totally ElGoodo - i love his music... but boy did he hate Hudson and Bergen counties....



asshole!

Quote:

damn talented asshole, though.

it is true - i've heard from many sources he made no secret of his disdain for his roots. it's funny how no one seemed to care and they romaticized him anyway. that kind of thing usually causes a huge backlash.

i know we all love to romanticize that Sinatra was one of us... and sure, he was born here, but once he left, he never looked back.

a lovely quote from my Grandfather (who grew up with him) "Frank Sinatra was an asshole!"


hehe.

Sinatra used to hang out at an Italian restaurant on Mallory Ave. on the west side. My mom went to school with him in Hoboken. Below is a photo of some of his other VIP friends from the NY area. Top left is Big Paul Castellano and standing third from right is Carlo Gambino. Second from right is Jimmy "The Weasel" Frattiano. The other guys are all Gambino wiseguys. Photo was taken at the Westchester Premier Theater which was owned by and "busted out" (run into bankruptcy) by the mob.

This was a great story, ole'bLUE eyes had some past in JC.

If not mistaken, I believe He may have performed at the Majestic, back in the day, if not, I'm certain a few venues offered up their mic to Mr Sinatra .

Trully a legend...

Thx
CK

I'm a pretty big Siantra fan, but never knew he did a stint in JC. Would have been great to find that record at a stoop sale or something.

yes, indeed-- totally cool. such a past our city has.

Thanks for that article...

Sinatra?s First, Freed at Last

By KEVIN COYNE - The New York Times
Published: October 21, 2006

THE most valuable object the late Frank Mane ever owned spent decades in a jumbled drawer in the living room of his apartment here ? a heavy 78-r.p.m. disc of ?Our Love? that he recorded in 1939, filed casually among newspaper clippings, sheet music, letters and other mementos from his long career as a musician. In the unlikely event that a listener couldn?t recognize the unmistakable voice of the singer, Mr. Mane wrote the name on the label in his spidery black hand: ?by Frank Sinatra.?

The two Franks knew each other from WAAT, a small Jersey City radio station where they sometimes performed on live broadcasts. Mr. Mane was older, an alto sax player who had a car and lived in Bayonne. Sinatra was a newlywed, living on Audubon Avenue in Jersey City, which was on Mr. Mane?s way home from the radio station. Both were veterans of the local nightclub circuit, and both were eager for the brighter lights elsewhere.

In March 1939, Mr. Mane had his eye on a job with Clyde Lucas and his California Dons, and he booked some studio time across the river in Manhattan to make an audition record. He assembled a 10-piece band and was rehearsing at the Sicilian Club in Bayonne when Sinatra showed up. ?He said, ?Cheech, could I go to New York with you and sing with the band?? ? said Mary Mane, recalling the way her husband always told the story. Mr. Mane died at 94 in 1998, just a few months after Sinatra. ?So my Frank said, ?Sure, why not?? ?

The band recorded four songs, including Rimsky-Korsakov?s breakneck ?Flight of the Bumblebee,? an ideal showcase, Mr. Mane thought, for his lightning virtuosity on the saxophone. They still had some time left, so Sinatra stepped to the microphone and started a song that took its melody from Tchaikovsky?s ?Romeo and Juliet? ? the first time he had ever sung solo in a recording studio:

Our love, I feel it everywhere,

Our love is like an evening prayer. ...

?You can tell it?s him,? Mrs. Mane said as the song played on a portable tape deck, filling the small kitchen of the rented apartment where she and her husband moved in 1969. ?His phrasing is the same.?

The record has finally left the living-room drawer and is now at Guernsey?s, the New York auction house that has sold items from the estates of John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley and Mickey Mantle. It will be auctioned in early December.

?Will it go for $20,000, or $200,000, or some multiple of that? God only knows,? said Arlan Ettinger, Guernsey?s president. ?What?s so unique here is that it?s the one and only first recording. With most early recordings, there are multiple copies. Something may have come out on an obscure label and only 20 have survived and are in collectors? hands, but that?s 19 more than Mrs. Mane?s.?

Mr. Mane did get the job with Clyde Lucas and spent the next three years on the road, but he wearied of the travel and returned home to Bayonne, where for the next half-century he led his own more modest bands at ballrooms and nightclubs, weddings and dinner dances. He was still playing when he was 93, and his foot was too swollen to get a black shoe on it, Mrs. Mane said. He wore slippers instead, and put black rubbers on them, and went to the job on a cane.

Just a few months after recording ?Our Love? with Mr. Mane, Frank Sinatra was singing with Harry James and saying goodbye to Hudson County. The two Franks didn?t see each other again until 1979, when Sinatra convened a reunion in Atlantic City of some of his old musician friends from his days apprenticing in New Jersey.

?Every casino he played at after that, we were his guests, V.I.P.,? said Mrs. Mane, pointing to an autographed picture of Sinatra among the dozens of photos that make the living-room wall a collage of her husband?s career.

Shortly after the reunion, Mr. Mane made a cassette copy of ?Our Love? and sent it to Sinatra, who hadn?t heard it in 40 years. A 1980 thank-you letter from Sinatra hung for years on Mrs. Mane?s wall and will be auctioned along with the record.

Mr. Mane ?liked to play the recording for his friends,? said Robert Mandelbaum, a friend of the couple who helped Mrs. Mane arrange for the auction. ?He understood its significance, but he never tried to capitalize on it. He wasn?t like that.?

Mrs. Mane is 84 now, gregarious and quick to laugh. ?There was always music here,? she said, sweeping her arm across her apartment, where she lives alone, on Social Security. ?Since he?s gone, there?s none.?

But on a gray, soggy afternoon, ?Our Love? was playing one more time. ?That?s my Frank,? she said, her ear tuning first not to the voice that everyone else hears, but to the alto sax. ?He had the warmest sound. Everybody told him that.?

E-mail: jersey@nytimes.comNew York Times Link