Tuesday, December 12, 2006

His Way

"Sure, I knew some of those guys. I spent a lot of time in saloons. And saloons are not run by the Christian Brothers. There were a lot of guys around, and they came out of Prohibition, and they ran pretty good saloons. I was a kid. I worked in the places that were open. They paid you, and the checks didn't bounce. I didn't meet any Nobel Prize winners in saloons. But if Francis of Assisi was a singer and worked in saloons, he would've met the same guys."

Frank Sinatra, the man who was Elvis before there was an Elvis, and who was called by one author "the most investigated American performer since John Wilkes Booth," was born on this day in 1915. He died on 18 May 1998.

1 comment:

Dad29 said...

ONE of the people that Sinatra met in 'saloons' was a legend in his own right: Vince Lombardi.

Sinatra was working as a singer in a small NJ club; Lombardi would go to the club every Friday night after the HS football game (he was the coach) and take his wife, Marie.

They thought Frank was a bit to skinny, so they offered to buy his dinner for him. It became a regular thing before both went their separate ways...