Nancy Sinatra Follow

Frank Sinatra has been called the greatest popular singer

of the century. Whether that is true, in a century that

also offers us Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and many others

is, of course, a matter of personal emotional choice and,

therefore, unknowable. What can be said is that under the

intense and fickle scrutiny of the pop marketplace for

nearly two-thirds of a century, Sinatra's music was in the

air the world breathed and fell out of fashion only long

enough for the deserters either to grow up or recognize

that what was offered in its place was almost always trash

by comparison.

Sinatra was born Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, N.J., and as a

schoolboy nursed ambitions to be a journalist. The earliest

known example of Sinatra on record come from his 1935