Frank Sinatra: 100 Years Of Jersey Kid To Cultural Icon
July 15, 2015 marked what would have been Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday, with a flurry of activities highlighting his remarkably diverse career. To examine the highlights of Frank’s life, or for pop culture immersion into his storied past, Sinatra’s backstory makes for an interesting investigation.
For many of us, Sinatra’s music was on in the background of our grandparent’s houses and on long family car rides when the adults wanted to listen to “their” music. The breadth and depth of Frank Sinatra’s career far surpasses the impressive 50-plus years he put out LP’s and collections, including well-known 1950s mob connection allegations and decades of music and movies.
It seems counter-intuitive that for such a vested, dynamic Rat Pack era icon of his time, Frank Sinatra still remains solidly represented in modern media. “Old blue eyes” himself would have marveled at how consistently and broadly represented his image and music still is. Frank’s strikingly familiar face and sound graces Facebook, Twitter, numerous websites, coffee table books, a dedicated Sirius XM station, and too many biographies to count. There’s even a Sinatra “Share A Song” app for your smart phone.
Five million followers share past personal connections, family memories, and modern applications of Sinatra’s music, movies, and influence on the Frank Sinatra Enterprises-run Facebook page. He is American cultural royalty in some circles. Whether you consider Sinatra an icon or just a New Jersey born kid who got lucky, his impact on American culture over his lifetime and to this day has been firmly established.
Take a look at this year’s “Why Sinatra Still Matters” article in the Washington Post or even the earlier piece “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold” published in Esquire magazine in 2007. You’ll learn the basics: Sinatra’s prolific career, highlights of his starlet wives, FBI surveillance details, and lesser-known connections linking Frank to the start of the New Journalism Movement by virtue of the original 1966 article written about him in a factual, yet storyteller-esque style normally found in fiction that journalists still use as a defining writing style today.
There’s little doubt, despite Frank Sinatra’s business and musical talent, he had a personality that you couldn’t ignore. U2’s Bono introduced Sinatra at the 1994 Grammy Awards where he won a lifetime achievement award.
“Frank’s the chairman of the bad attitude… Rock ‘n roll plays at being tough, but this guy is the boss – the chairman of boss… I’m not going to mess with him, are you?”
[Photo by Hulton Archive/GettyImages]
