Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [104]
I think part of the reason Frank didn’t enjoy being surprised was his masculine vanity. He’d always been a little vain in an old-fashioned Italian way. Extraordinarily for someone who’d chosen a career as an entertainer, he hated to be the center of attention, especially as he got older. One of the sexiest men in the world was in his seventh decade, and he didn’t like the way that made him look and feel.
The natural side effects of the aging process began to bother Frank, and it was his thinning hair that troubled him the most. After combing it across the top of his head for a while, he decided to do something about it. “I don’t care what I look like at home,” he said, “but if I’m going to continue working, then I think maybe I should get a toupee.” He found a great wig maker in New York named Joe Paris, who matched Frank’s own hair pretty well. He didn’t bother wearing Joe’s toupee at home or with people he knew, and he didn’t mind personal photographs being taken of him without it; he’d just put it on for the benefit of his public. The fact that Frank’s hair was thinning never bothered me one little bit. I even toyed with the idea of planting a big red kiss on his bald spot like I used to do with old Pa Hillis in Bosworth, but of course Frank would never have held still long enough.
Frank also suffered intermittent hearing problems, not helped by his eardrum having been punctured at birth. The medical condition that kept him from serving in the war flared up repeatedly all his life. During one European tour, he managed to go onstage in London and Dublin despite a raging ear infection. By the time I got him home, he had to have his eardrum completely rebuilt in what was pioneering surgery for the time. The deafness this caused worsened as Frank aged, and that really bothered him too—especially onstage, where he’d stand near the drummer to ensure he could follow the beat or ask for strong bass notes in his orchestral arrangements. “Give me a little extra support on the horns, fellas,” he’d tell the band.
He’d always been critical of his voice, and that only intensified the older he got. He never liked to discuss a performance afterward because he knew when his voice wasn’t as good as it used to be. If someone told him he’d been great, he’d reply, “It was a nice crowd, but my reed was off” or “I wasn’t so good on the third number.” Strangely, in spite of his hearing problems, he had the most incredible ear, which often drove those he worked with nuts. There could be an orchestra of a hundred musicians, and if one played a single bum note he’d know exactly who was responsible. “I could have sworn you were here yesterday for rehearsals,” he’d say, or he’d ask pointedly, “Where are you working next week?”
Despite his exacting standards, musicians, arrangers, and orchestra leaders loved working with Frank because he was the greatest. There was a force field of energy surrounding him that everybody fed off, and because he expected the best, he brought out the best in people. Those musicians would rather play for Frank than for almost anybody else. Just to be able to say they’d worked with the most important singer of his generation was worth the gig. Gordon Jenkins (whom Frank called “Lefty” because he was left-handed) arranged a great many of Frank’s songs, and the two of them really got along. Lefty had been on the periphery of my life one way or another since before my Riviera days. Of a song that Gordon wrote in an autobiographical suite about Frank’s life called “Before the Music Ends,” he told me, “You’re in that one, Barbara.” I listened but couldn’t hear any reference to me until Gordon explained, “It’s in the line ‘You won’t hear me talking about saving shoes; baby’s got fifty-seven pairs!’ ”
That wasn’t the only song in which I was referred to. Not long after we were married, Frank recorded a number called “I Love My Wife” from the Broadway show of the same name, set in New Jersey, which he sang just for me. Deciding that wasn’t good enough, he had Jimmy Van Heusen and David Mack write a number specially for me