HAPPY 100TH FRANK

This is the sound I was born into, the music on the radio when I was bought home from the hospital, or not long before. A time when big band singers were all about tone and resonance, and here was the young man who would become known as "The Voice" on this very early recording with the Tommy Dorsey big band—where Sinatra was known as "the boy singer."

Listening to this record, all the way through, will hopefully allow skeptics and fans both to appreciate how Sinatra changed music, not only with his incredible phrasing and melodic control but with the vulnerability he wasn't afraid to put into his vocal interpretations of lyrics that otherwise, in this case, would be almost a goof or novelty tune narrative.

You can see why he became the first true teen idol, to girls mostly, called at the time bobby soxers for the short white socks they mostly wore, like my two older sisters. They all wanted to mother this skinny, little, Jersey original.