Frank Sinatra -- Dec. 12, 1915 - May 14, 1998 -- Ol' Blue Eyes Sang With Unparalleled Emotion

Frank Sinatra was the greatest pop singer of all time. His phrasing was perfect, his sense of timing and rhythm innate, his delivery always just right for the message the song meant to convey.

But it wasn't technique that made him the greatest, but rather the emotion he brought to every song he sang. You really believed he knew the loneliness of "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," the uncertainty inherent in "All the Way," the soaring joy of "Come Fly With Me," the bravado of "My Way" (no doubt about that) and the fun of "Something Stupid" or "High Hopes." That's why songwriters loved him - because he always understood what a song was all about, and could realize it naturally, knowingly, effortlessly.

He lost some of his "chops" in his later years, sometimes having to strain in performance to reach notes he once glided through, but he never lost the devotion of his fans. And he kept recording, sometimes resorting to gimmickry to attract interest, such as his two "Duets" releases of recent years, on which he was matched, and mismatched, with the likes of Bono of U2, Gloria Estefan, Kenny G and Chrissie Hynde. With the advent of CDs, almost all his material was re-released, often in comprehensive box sets. Such re-releases introduced his genius to legions of new, young fans.

The depth of emotion in his artistry contrasted with his crude, tough offstage personality, which played itself out in violent punch-ups with photographers and others, association with "made" gangsters and macho posturings with the likes of the Rat Pack. That dichotomy, that contradiction, is one of the things that made him fascinating, and gave an edge and a spark to everything he did.

Sinatra was a star practically all his life. He emerged from the swing bands of the late 1930s to become the first teen singing idol. Decades before the Beatles, in the pre-war 1940s, he had girls screaming and fainting at his shows, and clamoring after his every move. He was the first pop singer to have an identifiable army of fans, known as bobby-soxers for the rolled-down socks they wore, usually with saddle shoes or penny loafers.

His appeal to young girls and adolescents resulted in disdain for him from many critics, and even from some of his peers. He was an object of derision and caricature in his early career, before his gifts were fully appreciated. Old Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies still playing on television show him as a rooster, skinny as a rail, crooning to chickens who disgorge piles of eggs as they swoon.

For some time he was a recurring, if unseen, character in the old "Li'l Abner" comic strip. When shady-looking types tried to pull a fast one on naive Dogpatch natives in the strip, the bad guys always got what they wanted by uttering, "Frankly, I'm with Frank." The menace Sinatra could exude was not lost on the strip's readers - or on Sinatra himself, who threatened to sue.

Sinatra's tie with gangsters was dramatically referred to in "The Godfather," in a scene in which a Hollywood producer who resisted the mob wakes up to find his prize racehorse's severed head next to him in bed.

The scene was a reference to a probably apocryphal story of how Sinatra got a career-boosting role in the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity." Eli Wallach originally won the role, but mysteriously dropped out of the production shortly before filming began. Sinatra, whose career was in a slump at the time due to a number of factors - resentment over the fact that he did not serve in the military in World War II, poor song choices by his producers (most notably Mitch Miller) at Columbia Records (Sinatra later founded his own label, Reprise), the replacement of radio by television, and the emergence of a new pop form called rock 'n' roll - swiftly replaced Wallach, reportedly after pressure on the studio from Sinatra's pals, including mobsters.

The film was a turning point in his career. He won an Oscar for playing a military hero, which boosted his image, even among veterans.

Sinatra's movie career was almost as successful as his recording and performing careers. His roles reflected the various aspects of his personality, from a lighthearted singer-hoofer in "Anchors Away" and "On the Town" to a ruthless assassin in "Suddenly," from a scared, shaking junkie in "The Man With the Golden Arm" to a comic bad guy in "Ocean's Eleven" and "Robin and the Seven Hoods."

Through his recordings and films, America watched Sinatra grow up. At first he was an impossibly slim kid with a shock of thick black hair, his suits baggy over his bony body. He grew up to become a fashionable swinger, in perfectly cut suits and fedoras, with his ties just right and his shoes shined. For many years he was the epitome of male style - the Esquire gentleman, the sort of man who reads Playboy. In his later years we watched him become bulky and his hair turn gray. But he always maintained his own ring-a-ding sense of hipness that lent him an eternal youthfulness. Even through many ups and downs in his career, his marriages and personal relationships, life never seemed to get him down. He almost always was on top of the world. He lived life his way.