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Tommy couldn’t believe how moved women were by the frail singer with the face of a debauched faun. “I used to stand there on the bandstand so amazed I’d almost forget to take my solos,” he said. “You could almost feel the excitement comin’ up out of the crowds when that kid stood up to sing. Remember, he was no matinee idol. He was a skinny kid with big ears. And yet what he did to women was something awful.”

By the end of the year, Frank had displaced Bing Crosby at the top of the Downbeat poll, a position that Crosby had held for six years.

“That’s when he really started pushing Tommy,” said Nick Sevano, remembering how Frank clamored to record some solo songs. Dorsey finally agreed, and on January 19, 1942, with Axel Stordahl as arranger and conductor, Frank held his first recording session, singing “Night and Day,” “The Night We Called It a Day,” “The Song Is You,” and “Lamplighter’s Serenade.”

“Frank rehearsed day and night for that project,” said Connie Haines. “We were playing the Hollywood Palladium at the time and rehearsing there. They put the record on the loudspeaker, and Frank’s voice began to fill the Palladium. We all knew it was a hit. Frank knew it, too, because he said, ‘Hey, Bing, old man. Move over. Here I come.’ ”

The next afternoon, Frank sat in his room at the Hollywood Plaza with Stordahl, playing the two sides of the record over and over on his portable machine. “He just couldn’t believe his ears,” said the conductor. “He was so excited, you almost believed he had never recorded before. I think this was a turning point in his career. I think he began to see what he might do on his own.”

That evening, Frank told Sammy Cahn that he had to leave Dorsey and go on his own because he was going to be the best singer in the world. He had worried so much in the last few months about making the move that he’d lost his appetite and barely weighed a hundred pounds.

“He was almost tubercular,” Nick Sevano recalled. “He was seeing all kinds of doctors, but he was so nervous that he couldn’t eat. He never finished a meal. He’d order fifteen different things but then he’d just pick, eat two bites of a steak, a forkful of pasta, and that would be it. He’d always get in deep depressive moods, but now he started talking a lot about death and dying. He’d tell me that he didn’t think he would live very long. ‘I get the feeling that I’m going to die soon,’ he’d say. That’s why he filled his days with so much activity. He always had to be moving and constantly doing something.

“He knew the time had come to move on and was just trying to ‘guts’ up to it. I thought he was crazy myself. So did Hank. Tommy had given him such prominence with the band that Frank had become a star with Dorsey. He was making about thirteen thousand a year. He’d already been in two movies, Las Vegas Nights and Ship Ahoy, and made over eighty recordings. I thought he was nuts to throw all that away, but Frank was determined to go on his own. ‘I gotta do it, I gotta do it,’ he kept telling me. ‘And I gotta do it before Bob Eberly does it.’ He drove Tommy up the wall telling him he didn’t want to be known as ‘Dorsey’s boy’ all his life. Hank and I were worried at first, but Frank would scream at us and say, ‘I’m going to be big, real big, bigger than Bing Crosby, bigger than anybody. I’ll leave the rest of those singers in the dust.’ So we fell in line. We started by staying up all night calling Frank Cooper, an agent at GAC [General Amusement Corporation], to represent him. Manie Sacks, head of Columbia Records, had taken a liking to Frank, and he was kind of guiding us. He’d already promised Frank a recording contract and then recommended Cooper at GAC to represent him. Later, he got Frank a spot on CBS and helped us find a press agent.”

Dorsey held his band close to him and took it as a personal affront if someone wanted to leave. “When a kid in the band said, ‘I’m giving you two weeks’ notice,’ Tommy wouldn’t look at him for the whole two weeks,” Frank said. “In fact, he would never