COCKY, HE WAS always that. When Sinatra was a twenty-three-year-old nobody who lucked into a gig with Harry James’s band, the bandleader was asked about his new boy singer. “Not so loud,” James said. “He considers himself the greatest vocalist in the business. Get that! Nobody ever heard of him. He’s never had a hit record. He looks like a wet mop. But he says he’s the greatest. If he hears you compliment him, he’ll demand a raise tonight.”
Fearless, too. Although he couldn’t read music, he did not let that incidental handicap stop him. He contributed lyrics to songs. He heard a new song once or twice and knew it cold.* He was even known to wield a baton. In 1946, Sinatra conducted Frank Sinatra Conducts the Music of Alec Wilder, an excellent album of thirteen Wilder compositions, including works for oboe, bassoon, and flute. Sinatra handled the woodwinds deftly. Ten years later, the first album recorded in the landmark Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles—the thirteen-story building that resembles a stack of records—was Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color. The composers of the “tone poems” were some of Hollywood’s top arrangers: Victor Young, Gordon Jenkins, Billy May, Nelson Riddle, Alec Wilder, Elmer Bernstein, Jeff Alexander, and André Previn.