Frank Sinatra...The Greatest Singer In Pop History?

Millions of words have been written about Frank Sinatra.....some of it actually true. One thing that cannot be challenged is his place as a superstar of the popular music world. When Frank died in 1998, the New York Times provided a beautiful tribute to him acknowledging his unique achievements. Here is a small portion;

"Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history, Frank Sinatra was also the first modern pop
superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940s when his first solo appearances provoked the kind
of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and
television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra
stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.

His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940s to the sophisticated swinger of the '50s
and '60s seemed to personify the country's loss of innocence. During World War II, Sinatra's tender
romanticism served as the dreamy emotional link between millions of women and their husbands and
boyfriends fighting overseas. Reinventing himself in the '50s, the starry-eyed boy next door turned
into the cosmopolitan man of the world, a bruised romantic with a tough-guy streak and a song for
every emotional season.

In a series of brilliant conceptual albums, he codified a musical vocabulary of adult relationships with
which millions identified. The haunted voice heard on a jukebox in the wee small hours of the morning
lamenting the end of a love affair was the same voice that jubilantly invited the world to "come fly with
me" to exotic realms in a never-ending party.

Sinatra appeared in more than 50 films, and won an Academy Award as best supporting actor for his
portrayal of the feisty misfit soldier Maggio in "From Here to Eternity" (1953). As an actor, he could
communicate the same complex mixture of emotional honesty, vulnerability and cockiness that he
projected as a singer, but he often chose his roles indifferently or unwisely.

It was as a singer that he exerted the strongest cultural influence. Following his idol Bing Crosby, who
had pioneered the use of the microphone, Sinatra transformed popular singing by infusing lyrics with a
personal, intimate point of view that conveyed a steady current of eroticism." NY Times 1998-Except