win for From Here To Eternity & is well-researched & entertainingly chronicled. However, the way the author inserted behaviour into scenes - Ava played with her emerald ring while sipping her martini / Frank reached down and plucked the cheek of Frank Jnr - when he was obviously not present to observe it became a little irritating. I realise he was trying to bring moments to life but ... On the whole, Sinatra was hard to like but he was definitely one of a kind. Recommended.
September 8, 2023
What a phenomenal biography of Frank Sinatra. James Kaplan does a marvelous job at telling an honest, engaging look at the life of "The Voice" from his birth all the way to the early 50s when his legendary run with Capitol is about to begin. Yes, Frank was a conflicting man, but Kaplan makes sure to show you all sides of him and not just the parts he is, rightly or wrongly, most well-known for. The second volume, "The Chairman," is already on my list of must-reads, and soon!
June 30, 2018
Phenomenal. Now to gear up for the second half!
June 12, 2010
Along with Buster Keaton, Marcel Duchamp, Howard Hughes, Duke Ellington, Louise Brooks and Fritz Lang, I think Frank Sinatra is an icon of the 20th Century - or in many ways he is the 20th Century. Famous, but still a mystery, and a man who saw things differently then everyone else. James Kaplan, the biographer, sees him as a genius, and if that is true, then he is a man pretty much made up by his inner personality - which is insecurity, doubt, and pure instinct.
The plus side of the book is that it deals with Sinatra from birth to 1954. Professionally speaking, a bumpy ride to end all bumpy rides. He went from being an early teen star to the bottom of the heap, to the top again - but over time he became a great recorder of human emotion via his music.
So the book in ways reads like a fictional narrative where it starts off good, the middle part is despair, and the ending is hopeful for a better future. And all of this pretty much has a strong second character Ava Gardner, the muse, the wife, and demon for Mr. Sinatra. In many ways a perfect couple, in the Sinatra world, but in reality it must have been a total mixture of boredom, total despair, and pure blissfulness all in parts, but never put together like a perfect cocktail drink.
Although the book doesn't cover the entire 1950's, which I consider to be the golden age of Sinatra-life, due to making perhaps the first of a series of conceptual albums with a particular theme for capital Records. Those series of albums are without doubt landmark albums, and they are made to play all the way through from the first song to the last.
So yes, the book ends in 1954, my birth year, and also one can argue the beginning of commercial white Rock n' Roll with respect to Elvis hitting Sun Studios. This decade he would grow as an artist, and yet the doubt lurks in the murky background....
The plus side of the book is that it deals with Sinatra from birth to 1954. Professionally speaking, a bumpy ride to end all bumpy rides. He went from being an early teen star to the bottom of the heap, to the top again - but over time he became a great recorder of human emotion via his music.
So the book in ways reads like a fictional narrative where it starts off good, the middle part is despair, and the ending is hopeful for a better future. And all of this pretty much has a strong second character Ava Gardner, the muse, the wife, and demon for Mr. Sinatra. In many ways a perfect couple, in the Sinatra world, but in reality it must have been a total mixture of boredom, total despair, and pure blissfulness all in parts, but never put together like a perfect cocktail drink.
Although the book doesn't cover the entire 1950's, which I consider to be the golden age of Sinatra-life, due to making perhaps the first of a series of conceptual albums with a particular theme for capital Records. Those series of albums are without doubt landmark albums, and they are made to play all the way through from the first song to the last.
So yes, the book ends in 1954, my birth year, and also one can argue the beginning of commercial white Rock n' Roll with respect to Elvis hitting Sun Studios. This decade he would grow as an artist, and yet the doubt lurks in the murky background....
April 9, 2014
Finally a powerful and stirring biography about one of the most chronicled men in modern history. Never has Frank Sinatra’s complicated genius been taken as seriously and with such sensitivity.
This is an enthralling account of a true American icon that was the first show business phenomenon of the 20th century. He was, unquestionably, the greatest singer of the American Songbook.
Frank: The Voice chronicles the first four decades of his stunning ride to the pinnacle of success, and his equally stunning fall from grace, to his matchless comeback. It describes the transition he made from lightweight tunes to adult fare, and how his personal experiences infused his songs with emotional depth.
Despite his considerable flaws the book describes how hard he worked at his craft, including a lifelong obsession with phrasing and most of all, the true meaning of the lyrics.
He sang the song as if he meant it, understood it, and then something absolutely wonderful happened.
Even if you aren’t mad about Frank like I am, this amazing book is great entertainment and a wonderful tribute to a fascinating, enormously talented, musical genius. A must read.
This is an enthralling account of a true American icon that was the first show business phenomenon of the 20th century. He was, unquestionably, the greatest singer of the American Songbook.
Frank: The Voice chronicles the first four decades of his stunning ride to the pinnacle of success, and his equally stunning fall from grace, to his matchless comeback. It describes the transition he made from lightweight tunes to adult fare, and how his personal experiences infused his songs with emotional depth.
Despite his considerable flaws the book describes how hard he worked at his craft, including a lifelong obsession with phrasing and most of all, the true meaning of the lyrics.
He sang the song as if he meant it, understood it, and then something absolutely wonderful happened.
Even if you aren’t mad about Frank like I am, this amazing book is great entertainment and a wonderful tribute to a fascinating, enormously talented, musical genius. A must read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 279 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.