![]() ![]() ![]() It was bad enough that countries were destroyed it was even worse that our faith in humanity went down with it. ![]() Instead, it set in motion even larger cataclysms-a world-wide depression, the Holocaust, and an even bigger war. The "war to end all wars" hadn’t ended anything. ![]() To those born in 1915, as Sinatra was, the world was a darker and scarier place. As young Frank came of age, Al Jolson was still singing about his mammy and Irving Berlin was writing gently about how he hated to get up in the morning, but those voices were increasingly nostalgic. Sinatra emerged from a more troubled world. Crosby emerged from a world in which it was easier to have faith and have fun. People believed in the future, in progress, in things making sense. The world before World War I was a simpler, stabler place. How different from Bing Crosby, whose personality emerged more clearly as the years passed, who died laughing, smoking his pipe, and playing golf.īut Crosby, though he was only twelve years Sinatra’s senior, belonged to a different age. As Sinatra grew older, the name burned brighter and the man grew fainter, until at the end he was a phantom being whisked from place to place in ambulances and black limousines. We surmise-but we do not know-that beneath the marquee lights, behind the stage doors, between the lines of newsprint, within the lyrics of a song lies a human experience worth pursuing.īut we do not know. We surmise-but we do not know-that his legendary woman troubles were replays of a tempestuous, love/hate relationship with his mother. We surmise-but we do not know-that his penchant for bullying was in part a response to being bullied in his Hoboken youth. He has granted few interviews over the years, and those have been guarded. More biographies have been written about Frank Sinatra than any other figure in popular music, and yet we know so little about him. This material is copyrighted and was originally published in The Mississippi Rag, June, 1998. ![]()
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