I really enjoyed completing this assignment. The insight and knowledge I gained from researching Frank Sinatra expanded my understanding of the development of the United States. From the history of music and art and their influence on society to the evolution of the American mentality and the development of organized crime, Frank Sinatra was in the middle of it all. I chose to research Ol Blue Eyes because of my love for music and wanted to discover his greatness as an artist and singer. I didn't know about his influence on American culture and his involvement with the prolific gangsters of the 1930s and 1940s. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Widely considered the greatest singer in American pop history, Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. Frank Sinatra has shaped musical trends for more than half a century. Sinatra's style and personality seemed to change over time, from decade to decade. In fact, he pioneered two different styles of music in the 1940s and 1950s. He defined that role in the early 1940s, when his first solo appearances caused the kind of mass mayhem that later hosted Elvis Presley and the Beatles. But don't let the Pop label fool you, Ol Blue Eyes provided much more than just popular entertainment to the world. America experienced a cultural explosion to which Sinatra greatly contributed. During a career in show business that spanned more than 50 years and included recordings, films and television shows as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and arenas sports, Sinatra established himself as a singular mirror of the American psyche. During World War II, Sinatra's tender romance served as a dreamlike emotional connection between millions of women and their husbands and boyfriends fighting overseas. By the late 1950s, Sinatra had become such a personification of American show business success that his life and art became emblematic of the zeitgeist. His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early '40s to the sophisticated swinger of the '50s and '60s seemed to personify the country's loss of innocence. (Lahr, 1997) And he had lost his innocence, according to the media representation of Sinatra as a thug or gangster. The media and political figures such as J. Edgar Hoover, from the time he rose to fame until the day he died, questioned Sinatra's affiliation with organized crime. Sinatra used his fame and talents to express his sociopolitical views on the equality of Americans of all ethnic backgrounds. Frank Sinatra is considered the most influential American singer of all time. In addition to Sinatra's gentle but persuasive tone, his lyrical phrasing set him apart from others and provided a model for musicians to follow for half a century. Sinatra appeared on the scene with Columbia Records in 1942 and at age 47, he was America's favorite popular music star. He topped the charts with hits such as I Fall In Love Too Easy and Empty Arms. However, as Sinatra grew older, his style and perhaps a bit of his personality changed. Thus emerged Frank's second period of greatness, the Capitol Records years. Frank Sinatra introduced himself to the world as a gentle crooner of love ballads in the early 1940s when he decided to leave Tommy Dorsey's band and pursue a solo act. Sinatra, still young at heart and innocent,captured the hearts of young women across the country. The lean, blue-eyed crooner, quickly nicknamed The Voice, made hordes of bobby-soxers swoon in the 1940s with an extraordinarily smooth and flexible baritone that he wielded with unrivaled skill. (Lahr, 1997) His mastery of long phrasing inspired many other male crooners, including Dick Haymes, Vic Damone and Tony Bennett in the 1940s and 1950s and more recently pop-jazz star Harry Connick Jr. In some ways though , the Sinatra of this period, his first great period (1943-1952) seems barely recognizable from the figure that emerges next. How can we reconcile the vulnerable childish crooner of this period with the finger-snapping, bell-ringing chairman of the board of the next period? (Mustazza, 1995). Changes in Sinatra's vocal timbre coincided with a precipitous career. descendants in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But in 1953, Sinatra made one of the most dramatic career comebacks in show business history, re-emerging as a performer of popular standards with a coarser voice and jazzier, which gives a more aggressive personal imprint to his songs. After the voice lost its velvety youth, Sinatra's interpretations became more personal and idiosyncratic, so that each performance became a direct expression of his personality and mood of the moment. (Wikipedia, 2001) By expressing anger, petulance, and bravado, attitudes that had been largely excluded from the acceptable vocabulary of pop sentiment, Sinatra paved the way for the unfettered vocal aggression of rock singers. (Mustazza, 1995)This re-emergence of Sinatra coincided with the introduction of Swing music into American society. Swing is a form of jazz music that is less structured and features faster rhythm sections and percussion. As jazz in general, and swing jazz in particular, began to gain popularity across the United States, a number of changes occurred in the culture surrounding this music. On the one hand, the introduction of swing in the early 1930s, with its strong rhythms, loud tunes, and "swinging" style, led to an explosion of creative dance in the black community. The various rowdy, energetic, creative, and improvised dances that came into use during this era became collectively known as swing dancing. The second change that occurred as swing music gained popularity outside of the black community was, to some extent, an increasing pressure on musicians and bandleaders to soften (some would say dumb down) the music to meet a more calm and conservative music. , Anglo-American audience. Well, Sinatra rebelled against these pressures and thrived as he continued to contribute to the swing culture of the 1950s. In fact, almost single-handedly, he contributed to the revival of vocalized swing music that brought pop American to a new level of musical sophistication. Coinciding with the rise of full-length albums (LPs), his 1950s recordings were instrumental in establishing a canon of American pop song literature. With Nelson Riddle, his most talented arranger, Sinatra set the standards for sound, style, and song selection in pop recording in the pre-Beatles era. The aggressive, fast-paced style of Sinatra's mature years spawned a genre of fast-paced, hard-hitting belters associated with Las Vegas, which he helped establish and popularize as an entertainment capital. The adulation peaked on October 12, 1944, opening day. of a return commitmentthree weeks at the Paramount, when 30,000 fans - mostly bobby-soxers - formed a frenzied crowd in Times Square. “It was the war years and there was great loneliness,” Sinatra later recounted, who was prevented from enlisting because of a perforated eardrum. "I was the boy who, in all the local pharmacies, had left, enlisted for the war. That was all." From 1943 to 1945 he was the lead singer of "Your Hit Parade" and at the same time began recording for Columbia. Due to a musicians' strike, the accompaniment during his early recording sessions for the label was a vocal choir called the Bobby Tucker Singers, instead of an orchestra. Reinventing himself in the '50s, the starry-eyed boy next door became the cosmopolitan man of the world, a bruised romantic with a badass side and a song for every emotional season. In a series of brilliant concept albums, he codified a musical vocabulary of adult relationships with which millions identified. The haunted voice heard on a jukebox in the wee hours of the morning This morning, lamenting the end of a love affair, it was the same voice that jubilantly invited the world to "come fly with me" to exotic realms in a never-ending party. For years, Sinatra seemed the epitome of the hedonistic, hard-drinking swinger, who could choose his women and was the leader of a partying entourage. (Petkov, 1998) Sinatra appeared in more than 50 films and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the fiery misfit soldier Maggio in "From Here to Eternity" (1953). As an actor, he could communicate the same complex mix of emotional honesty, vulnerability, and arrogance that he projected as a singer, but he often chose his roles indifferently or recklessly. It was as a singer that he exerted the greatest cultural influence. Following his idol Bing Crosby, who pioneered the use of the microphone, Sinatra transformed popular singing by infusing the lyrics with a personal, intimate point of view that conveyed a constant current of eroticism. On a deeper level, Sinatra's career and public image touched many aspects of American cultural life. For millions, his modest Italian-American origin in Hoboken, New Jersey, was a symbol of ethnic success. And more than most artists, he used his influence to support political candidates. His shift in allegiance from a pro-Roosevelt Democrat in the 1940s to a pro-Reagan Republican in the 1980s was accompanied by a seismic shift in American politics. Rumors of Mafia ties hounded Frank Sinatra throughout his rich and tumultuous life. His denials were as ready on his lips as his signature song “My Way” was in his later years. (crimemagazine.com) J. Edgar Hoover didn't buy it. He thought Ol Blue Eyes was a murderer and a mobster with a golden voice. Although the Hoover FBI assembled the largest dossier on Sinatra of any entertainer in U.S. history, none of the damning information contained therein was ever submitted to a grand jury. On numerous occasions, the government came close to indicting Sinatra, but never did so. Sinatra had friends at the highest levels, first President Kennedy, then President Nixon, and finally President Reagan. Each, in different ways and to varying degrees, came to his aid when he needed it most, allowing him to defend the mob with impunity. In the 1960s, most Americans became aware of Sinatra's friendship with Sam Giancana, the Chicago mob boss. Most people were unaware of family ties.