by Kitty Kelley
Nancy was so grateful to be Mrs. Frank Sinatra that she did anything she could to make him happy. She cooked his favorite meals—spaghetti and lemon pie. She tolerated the odd hours that he kept as he raced from one radio station to the next begging to sing free simply to be heard. She waited patiently for him to come home from the Rustic Cabin every night. She encouraged him constantly, saying he was going to be a bigger star than Bing Crosby. And she tried to get along with her mother-in-law, which required great effort on her part because she did not like Dolly and bitterly resented her hold over Frank. Dolly insisted on her son’s visiting her in Hoboken at least once a week, and he dutifully did as he was told. Usually, he went by himself.
“Frank visited his mother often after he was married because she demanded it,” said Nick Sevano, Frank’s Hoboken friend. “If he didn’t come to see her, she’d go looking for him in New York!”
Nancy was thoroughly humiliated by her mother-in-law’s abortion business, which had become even more publicized after she and Frank returned from their honeymoon. On February 27, 1939, Dolly was arraigned in Hudson Special Sessions Court for performing yet another illegal operation. She pleaded non vult (does not wish to contest) before Judge Lewis B. Eastmead. The story was published in Hudson County newspapers, and Nancy confided her shame to her friend Adeline. “I had only met Dolly once at the bridal shower, but after listening to Nancy I sure didn’t want to meet her again or get to know her in any way,” Adeline said.
Nancy saw little of her husband during the week; she went to work early in the morning and came home around dinnertime. That’s when Frank was getting ready to go to the Rustic Cabin, where he stayed until early morning. Many days when she arrived, he wouldn’t be home, having spent the day in New York, before going to work in Englewood Cliffs.
Nancy soon grew resentful of the hours her husband spent away from home with his men friends like Hank Sanicola, a former boxer and now a song plugger from the Bronx, who played the piano for Frank on all his singing dates.
“Hank was the only guy Frank ever feared, or at least did not double-cross,” said Nick Sevano. “He knew that Hank feared nobody, and I mean nobody! He was a rough guy, Hank was. He was Frank’s muscle man for years. That’s why Frank kept him on his side.”
Frank was not at all athletic. He was too frail and too thin to hold his own in the ring like the father and uncles he looked up to. Even his childhood friends had to do his fighting for him. But he grew up admiring brute strength, and Hank Sanicola treated him like a kid brother from the beginning.
“I was always his right arm, the strong right arm,” he said. “I know how to fight. I was an amateur fighter. I used to step in and hit guys when they started ganging up on Frank in bars.… We were both of Sicilian origin, both Italians, so we became good friends. When Frank wasn’t working, I would arrange a club date for him and go along to accompany him. We knew, both of us, that it was only a question of time until somebody bought Frank.”
That somebody was Harry James, a fiery trumpeter who had left Benny Goodman’s band to start his own, and who was looking for a singer when he heard Frank on the radio. The next night he went to the Rustic Cabin to see the singer in person. At first, Frank didn’t believe that Harry James had come to the small-time madhouse, and Harry James did not believe that the singer he’d heard on the radio was simply a waiter.
“This very thin guy with swept-back greasy hair had been waiting tables,” he recalled. “Suddenly he took off his apron and climbed onto the stage. He’d sung only eight bars when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I knew he was destined to be a great vocalist.”
In June 1939, James, whose band was only four months old, offered Frank a two-year contract as the featured male vocalist for seventy-five dollars a week. Frank accepted immediately without mentioning that he had already auditioned with Jack Miles, trombonist with Guy Lombardo, who was forming his own band, and had started practice workouts with Bob Chester, also starting his own band.
“All I could think of was ‘Lock the doors! Board up the windows! Don’t let this guy out!’ ” Frank said later. “I had hold of his arm so tight, his fingers went numb.”
Harry James had already hired a female vocalist, Marie Antoinette Yvonne Jamais, and changed her name to Connie Haines. Now he said “Frank Sinatra” might sound too Italian and suggested that Frank become “Frankie Satin.”
When Frank told his mother, Dolly raised her hefty fist and bellowed, “I’ll give him ‘Frankie Satin’ with a shot to knock him cold. Your name is Sinatra, and it’s going to stay Sinatra. So tell him to fuck off with this ‘Frankie Satin’ crap.”
The next day, Frank phoned James and said if he wanted the voice, he’d have to take the name with it.
That same June, Frank made his first appearance with Harry James and his Music Makers at the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore, where he sang “Wishing” and “My Love for You.” Then the band headed for the Roseland Ballroom in New York City, where it played most of the summer, breaking for a three-week stint at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
After three months, Frank complained to Harry James that the music critics were ignoring him. He said he wasn’t getting the recognition he deserved. He had made only a few recordings with the band, and one of them, “All or Nothing at All,” sold a dismal eight thousand copies. (Four years later, a reissue of that same record would sell more than a million.) And the recordings he had made received little air time because of the radio ban on all ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) music. In an effort to counter the Musician’s Union’s demands for royalties for bands and orchestras whose records were played on the radio, ASCAP banned radio performance of any song licensed by that society—and ASCAP controlled most U.S. music. The ban lasted until 1944.
Frank was also frustrated that Harry’s band wasn’t streaking toward the great success he thought he was due. Restless and dissatisfied, he considered quitting, but Hank Sanicola persuaded him to hang on for a few more months. In September 1939, George T. Simon of Metronome went to Roseland to hear the band, and as he was leaving he was approached by the band’s road manager, Jerry Barrett.
“Please give the new boy singer a good write-up because he wants it more than anybody I’ve ever seen, and we want to keep him happy,” said Barrett.
In his review, Simon raved about Harry James and “his sensational, intense style,” complimented the drummer Ralph Hawkins, saluted Dave Matthews on the saxophone, and praised the arrangements of Andy Gibson. Then he mentioned the “pleasing vocals of Frank Sinatra, whose easy phrasing is especially commendable.”
That wasn’t good enough for Frank. He needed raves to get where he was going. Pleasing vocals and commendable phrasing would never catapult him to stardom.
And yet in 1939 the voice that would become one of the most exceptional in popular music was untrained. Frank sang uncertainly, hesitantly, and without the self-confidence he later exuded. His voice was pitched two tones higher than normal. Yet. even then, he displayed a natural way of phrasing that was distinctive and extremely musical.
By now, his repertoire included “My Buddy,” “Willow Weep for Me,” “It’s Funny to Everyone but Me,” “Here Gomes the Night,” “On a Little Street in Singapore,” “Ciribiribin,” and “Every Day of My Life.”
The next month the band played the Hotel Sherman in Chicago, where Billboard mentioned the twenty-four-year-old vocalist who sang “the torchy ballads in a pleasing way in good voice. [His] only blemish is that he touches the songs with a little too much pash, which is not all convincing. …” Frank was incensed, and Harry James, who was voted the number-one trumpeter in the nation by Downbeat, was astounded by his arrogance.
A few nights later, a reporter asked the bandleader about the skinny little singer who slicked his hair back in a big pompadour and acted like a matinee idol at the microphone.
“Not so loud,” said Harry James. “The kid’s name is Sinatra.
He considers himself the greatest vocalist in the business. Get that! No one ever heard of him. He’s never had a hit record. He looks like a wet rag. But he says he is the greatest. If he hears you compliment him, he’ll demand a raise tonight.…”
The public response to Harry James and his Music Makers was improving, but only slightly. The most dedicated swing fans preferred the established bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Bob Crosby, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, and Jimmie Lunceford. Harry’s fledgling band was discouraged until they landed a choice booking at the Palomar Ballroom in Hollywood; then their spirits soared. “We felt sure that a successful engagement at the Palomar was all we needed to put us up on top,” said Frank.
By the time the band bus had reached Denver, though, their spirits had plummeted. The Palomar had burned to the ground. Harry James wired his agent at MCA and was quickly booked into Victor Hugo’s in Beverly Hills, an establishment more used to the sweet sounds of Guy Lombardo. The owner was flabbergasted when he first heard the hard-driving beat of Harry James and his swinging sidemen.
“He kept telling us we were playing too loud,” said Harry. “And so he wouldn’t pay us. We were struggling pretty good and nobody had any money, so Frank would invite us up to his place, and Nancy would cook spaghetti for everyone.” Nancy had given up her job because she was pregnant and was traveling with Frank.
A few nights later as Frank stood at the microphone singing “All or Nothing at All,” the manager rushed to the stage waving his hands and yelling, “Stop! No more! Enough!”
“We were thrown out—right in the middle of that song,” said Frank. “They didn’t even let us get through it. The manager came up and waved his hands for us to stop. He said Harry’s trumpet-playing was too loud for the joint. He said my singing was just plain lousy. He said the two of us couldn’t draw flies as an attraction—and I guess he was right. The room was empty as a barn.”
The owner figured that he should charge Harry for emptying his establishment, so he refused to pay the band. With no money, Frank sent his wife back to New Jersey. Then he and the band headed for Chicago for another booking in the Sherman House Hotel. Every big band in the area was in town that week at the command of the musicians’ czar, James Petrillo, to perform for the annual Christmas benefit party sponsored by Chicago’s Mayor Edward J. Kelly.
After the benefit, Frank was slipped a note from Tommy Dorsey that said, “Meet me in my suite at the Palmer House.” Frank knew that the famous bandleader was looking for someone to replace Jack Leonard, who in 1939 was considered the best band vocalist. Leonard was thinking of leaving Dorsey to go on his own, and that’s all the temperamental bandleader had needed to hear before looking for another singer.
Frank was convinced that with Tommy Dorsey he would become a star. Backed by that orchestra, he would never have to worry about bookings or getting thrown out of places like Victor Hugo’s. He knew that the critics would have to write about him, and recordings and radio shows would follow. There would be one-nighters all over the country in the best ballrooms and biggest theaters. But Frank worried that Dorsey might remember him from an earlier disastrous audition.
As Frank himself recalled it: “I’d sung in front of Dorsey once a few years before I’d joined him. Or rather I hadn’t sung! It was an audition, and I had the words on the paper there in front of me and was just going to sing when the door opened and someone near me said, ‘Hey, that’s Tommy Dorsey.’ He was like a god, you know. We were all in awe of him in the music business. Anyway, I just cut out completely—dead. The words were there in front of me, but I could only mouth air. Not a sound came out. It was terrible.”
Hurrying to the hotel now, Frank waited hours for Tommy Dorsey. Finally the “Sentimental Gentleman of Swing” arrived wearing wire-rimmed glasses. A direct, blunt man, his first words were: “Yes, I remember that day when you couldn’t get out those words.” Undaunted, Frank laughed, and this time he didn’t mouth air. In a smooth baritone he sang “Marie,” which was Jack Leonard’s signature song and one of Dorsey’s biggest hits. The bandleader offered him $125 a week, provided he could get out of his contract with Harry James. Frank accepted on the spot.
Returning to his hotel, he went to James’s room. “He was reading,” recalled Frank. “I walked into the room. I walked out again. I must’ve done that four times. Then I walked around in circles. Finally, Harry put down his magazine. ‘What’s bothering you? Seven-year itch?’ So I told him. I’d’ve been happier opening a vein.”
Harry called his business manager and asked for Frank’s contract, which still had seventeen months to run.
“When he had it, he sat there and tore it into little pieces,” said Frank. “He did that just because I had a better offer. No getting sore, no talking about letting him down, then or later.”
Frank stayed on with Harry James long enough to break in a new singer by the name of Dick Haymes. On Sinatra’s last night with the band, Harry wished him well and Frank introduced Haymes to the audience. Afterward, he walked with the band to the bus.
“The bus pulled out with the rest of the boys at about half past midnight,” recalled Frank. “I’d said good-bye to them all and it was snowing. There was nobody around, and I stood alone in the snow with just my suitcase and watched the taillights disappear. Then the tears started, and I tried to run after the bus.”
A few days later, he began rehearsing with the Dorsey band, convinced that he was at last on his way to becoming a star. He even arrived with one of the trappings—an entourage that consisted of Hank Sanicola, his piano player and protector, and Nick Sevano, the young man from Hoboken who had become his general factotum.
Nick had worked for De Santo tailors in Hoboken and had helped Frank get his clothes made there.
“I started by helping Frank dress,” Nick said. “He always liked my sharp pinstriped suits and my silk ties, so I started helping him pick out his clothes. When I quit my job, I became his valet, secretary, gofer—everything. I lived with Frank and Nancy on the weekends on Audubon Avenue in Jersey City and I traveled with Frank on the road. I had to do everything for him—screen all his calls, buy his ties, design his clothes, deliver his records to disc jockeys, run his errands. You name it, I did it.
“Frank became a star within a few months of starting with Dorsey when he recorded ‘I’ll Never Smile Again.’ That’s the song that launched him, and became number one on the hit parade for weeks. After that, Tommy put Frank’s name above everyone—above Connie Haines, above Jo Stafford and The Pied Pipers, and above all the other musicians, including Buddy Rich, who hated Frank because of it.”
A brilliant and dynamic drummer, Rich did not like the new singer, who was as cocksure about his talent as Buddy was of his own. Equally arrogant, both men had violent tempers, which erupted when the band played the Meadowbrook in New Jersey. By that time, Frank had persuaded Tommy Dorsey to include his picture at the bottom of the band’s publicity poster. Buddy Rich saw the poster and exploded. If anyone deserved to be featured, he said, it was he and not some lousy singer with jug ears. Dorsey did not budge. Buddy retaliated by speeding up his tempo whenever Frank sang his slow ballads, and soon Frank was complaining that Buddy’s drums messed up his vocals. Their fights escalated, sometimes terrifying members of the band who happened to be present.
Jo Stafford saw one such incident backstage at the Astor Hotel in New York. “Buddy called Frank a name,” she said, “and Frank grabbed a heavy glass pitcher filled with water and ice and threw it at Buddy’s head. Buddy ducked. If he hadn’t, he probably would have been killed or seriously hurt. The pitcher hit the wall so hard that pieces of glass were embedded in the plaster.”
San Francisco columnist Herb Caen recalled going backstage at the Golden Gate Theater one night and seeing the drummer trying to skewer the singer.
“Buddy was trying to ram Frank against the wall with his cymbal—the high F cymbal that you play with your foot—and Sinatra
was screaming and swinging at him,” he said. “Finally, Tommy broke it up with the help of a couple guys in the band.”
Frank did not tolerate anyone’s interfering with his singing. At one point, he refused to share the microphone with Connie Haines, Dorsey’s female vocalist, because the little southerner attracted too much attention.
“When Frank wouldn’t let me sing on the same mike, I’d look at some guy in uniform in the audience and sing to him instead,” said Connie Haines. “The guys loved it and started hollering and screaming for me, which really made Frank mad. He was ready to kill me. Between choruses, I’d step out to do the boogie or the lindy, and Frank would always belittle me. ‘Do your thing, cornball,’ he’d say. He didn’t like me because I was from down south and wasn’t New York sophisticated like he thought he was. Finally, he told Tommy to fire me, but Tommy fired him instead, and for two weeks we worked with the guy who played Doc [Milburn Stone] on Gunsmoke. Then Frank apologized, and Tommy let him come back.”
Frank’s compulsion for cleanliness showed itself when he traveled with the Dorsey band. The musicians called him “Lady Macbeth” because he was always showering and changing his clothes.
Dorsey knew that he had a spectacular singer in Sinatra, whose soft ballads carried intimate messages of love that made women swoon. Frank in turn idolized Tommy, making him the godfather of his daughter, Nancy Sandra, born June 7, 1940. He imitated the flashy way the bandleader dressed. He threw the same kind of temper tantrums. He copied his mannerisms. Tommy was demanding, a perfectionist, and so Frank became one, too. He spent money as openly as Tommy and took women as easily. The bandleader had a passion for toy trains, so Frank adopted the same hobby. Soon he even began to sound like Tommy Dorsey.