Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, on December 12, 1915. The son of Italian immigrants. Started singing in saloons for tips as a teenager.

Got his big break with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1940. By 1943, the bobby soxers at the Paramount Theatre were screaming themselves hoarse. He was the first real pop idol — before Elvis, before the Beatles, there was Sinatra.

The Capitol years (1953-1962) are the artistic peak. Working with arrangers Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins, Sinatra invented the concept album. In the Wee Small Hours (1955) is fifty minutes of 3am heartbreak, every song in the same key, the same tempo, the same emotional register.

Songs for Swingin' Lovers! (1956) is the opposite pole — brass, confidence, finger-snapping swing. These albums changed what an album could be.

The Reprise years (1961-1969) included his own record label, the Rat Pack Vegas era, and the late-60s comebacks — Strangers in the Night (1966), That's Life (1966), My Way (1969). He kept recording into the 90s. When he died on May 14, 1998, the lights of the Empire State Building turned blue.

That's the kind of singer he was.

In the Wee Small Hours (April 1955) was the first of the great Capitol concept albums. Nelson Riddle arranged. Sinatra sang every song as if it were 3am and the bourbon had stopped working.

Glad to Be Unhappy. Mood Indigo. Last Night When We Were Young.

It Never Entered My Mind. Sixteen songs about loneliness, performed with the most devastating phrasing ever committed to tape.

Songs for Swingin' Lovers! (March 1956) was the flip side. Billy May's brass arrangements hit like a punch to the chest.

I've Got You Under My Skin is seven minutes of pure swing — the trombone solo alone is worth the price of the album. You Make Me Feel So Young. Too Marvelous for Words.

Pennies from Heaven. This is what confidence sounds like.

Come Fly with Me (January 1958) was the travel-themed album. The title track, with Billy May's horn arrangements, is impossible to resist. Around the World.

Isle of Capri. Moonlight in Vermont. Blue Hawaii.

Autumn in New York. It's the album that made you want to live in a Boeing 707 with a martini in your hand.

Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (September 1958) returned to the concept-album format. It's bleaker than Wee Small Hours. Angel Eyes.

One for My Baby (And One More for the Road). Gone with the Wind. Willow Weep for Me.

Nelson Riddle's arrangements are mournful and spare. Sinatra considered it his finest vocal performance.

My Way (1969) was the late-career statement. Paul Anka wrote the lyrics to a French melody. Sinatra sang it with the perfect balance of defiance and resignation.

"And now, the end is near." It became his signature song. He reportedly hated it, thought it was self-indulgent.

Audiences disagreed.

Frank Sinatra is the reason we have singers who interpret songs rather than just perform them. Before Sinatra, popular singers were vocalists — they hit the notes, they projected, they entertained. Sinatra treated every song as a three-minute short story.

He bent the rhythm to match the meaning. He held notes to amplify emotion. He cut syllables short to suggest heartbreak.

Every singer who came after — Elvis, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, even rappers like Jay-Z and Drake — learned from Sinatra's phrasing.

The concept album exists because of Sinatra. In the Wee Small Hours (1955) and Only the Lonely (1958) proved that an album could be a unified artistic statement rather than a collection of singles. Every concept album from Sgt.

Pepper's to Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly traces its lineage to Sinatra and Nelson Riddle in a Capitol studio in 1955.

My Way, New York New York, Fly Me to the Moon, That's Life, Strangers in the Night — these songs are cultural permanent installations. Weddings, funerals, movies, karaoke bars. The Sopranos opens with Woke Up This Morning but it closes with Don't Stop Believin' — and in between, every episode treats Sinatra like the patron saint of New Jersey Italians.

Because he was.