Saturday, December 12, 2009

Memo to "Chairman of the Board:" Happy Birthday ...

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra - an American success story whose career included everything from big band to bobby-soxers, from Vegas to Hollywood - was born on this day in 1915, in Hoboken, N' Joizey.

That career included many peaks, many returns to stardom, including very late in his life. Me? ... I'll always prefer those early years, and that awesome young voice singing "All, or Nothing at All" ... or "I'll Never Smile Again." I loved him in lighthearted and lyrical films such as "On the Town" ... but he also showed his flair for drama in "From Here to Eternity" and "The Manchurian Candidate." It was a career that successfully spanned generations, as well as media ... among the zillions of sidebars composed during coverage of last year's presidential campaign, it was reported that
Sinatra was the only artist to make the top-ten list of favorite songs of (then) candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.

Here is his Wikipedia write-up and the official Frank Sinatra website. Also, here is an audio recording of "The Best is Yet to Come," courtesy of scooterride33 at YouTube.

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