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Christmas stocking: new Sinatra bio essays early career rise and fall of →
Goody, goody: 800 pages of deep Frank Sinatra thought. I haven’t determined whether author James Kaplan has a second volume in mind, but I’d sure welcome it. Peter Guralnick made a career out of his tremendous, 1300-page, two-volume Elvis Presley investigation; for all the ink spilled on Ol’ Blue Eyes, Sinatra books veer towards either personality studies (and assassinations: hi, Kitty Kelley) or musicological exegesis (the Will Friedwald and Charles Granata books are must-reads), but seldom both. This biography addresses the gulf.
Frank: The Voice ends in 1953, at the end of Sinatra’s decade-long stint on Columbia Records, his career in tatters, his personal life the subject of tabloid derision and suicidal drama. It’s long held that his phoenix-like rise from such ashes is the standard-bearer for career recoveries: it’s telling how little mental imagery non-fans have from this period. This is not the swaggering, silver-haired Chairman of the Board Frank we’re talking about here, nor the cocky, world-beating megastar of the late-1950s. This is the scrawny, thirtysomething pop idol. Guralinick’s Presley books divide at an appropriate evolutionary point, and Kaplan’s The Voice suspends the narrative in a way that makes a second volume necessary.
