I’m probably the only one in the world you can name that’s worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I’m the only one.
I worked with practically everybody in the business in all of the years in NBC, but I worked personally many years with people like Crosby and Sinatra, so of course that was a great ground school for me.
It’s not an easy task, believe me. How the hell do you replace Frank Sinatra? There’s no way anybody can do that. But as far as I’m concerned, if there is music to be made and I have to wear somebody else’s clothes, I can’t think of anybody’s I’d rather wear.
Unlike Frank Sinatra, I have no regrets in my life. Zero. Whatever hardships I have faced, or have caused myself, are moments I have to embrace in order to move forward. I have no problem coming to grips with either the highs or lows in my life.
The thing is when you play a character it’s the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there’s gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it’s the personality that comes across.
I recorded with Sinatra, but the recording business is a very strange strata right now.
Well, I met Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan in the space of 15 minutes. Frank Sinatra kissed me on the lips. He kissed me on the lips. And then he gave me a filterless cigarette. And then I met Bob Dylan. I came off all lightheaded and had to go sit on his dressing-room steps.
I don’t think it’s ever changed, whether its Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Zeppelin, Guns n’ Roses or anyone today, the reason why you get into music is because you love it, and if you’re good at it, that’s a plus.
It’s not really a popular consensus to sing Sinatra – which I love! And I just think it’s so cool that he disliked rock n’ roll so much.
Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.
Sheikie love the music that make me happy when I eat the kebob. I love the old generation – the Frank Sinatra, Bob Marley – he legend.
I actually started singing those songs six or seven years ago, when I was an opening act for Frank Sinatra.
I’m awful at karaoke, but if I did have to sing, I’d go for my favourite Frank Sinatra song ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin.’ The fact I love Frank is my grandfather’s doing: he drummed it into me from a very early age that Frank Sinatra is God.
Frank Sinatra was a great singer, but my favourite is Sammy Davis Jr. He had incredible versatility in his voice, often doing impressions of people. It’s always going to be classic, and you’ll never get bored listening.
When I was 3 or 4, I seemed to be bursting with music. They played Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra in the house, so I learned my vocabulary from song lyrics – I was literally singing before I was talking.
Frank Sinatra Jr. has never been particularly popular as a record seller.
Sinatra’s melancholy was the melancholy of mass (old) media technology – the ‘extimacy’ of the records facilitated by the phonograph and the microphone, and expressing a peculiarly cosmopolitan and urban sadness.
Then I went to radio with Sinatra and I watched that disappear.
My wife didn’t like Hollywood or its stars, but she made an exception when, in 1972, we were invited to dinner – cooked by Frank Sinatra.
In 1957’s ‘There’s No You,’ Sinatra is suspended at the intersection of a loss he can’t face and a memory he can’t relinquish.
Sinatra had deep loyalties to his friends for years.
I listen to everything from Lady Gaga to Lady Antebellum. I’ve got Frank Sinatra. I’ve got old stuff, new stuff. Iggy Azalea. I’ve got everything.
I’ve learned that people latch onto labels and stereotypes. There was a period when I was asked in every single interview how I liked being the new Frank Sinatra… I think people will soon realize that I do a lot more than interpret old songs.
No press conference announcing a last film. I’d just steal away. Best way because, if by chance after two or three years something interesting comes up, I would not – like Sinatra – have to say: ‘Well, I’ve thought it over and decided to come back.’
A lot of the greatest compositions were made famous by Sinatra.
You don’t show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that’s the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.
And I did feel there was an album to be made about winter that can make you feel the way Sinatra and Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline make me feel – warm, nostalgic and comforted.
All my memories of being in Las Vegas with Bobby were great. Frank Sinatra brought us to the Sands Hotel in 1965. When we worked that lounge, it was a great lounge. I think it was bigger than the showroom. We were two 25-year-old dumb kids from Orange County in Las Vegas with The Rat Pack.
When I was in my formative years, I rejected Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, and Dean Martin. I now realise they were all great artists, but at the time, as a young man, you have to clear the decks.
Opening for Mr. Sinatra in 1991 enabled me to do Vegas more as an opening act. I did the Superdome with him, probably nine arenas over a year and a half, and his second-to-last appearance at the Desert Inn in Vegas.
My mother was against me being an actress – until I introduced her to Frank Sinatra.
The artist that had the biggest impact on me was Michael Jackson. He was my Elvis and Beatles. When I was 15, I listened to a lot of Sinatra, but my jean jacket didn’t have, ‘I love Frank’ on it, it had, ‘I love AC/DC’, ‘Guns N Roses’, ‘Pearl Jam’. I thought Eddie Vedder was the second coming.
Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ is my ultimate karaoke song. It is a wonderful world. People forget we only have a certain amount of time, and it can all end at any moment. Armstrong and Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ are the ultimate one-two punch.
Pablo Picasso, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway, Mel Gibson, Lou Reed, Norman Mailer, Vanessa Redgrave, Van Morrison – each is distinguished by controversies unrelated to his or her art; by many accounts, some of them are not nice people at all.
When pop and rock were taking over from jazz, and Sinatra was covering a Beatles song, it was all very new. I get to come at it from a different direction.
We had some very distinguished fans: I know one chancellor of a major university who used to schedule his meetings around Star Trek. We were thrilled to discover that Frank Sinatra was a big fan.
Frank Sinatra did ‘Born Free’, Tony Bennett did ‘Walkabout,’ but you have no control over who does what, really. So you just hold yourself responsible for the stuff you do, and then get filthy rich on all this stuff that other people have done.
I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra.
I learned by listening to other people sing and doing impressions of them. And there are things no one can ever teach you, like phrasing. By listening to Sinatra, for instance – you felt that everything he sang had happened in his life.
Frank Sinatra discovered me at a nightclub called P.J.’s in Hollywood. It was 1962. He used to come in there a lot with all his big star friends. I was so nervous to see him. I’ve only had one idol in my life, and that was Frank Sinatra.
Van Heusen understood Sinatra’s style of singing; Sinatra understood Van Heusen’s concept of melody.
You know, legends are people like Haggard and Jones and Wills and Sinatra. Those people are legends. I’m just a young buck out here trying to keep in that same circle with the rest of ’em.
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