07-11-2014, 07:46 AM
Had a top-40 hit with the maudlin "It Was A Very Good Year" but really he was just somebody from our parent's generation by the time our tastes dictated pop radio. ( Or did pop radio's arbitrary song rotation dictate ours?) Anyway. My parents had some Sinatra records. Left me cold. Nancy Sinatra's execrable "These Boots Were Made for Walkin'" record in top-40 didn't help the Sinatra family's standing with the teen me. Fast forward to post-grad, living back in Pasadena. Best friend enrolled at USC film school. Comes back raving about Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (which featured a very young Robt. De Niro). So, he drags me to it. Come to close credits and it's done with a Sinatra tune "Summer Wind". Blew me away. My folks would have howled. Me walking out of the theater asking my buddy who that singer was. Finally got to hear the Sinatra that my folks' generation knew. I didn't go out and buy Sinatra records, but with the advent of iTunes & Amazon, have been picking a selective library of individual Sinatra songs. Didn't care much for his persona and image, but the man could sing.