His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [34]
A few nights later as Frank stood at the microphone singing “All or Nothing at All,” the manager rushed to the stage waving his hands and yelling, “Stop! No more! Enough!”
“We were thrown out—right in the middle of that song,” said Frank. “They didn’t even let us get through it. The manager came up and waved his hands for us to stop. He said Harry’s trumpet-playing was too loud for the joint. He said my singing was just plain lousy. He said the two of us couldn’t draw flies as an attraction—and I guess he was right. The room was empty as a barn.”
The owner figured that he should charge Harry for emptying his establishment, so he refused to pay the band. With no money, Frank sent his wife back to New Jersey. Then he and the band headed for Chicago for another booking in the Sherman House Hotel. Every big band in the area was in town that week at the command of the musicians’ czar, James Petrillo, to perform for the annual Christmas benefit party sponsored by Chicago’s Mayor Edward J. Kelly.
After the benefit, Frank was slipped a note from Tommy Dorsey that said, “Meet me in my suite at the Palmer House.” Frank knew that the famous bandleader was looking for someone to replace Jack Leonard, who in 1939 was considered the best band vocalist. Leonard was thinking of leaving Dorsey to go on his own, and that’s all the temperamental bandleader had needed to hear before looking for another singer.
Frank was convinced that with Tommy Dorsey he would become a star. Backed by that orchestra, he would never have to worry about bookings or getting thrown out of places like Victor Hugo’s. He knew that the critics would have to write about him, and recordings and radio shows would follow. There would be one-nighters all over the country in the best ballrooms and biggest theaters. But Frank worried that Dorsey might remember him from an earlier disastrous audition.
As Frank himself recalled it: “I’d sung in front of Dorsey once a few years before I’d joined him. Or rather I hadn’t sung! It was an audition, and I had the words on the paper there in front of me and was just going to sing when the door opened and someone near me said, ‘Hey, that’s Tommy Dorsey.’ He was like a god, you know. We were all in awe of him in the music business. Anyway, I just cut out completely—dead. The words were there in front of me, but I could only mouth air. Not a sound came out. It was terrible.”
Hurrying to the hotel now, Frank waited hours for Tommy Dorsey. Finally the “Sentimental Gentleman of Swing” arrived wearing wire-rimmed glasses. A direct, blunt man, his first words were: “Yes, I remember that day when you couldn’t get out those words.” Undaunted, Frank laughed, and this time he didn’t mouth air. In a smooth baritone he sang “Marie,” which was Jack Leonard’s signature song and one of Dorsey’s biggest hits. The bandleader offered him $125 a week, provided he could get out of his contract with Harry James. Frank accepted on the spot.
Returning to his hotel, he went to James’s room. “He was reading,” recalled Frank. “I walked into the room. I walked out again. I must’ve done that four times. Then I walked around in circles. Finally, Harry put down his magazine. ‘What’s bothering you? Seven-year itch?’ So I told him. I’d’ve been happier opening a vein.”
Harry called his business manager and asked for Frank’s contract, which still had seventeen months to run.
“When he had it, he sat there and tore it into little pieces,” said Frank. “He did that just because I had a better offer. No getting sore, no talking about letting him down, then or later.”
Frank stayed on with Harry James long enough to break in a new singer by the name of Dick Haymes. On Sinatra’s last night with the band, Harry wished him well and Frank introduced Haymes to the audience.