By Barry Clifford: A Man Called Frank Sinatra

As a child I thought ‘old blue eyes’ was for, well, old people with blue eyes and any other colour as well. I kinda came round a bit a month before my 13^th birthday when ‘old blue eyes’ released the song: My Way. Since then it has been a slow but sure affection of who Frank Sinatra was and always will be.

Some people have that certain poise, spark, charisma, chemistry, and sometimes you can’t even put your finger on it, yet Frank had all these things together. His jokes did not have to be funny, you just knew he had something else in his arsenal that very few others had just waiting in the wings and so you waited. It could have been the black suits, white shirts and black tie that did it, but that was a bridge too far. The way he held a drink might have been it but Dean Martin always looked like he did it better, and Dino told a joke that always went down more than Frank’s did. That all changed when Frank started to do what he ultimately did, and what you expected him to do, that was better than anybody, and simply sang. He sang with such an intensity and feeling unmatched yet imitated by many right to this very day.

His song’s like My Way, and New York New York are veritable national anthem’s of many countries and the inspiration to those to try to make it wherever they are, and in the end, remember the trying of it most of all, win or lose.

As he got older, in the September of his years, he would not allow himself to give it up; it was just too much fun. As the voice grew weary I rooted for him in those live recordings to do it what seemed could not be done. He did not matter in the end if he did not hit the note or forgot a word here and there, for you were not just listening to a song, you were watching The Frank Sinatra show and all what that meant. So, just in case I missed this legend in my lifetime, I went to see him in his when he went to perform live in New York around 1993.

The opening act was Shirley Mc Lane in a physical dance routine that defied her years and Frank came out to defy his. I was in a minority of an almost exclusive concert hall of Italian Americans that roared and applauded at this Italian American icon. One of their own but everyone else’s too. He was larger than life.

As the curtain went down for the second and last time that night, I knew that I had witnessed something special: A man who was a legend in his own lifetime and ours, at least those of a certain vintage, and one that will endure in many other lives yet to come.  

By Barry Clifford