His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [36]
Frank’s compulsion for cleanliness showed itself when he traveled with the Dorsey band. The musicians called him “Lady Macbeth” because he was always showering and changing his clothes.
Dorsey knew that he had a spectacular singer in Sinatra, whose soft ballads carried intimate messages of love that made women swoon. Frank in turn idolized Tommy, making him the godfather of his daughter, Nancy Sandra, born June 7, 1940. He imitated the flashy way the bandleader dressed. He threw the same kind of temper tantrums. He copied his mannerisms. Tommy was demanding, a perfectionist, and so Frank became one, too. He spent money as openly as Tommy and took women as easily. The bandleader had a passion for toy trains, so Frank adopted the same hobby. Soon he even began to sound like Tommy Dorsey.
“I used to sit up there on the bandstand with the other singers,” he said. “They’d be looking all around the dance hall or whatever it was we were playing in, and I’d be looking at Tommy Dorsey’s back. I never took my eyes off his back. He’d stand there playing his trombone, and I’d swear the son of a bitch was not breathing. I couldn’t even see his jacket move—nothing. Finally, he gets finished playing ‘Sleepy Lagoon’ one night and he turns to me and says, ‘Jesus Christ, you mean you still haven’t figured it out yet?’ ”
“He knew I’d been watching him all the time, but he would never let me know. Then that night he explained to me how he would sneak short breaths out of the corners of his mouth at certain points in the arrangement. I do the same thing in a song.”
Having taught Frank his technique for seamless phrasing, Dorsey advised him to listen to Bing Crosby’s singing. “I used to tell him over and over, there is only one singer you ought to listen to, and his name is Crosby. All that matters to him is the words, and that is the only thing that ought to matter to you too.”
Frank listened to Tommy Dorsey, who had become his mentor, his guide, his hero. “He became almost a father to me,” he said. On the road, he sat up with him playing cards until five in the morning because Dorsey could not sleep. “He had less sleep than any man I’ve ever known,” said Frank many years later. “I’d fall off to bed around then, but around nine-thirty A.M. a hand would shake me and it’d be Tommy saying, ‘Hey pally—how about some golf?’ So I’d totter out onto the golf course.”
Nevertheless, Frank was no longer star-struck. If Dorsey was late to a rehearsal, Frank acted as substitute orchestra leader. “When Dorsey arrived, Sinatra would fix him with a glare of ‘Where the fuck you been?’ ” said lyricist Sammy Cahn. “Dorsey would apologize that he’d been tied up in this and that, and Sinatra’d say something quaint like ‘Bullshit.’ ”
Tommy was a fan of Dolly Sinatra. Nick Sevano said, “Tommy adored Frank’s mom and her cooking, so we were always dragging the band to Hoboken for one of Dolly’s Italian dinners.” Sevano had been one of the many babies delivered by Mrs. Sinatra. Now in his work with Frank, he soon became the conduit between the overbearing mother and her elusive son.
“Dolly would get mad at me if I didn’t call her every day to keep her informed of what was going on,” said Nick. “I even had to call her when we were on the road because Frank didn’t have the time. Boy, if I didn’t call, she’d chew me out the next time I talked to her. ‘You bastard, where have you and that son of a bitch son of mine been? Why didn’t you call me, ya fucking bum?’ she’d say. I still remember sitting in her living room on Garden Street just after we had come home from California with Dorsey’s band and Frank had not been in touch with her for over a week. God, did she give him hell. ‘You bastard, you too good to call your own mother?’ she shouted. I always took her side, of course. ‘Jesus, Frank,’ I’d say. ‘Why didn’t you call her?’ Frank would lower his head and say, ‘I couldn’t. I was on the road.’ Then she’d really light into him. Frank would sit there and take it because he respected her. After she got the last word and blasted