’Ol’ cold eyes

IN A special Millennium edition Time magazine named Frank Sinatra ‘the voice’ of the 20th century.

Few, outside of classical music circles, would quibble. “He loved, he brawled, he had style, he had guts, he could even act,” Bruce Handy wrote in his profile of the boy from Hoboken. “And, oh yeah, he defined American pop.”

Much has been written of Sinatra’s unassailable greatness as a singer, and most of it is justified. His musical idol was Bing Crosby, and James Kaplan Crosby’s influence on Sinatra cannot be underestimated.