Pop icon is a phrase that has been applied so promiscuously to so many evanescing stars that it has little, if any, value left. But when it did mean something Frank Sinatra, who crooned his way through 50 years of this century, was its personification. He was the consummate professional who sang with great style and beauty. Generations loved, and fell in love to, the sound of his voice. Paying tribute to his fellow American in the way that only he could, the writer Gore Vidal estimated that the critical point of consummation for more than half of the country's current fortysomethings had been reached by their parents as a Sinatra ballad playing on the household gramophone also reached its climax. Such were the power, popularity, and inspirational qualities of
Ol' Blue Eyes. Only unrelenting decrepitude ended his career. He reinvented himself at least twice, which is once more than Elvis Presley and twice more than Bing Crosby. There were three phases to his career: the big band era; the Capitol years, after which he lost the plot somewhat; and finally his return to form and fame as a movie actor and founder of his own record label which was responsible for yet another immaculate series of albums. Through it all he could, admittedly, have chosen his friends more carefully, but he was more fascinated by, than involved in, the Mafia. He was a rat-pack bad boy. It was an image he craved, as do today's pop heroes, but they project it with much less grace and style, and infinitely less talent.
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