Connections: Polkadots and Moonbeams
What I remember most about going to see Frank Sinatra perform in New York City is the smell of lily of the valley perfume. I must have been at least 14 because if I had been younger my parents would not have let me go, joining a batch of girls who took a bus from Bayonne to Jersey City’s Journal Square and then the Hudson Tubes to the city.
But perhaps I was indeed younger — and someone’s older sister was along to chaperone? — because, according to Wikipedia, his first string of performances before screaming bobby-soxers at the Paramount Theater were long over by the time I was 14. I just looked at a YouTube video titled “Frank Sinatra Causes Riot at NYC Paramount,” and the young women in the audience, wearing their saddle shoes and knee-length coats, look considerably older. Maybe I remember one of his later stands? Or maybe the concert we saw was someplace other than the Paramount? He was a boy singer with Tommy Dorsey at nightclubs in New Jersey before Benny Goodman invited him to the Paramount and all the hysteria started.
The Hudson Tubes (Hudson and Manhattan Railroad) are now the PATH operated by the Port Authority. If memory serves, their most northerly terminus in the city was underground at 33rd Street and adjacent to the basement of Gimbels department store. It was at Gimbels that we dipped our hands into a small fountain set up on a counter that cascaded with lily of the valley. I can almost smell it now.
The Tubes also connected Newark and Hoboken with Manhattan, and since Frank Sinatra came from Hoboken he was almost a hometown boy, although I don’t think any of us thought much about the geography. Exactly why and how a skinny kid from Hoboken emanated such glamour is beyond me, but he did. I suppose it was that he sang so well about the kind of love his young fans dreamed of.
I have to admit there was a time when as a young adult I divided my friends and relatives into those who loved the Voice and those who didn’t get it. I lost interest in him — and the complicated, ring-a-ding-ding life he led as an adult — long before his star set, but have never forgotten the sentiments and sounds of those songs. The melodies and words are imprinted.
It turns out that my husband — counted with his composer sister among those who appreciated the Voice — and I own nine Sinatra CDs (I just counted), although the 78s are long gone. We made a point of watching the two-night, biographical Sinatra special on HBO this week. The four hours of the film are well worth your time (catch it “on demand,” perhaps), even if you didn’t grow up with Old Blue Eyes.
His appeal, and the songs he sang, must seem antediluvian to, well, 14-year-olds today. But I don’t think they should scoff at his story of unlikely stardom and sheer determination. Some people say the Sinatra craze was the birth of modern teenage culture. There is certainly something eternal about the way he rose, caught fire, fell victim to his own foolish and juvenile behavior, and rose, rose, rose again like a Las Vegas phoenix.
Justin Bieber, are you listening?