A musical biography documents Frank Sinatra's legacy through seven decades, including The Skinny Years in the 1930s and 1940s; The Hat Years of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; and the Tux Years of the 1980s and 1990s. 25,000 first printing. Not surprisingly, most of Frank Sinatra's biographers have raked through the muck of the singer's marriages, divorces, mob connections, and outbursts of foul-mouthed misogyny. Will Friedwald takes a different tack. Oh, the biographical facts are there, but Friedwald is mostly interested in the Voice--that irresistible, inimitable instrument, the absence of which would punch a major hole in the soundtrack of life. This is certainly the best book ever written on Sinatra's music, which means that it sheds a great deal of light on American pop music in general. And while Friedwald gets downright rhapsodic when it comes to the career highlights, he's not afraid to tweak Ol' Blue Eyes when he comes up with a dud. Frank Sinatra is a 20th-century icon?a singer, actor, and celebrity whose career stretches from boy singer with Tommy Dorsey in the Forties to creater of two bestselling discs of duets in the Nineties. In this musical biography, names like Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins (some of Sinatra's most significant arrangers) dominate, while Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow get but passing mention. Despite the serious intent, Friedwald writes in a loosely casual writing style (as in his earlier Jazz Singing, LJ 5/1/90) that tends to wear thin after a while. Also, a few examples with musical notation would have been welcome. Still, the level of detail in which his singing and recordings are discussed in over 500 pages is sure to delight true Sinatra fans, even if more casual readers may lose interest. Recommended for larger popular music collections.?Michael Colby, Univ. of California, Davis Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. In the twilight of his career, Frank Sinatra has received many accolades. None is more appropriate than this critical but loving overview. Other volumes on "the Voice" have concentrated on Sinatra the celebrity--on his Rat Pack image and stormy personal life--at the expense of his brilliant music. But Friedwald wrote the book on pop vocalists-- Jazz Singers (1990)--and he details Sinatra's musical legacy, from his start as a big band vocalist and his early Columbia recordings, through his Capitol Records triumphs of the 1950s and his not always successful 1960s and 1970s experiments on the Reprise label, to his commercial pinnacle but aesthetic nadir, the recent Duets . With acumen and enthusiasm, Friedwald lavishes fitting praise on Sinatra's many masterpieces, drawing on interviews with the arrangers and musicians who contributed to Sinatra's success, yet he's not reluctant to slam Sinatra's occasional miscues. Other performers go out of style eventually, but Sinatra's music seems genuinely timeless. So Friedwald's astute, illuminating study should enjoy a richly deserved long life on library shelves. Gordon Flagg Tony Bennett Friedwald's book is the most important and complete documentary of popular American music....It shows that Sinatra alone is the president of all the popular American singers. -- Review The week Will Friedwald was born, Frank Sinatra commemorated the occasion by recording Point of No Return. The author of Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond and a regular contributor to The Village Voice and The New York Times , Friedwald has also written for New York magazine, Entertainment Weekly, New York Newsday, L.A. Weekly, and The New York Observer, as well as for numerous music and film journals. He has been a consultant on many television documentaries and has produced and annotated hundreds of compact disc reissues, including several Grammy-winning packages. In 1990, Nancy Sinatra Lambert invited him to write an essay for Frank Sinatra: The Capitol Years. Since then he has contributed to compilations of the music of Frank Sinatra on all four labels on which Sinatra has recorded. CHAPTER ONE "NIGHT AND DAY": THE SINATRA STYLE An artist must create a personal cosmos, a verdant world in continuity with tradition, further fulfilling man's awareness, his degree of consciousness, and bringing new subtilization, vision, and beauty to the elements of experience. It is in this way that Idea, powered by conviction and necessity, will create its own style and the singular, momentous structure capable of realizing its intent. Leon Kirchner (American composer, born 1919) "Why is it," one late-night comic recently asked, "that when either Frank Sinatra or the President is in New York, all the hookers suddenly get better looking?" The hubbub regarding a visit from the chief executive can be easily understood. But how can we account for the disruptive power of this swinging septuagenarian, especially in the city that's seen it all? Sinatra is undeniably a dinosaur. But like t