sinatra and jazz
...ionate romance with actress Ava Gardner. 1949 was arguably the worst year of Sinatra’s career. He was fired from his radio show, and six months later his New York concerts went belly up. He and his wife were divorcing, and his affair with Ava Gardner had become an open scandal. Columbia Records wanted him out. In 1950, he was released from his MGM film contract, and his own agent, MCA, dropped him. Sinatra seemed to have become old news at age 34. Sinatra and Gardner married in 1951, but separated a few years later and divorced in 1957. Things got worse when Sinatra lost his voice due to a vocal cord hemorrhage, and he was rumored to have attempted suicide. Fortunately his voice problems were temporary, and he helped pick himself back up by resuming his recording career, and making an important re-entry into films. Sinatra landed the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity in 1953, which earned him an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor. Considered a natural actor, Sinatra turned in wonderful performances in many more films, most notably The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955 and The Manchurian Candidate in 1962, which was later re-made recently this year and The Detective in 1968. In 1966, Sinatra married actress Mia Farrow, when he was 51 and she was 21. The couple divorced a little over a year later, in 1967. He married Barbara Marx in 1976. Sinatra announced his retirement in 1971 but returned for various concert tours and recordings during the next two decades. His 1980 recording of “New York, New York” made him the only singer in history to have hit records in five consecutive decades. In 1988-89, Sinatra teamed up with some of the old gang and performed for the final time in public in 1995 at age 79. Sinatra died of a heart attack at age 82 on May 14, 1998. The name Frank Sinatra when said turns many music lovers’ heads. When a musical group specializes in playing the music Frank Sinatra sang, you could expect a large audience at any venue that they are performing at. On Saturday, November 20th, a group called the Frank Sullivan Trio teamed up with a cornet player named Nick DeCarlis to play “Songs Sinatra Sang” at a minor pub establishment in New York City hosted by New York friends of Jazz & Blues. The pub was filled past capacity with some drinkers, some listeners, and some doing both. The room was dim, and had yellow lights that illuminated the white walls. The band stood in front of a room filled with small round tables, draped in white table cloths, and then farther back, there were many rows of seats. Just behind the seats, there was a table with many pamphlets advertising other such jazz events in town, and forms to fill out if you wanted to join the New York Friends of Jazz & Blues club. Behind those tables was room for people to stand and enjoy the music that was being played for those who didn’t have a seat. On the audience’s right side, there was a table set up with CD’s of the musicians for anyone that wanted to buy one. In the back of the room to the audience’s left, there was a small bar that was busy all night, dispensing cocktails to the patrons. This event was more than a concert, it was an opportunity for the citizens of New York City to congregate, and enjoy fine beverages and listen to well known jazz tunes. An older crowd dominated the room, and got a kick out of almost every song that the quartet played. The quartet consisted of the Frank Sullivan Trio who has Frank Sullivan tickling the ivory on piano, Ali Che’ree plucking the upright bass, and Billy Bowker keeping the rhythm on the drums. The fourth member of the group was Nick DeCarlis who blew the cornet, and kept the melody for the majority of the songs. Before every song was played, a story was told by the cornet player Nick DeCarlis about the song’s origin, and who the song related to. Most of the time, the audience got a chuckle out of the legend being told, and were interested to learn how their favorite tunes came about. The first...