Free Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan

foreordained, a vastly ambitious man whose chief abhorrence in life was the phonograph record. As James Caesar Petrillo saw it, the phonograph was an invention whose sole purpose was to put honest musicians out of work. And Petrillo (whose path would cross with Frank Sinatra’s in an important way in just a few years) was a Friend of the Musician, and Harry Steeper was a friend of James C. Petrillo’s. 2
    So—surprise—Frankie got the job. Harold Arden could wax the tips of his mustache with
that
.

5

    Frank fronting Bill Henri and His Headliners at the Rustic Cabin, early 1939. Harry James would discover Sinatra here in June. (photo credit 5.1)
    T he universe, in Dolly Sinatra’s view, was a well-ordered place as long as she had anything to do with it. Within her realm, she could control the miracle of birth itself and all the machinations of the day-to-day world. But certain areas threatened her: Frankie’s temperament, for one. She possessed the same volcanic center, but she could keep a lid on it. The thought of living without that control perplexed and, at times, terrified her.
    Sex was another matter, a dark force that had to be contained atall costs. With Marty, the question had long since been put to rest, but poor Chit-U was another story. Poor Chit-U, slow-witted and gimpy, was forty, well past the age when a man should have a wife. Still, one day Chit-U found a woman: a poor little wounded duck who worked behind the counter at the greengrocer, so shy she herself could barely speak. Within a few weeks he was taking her out for beers on Friday nights.
    Dolly saw where it was going.
    The man lived under her roof, mopped her floors, dusted her vases, and put his salary from the docks into her pocket. If a piece of heavy equipment, a pallet, or a shipping crate, God forbid, fell on Chit-U’s head, the life-insurance money was hers.
    Now he was using his money—which was her money—to buy drinks for this woman. Dolly knew meals and gifts would follow, and soon enough, a ring, and brats, and then his insurance would be signed over to
them
.
    Dolly found out where the woman lived and went there one night, stood under her window, and shrieked abuse and obscenities at the top of her precinct captain’s voice. The whole neighborhood heard the racket, the cop on the beat came by—but one sharp look from Dolly took care of
him
. She continued her shrieking; the poor little wounded bird shivered in her rented room, making the only possible assumption:
Chit-U must have a wife
.
    But Frankie’s stream of girls would not be stopped so easily.
    A few years earlier, just before he dropped out of high school, he had gone out for a while with Marian Brush, a cute, smart Garden Street neighbor. One afternoon when the two of them came home from school, Dolly was there. Frankie, in all innocence, said he wanted to show Marian something amazing: his new radio that could pick up
Pittsburgh
.
    Marian, glancing back over her shoulder as they went up the stairs, saw Dolly staring after them with an expression the girl would remember until she was an old lady:
She thought we were going up there to do it
. Just the look in Dolly’s eyes made Marian feel dirty.
    But Frankie would always have girls pursuing him. And the Cabinwas an ideal base of operations: it was a sneak joint, a place where married men brought their girlfriends. The place oozed sex, and Frankie, showing the giggly couples to their booths in his waiter’s outfit, felt horny just being there. It showed in his voice.
    The lyrics had begun to mean something.
Somebody wrote that for a reason—try to imagine what that reason might have been
. The better the song, the deeper the meaning.
    What is this thing called love?
this funny thing called love?
    Feeling the words, and remembering how Billie could tell you her whole life story in the glide of a note, Frank began to sing the lyrics as if he really meant them, and something happened.
    The girls, dancing with their