Excerpts: New York State Of Mind by Frank Sinatra Jr.

As a kid growing up in North Jersey, the visit to New York was only a proverbial “hop, skip, and a jump.” In later years, reminiscing, he referred to it as “the 4-cent ferry ride.” For him, New York was always the most important of all cities anywhere in the world.

The early years of his musical career, in which he began to enjoy the wonder of success, saw him almost always in “The Apple.” Between the Paramount Theatre, the Empire Room at The Waldorf-Astoria, the Hotel Astor Roof, the club Riobamba, the recording studios of RCA Victor and Columbia Records, plus numerous radio broadcast theaters, his entire professional life, with very few exceptions, saw him in Midtown Manhattan.

Later in life, even when the warmth of Florida beckoned him to escape the January/February cold of the north, he always looked forward to the finish of his Miami Beach hotel engagement so that he could go “home” to the “big town.”

In this never-before-released collection of live recordings spanning four decades, producer Charles Pignone has not only assembled Sinatra songs but also the “Sinatra state of mind” with regards to New York being his favorite city.

As I listened to the recordings made in the early 1990s, I had the added pleasure of remembering that I was conducting the orchestra for him during those years. Not only was the musical experience personally gratifying but also one other imprint of his memory.

From the early days of the bobby-soxers to the later days of the sophisticated women, the fans of New York, it seemed, were always a little more devoted and loving. Such for the ladies. As for the men, they all used to display a particularly respectful smile because they had never forgotten that, like them, he too was “a guy from the streets.”

Nowadays, whenever I am in New York and midnight has already passed, if I look out the window onto a deserted crosstown street—the type that has been the foreground of so many oil paintings and the background of so many movies, for so many years—I half expect to see that gaunt figure clothed in a hat and dark-colored overcoat walking off into the night, displaying nothing more than the glow of a cigarette.

I wish.

This essay by Frank Sinatra, Jr. is one of the stories featured inside the liner notes of the SINATRA: NEW YORK boxed set.