WHEN LEONARD FEATHER polled jazz musicians for his 1956 Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz, Sinatra garnered nearly half the votes for best jazz singer. He was named on fifty-six out of 120 ballots. Duke Ellington picked him. So did Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Carmen McRae, Horace Silver, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan, Sy Oliver, Bud Powell, and Lester Young.
Miles in his autobiography: “I learned how to phrase from listening to Frank, his concept of phrasing, and also to Orson Welles.”
It is not surprising that rap singers admire Sinatra’s attitude for the same reasons that prompted Marvin Gaye to say that his “dream was to become Frank Sinatra”: “I used to fantasize about having a lifestyle like his—carrying on in Hollywood and becoming a movie star. Every woman in America wanted to go to bed with Frank Sinatra. He was the king I longed to be.”