In the Casinos: Frank Sinatra's son also rises
BY PHIL ROURA
Saturday, November 17th 2007, 2:05 AM
Crooning his way, Frank Sinatra Jr. is at Harrah's in A.C. on Saturday.
It is the day before Halloween and nearly 10 years after Frank Sinatra's death, his shadow still hovers over his son. It's something Frank Jr. will never, ever escape.
Still called "the boy" by some of the musicians in his orchestra who also played for his dad, music is what still connects the 63-year-old Sinatra to the father he hardly knew as a child - and was not close to until later in life.
Since the elder Sinatra's death on May 14, 1998, "Sinatra Sings Sinatra" has been the bond. But even as Frank Jr. brings the show to Harrah's in Atlantic City on Saturday night, the Chairman of the Board's spirit is about to take on yet another form.
"I conducted for my father only last week," says Sinatra, pausing for the anticipated, "How so?"
Recently, a bunch of recordings Ol' Blue Eyes made decades ago were found in a vault in Los Angeles. Apparently, he didn't like how they sounded and stashed them away.
"They're tracks the public has never heard," says the son.
"Through the means of modern technology, we've been able to erase all of the old music, write some new orchestrations and begin recording them with a live orchestra and Frank's original voice.
"They sound as if they were made yesterday."
The results will be a new Frank Sinatra CD that should be out by the time the U.S. Postal Service issues a new F.S. stamp around the 10th anniversary of his death. But unlike what Natalie Cole did so famously with her father, Nat King Cole, Sinatra will not sing with Sinatra.
"I will not presume to do that," he adds. Nevertheless, he considers the project "exciting."
That's not an adjective easily applied to Junior, whose mother was Frank's first wife, Nancy.
Like his father, Frank Jr. is not shy about expressing his views. But unlike the old man, they revolve around topics other than just music - the nation's economic ills, the declining number of nightclubs, the 1990s genocide in Serbia (his wife, Cynthia, was a defense advocate with the World Court at the trials in The Hague, which he attended) and the public's insatiable appetite for faux stars such as Paris Hilton -"I don't understand the fascination with her."
"The Rat Pack may've played hard but they also worked hard," says Sinatra, comparing his father's famous posse to today's celebrities. "They never ended up in jail or lost custody of their children."
