Let Me Be Frank: The Extraordinary Life and Music of Frank Sinatra, Jr.

It is difficult not to feel sorry for Frank Sinatra, Jr. Imagine being named after a very famous father and having to convince people your whole life that you have your own identity and am not trying to live off of his name. Imagine always being referred to as “Junior” even when you were in your sixties. Making the situation even more difficult is deciding to sing in a similar style of music, knowing that you can never equal your father’s success or escape from his shadow. How does one possibly overcome that situation?

Try as he might, Frank Sinatra, Jr. never really did. At the conclusion of this definitive biography, Sinatra is quoted summing up his career and dilemma: “Over all these years, I have never had a hit record, never had a hit television program and never had a hit record…I have made no mark of my own creation…But if the audience comes and likes what I do, then that’s enough for me. I’ll settle for that.”

Veteran music journalist Bruce H. Klauber and Andrea Kauffman (entertainment manager, producer and Frank Sinatra, Jr.’s personal manager for 31 years) have collaborated on this fascinating work. In addition to the narrative and many stories from Ms. Kauffman, over 40 interviews from the friends, relatives and musical colleagues of Sinatra Jr. were conducted and the results are consistently memorable. In no less than 41 chapters (some are only a couple of pages), the Frank Sinatra, Jr. story is told as fully as possible and some of the tales are quite touching.

Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1944-2016) really never had a chance once he decided to try to become a singer. He had a complex relationship with his often absentee father which became warmer through the years, his mother was not particularly loving, his two sisters had mixed feelings towards him, and his stepmother Barbara did not seem to like him at all. When he got into a little bit of trouble as a young teenager, he was shipped off to boarding school. Despite this, he developed a love for singing along with some talent. After a promising start including touring with the Tommy Dorsey ghost band (singing some of his father’s songs of 20 years earlier), he was kidnapped in late 1963, a brief but tumultuous experience that affected him his entire life.

He returned to music, singing for a period with Harry James and then going out on his own. At that point he faced a problem that always plagued his career. Should he sing his father’s hits which is what the public really wanted from him, or write some new songs and perform tunes from his own era? Sinatra mostly sought to do the latter but it was always a struggle. When Andrea Kaufman entered the picture, she tried to steer “Junior” in the direction of singing much more of his father’s music since that would increase his popularity and his income but he resisted, usually only performing a few of Sinatra Sr.’s more obscure numbers in favor of fresher (but often inferior) recent material. Because he looked like and to a certain degree sang like his father, he never could find his own niche.

Frank Sinatra, Jr. was a skilled musician, appeared fairly regularly on television for a time, and was a good actor including being in the Sammy Davis, Jr. jazz movie A Man Called Adam. His father respected his musicianship, hiring him as his conductor in 1988 and utilizing him during the remainder of his life. Gradually after Frank Sinatra’s death, his son finally began regularly performing some of his hits, taking advantage of his unique position and doing an admirable job of paying tribute to his father’s musical legacy. But he never escaped the shadow which affected his personal relationships, his attitudes, and his career.

Let Me Be Frank explores all of this in colorful, detailed and well-written fashion. This is a book that always holds on to one’s attention. It certainly makes one wish that Frank Sinatra, Jr. had not been burdened with that name.

Let Me Be Frank:
The Extraordinary Life and Music of Frank Sinatra, Jr.
by Bruce H. Klauber and Andrea Kauffman
University Press Of Mississippi
www.upress.state.ms.us
Hardcover: 264 pages, 32 b&w illus.; $30.00
ISBN: 9781496858658

Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.

Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.

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