ORIGIN UNKNOWN...

We'll chalk this one up to divine intervention...

You may be wonderin' how an otherwise relatively hip chick like me would become an adoring fan of such an old-timer...
Well, it was merely a matter of time.

My childhood experience of watching the classic musicals that my parents so adored created a subtle sense of nostalgia for the bygone days. However, my parents weren't nearly as cool as I in their musical tastes, preferring Yani (they call him that cuz it's what he makes you do!) and, what's that sax player's name? to the super style of my boys. My grandparents--really more of the Sinatra fan base peer group--were either into barbershop quartets (such as grampa the preacher) or old school country (such as granny the arkie). So where did the influence come from? I guess it might have been a gift from above...

As a bartender in Wichita, Kansas at the premier dead-head/biker bar, Downtown Wally Brown's, I was shooting pool in a local competition dive bar--i mean seedy!--when I stumbled upon a Sinatra CD in their juke box--is that cosmic placement or something? It was just like the Universe slipped it into that brief moment in time, just to change my life!--and decided, "what the heck; let's see what that era was all about!" I don't remember just what song it was... I've heard so many of his songs for years not even realizing who I was listening to, like the Married With Children theme song, Love and Marriage. Maybe it was World on a String. Whichever the case, it was like an immediately heart-melting moment, and I knew that no other man, not Jerry Garcia himself, would ever hold a candle to this one.

I returned to my own dive bar the next day and demanded that SOME album be taken off the jukebox so that SINATRA could be put on!

OK, so the bikers and the hippies gave me funny looks for quite a while after that, but man I tell ya, something otherworldly happened, and it caught on. Imagine the bearded, burly, bikers singing in unison,
I got the world on a string
Sittin' on a rainbow
Got the string 'round my fi-i-inger
What a world, What a life
I'm in love!

Then I discovered his theatrical line-up. He was really quite good. Check out my review of certain films, 3 posts down, called "what mood moves you?"
Lori, to you I recommend "High Society." It's a musical, if you can handle that! But Frank's performance is top notch. Plus, he sings some wonderful tunes.