FRANK SINATRA AND THE ARGENTINE CONNECTION

Anybody in the US—and, indeed, in much of the rest of the world as well—with an even passing interest in the history of popular music, and particularly in the music of the Big Band Swing era, knows the name, and the voice, of Frank Sinatra. Many fans from my generation (I was born in 1949), and from the one before, know a little about Sinatra’s rags to riches story as well.

Frank Sinatra.  a new star

A less well-known legend from the annals of swing, however, is of how Sinatra’s destiny was significantly influenced by a personality of the era who was “the voice” of the Americas long before Sinatra would ever be known as “The Voice”. I’m talking about Sinatra’s “Argentine connection” and a chance meeting that the young wannabe singer had, or so the legend goes, in New York City with tango’s singer-saint, Carlos “El Zorzal” Gardel.

And we’ll get to that alleged meeting, but first, let me set the stage.

Born Francis Albert Sinatra in 1915, Frank was the son of Italian immigrants Antonio Martino “Marty” Sinatra and Natalina “Dolly” Garaventa. They lived in a tenement in Hoboken, New Jersey, which is where Frank, their only son, was born.

Life was tough for Frank from the beginning. At birth he weighed in at a whopping thirteen pounds, almost twice the average birth weight of a normal child, and had to be delivered with the help of forceps. This not only left him with permanent scars on the left side of his face and neck but also punctured his left eardrum, leaving him hard of hearing in that ear for life.

Sinatra with Ava...the odd couple

But if anybody ever expected Frank to be a big boy because he was a huge baby, they were mistaken. There were jokes about how small and skinny Frank was in the entertainment business throughout his career. But that didn’t keep him from being the heart-throb of his era. The glamorous women he consorted with seemed to corroborate his sex appeal. For instance, when Sinatra’s statuesque and stunningly beautiful second wife, actress Ava Gardner, was badgered by a reporter about what a knock-out like her saw in a skinny little gnome like Frank, she famously quipped that, “Frank’s only a hundred and ten pounds, but ten of it is cock.”

If Frank’s dad taught him anything, it was to be as tough as he was small. Marty Sinatra was illiterate and thus unsuited for most good-paying jobs, but he made extra cash as a fast and dangerous bantam-weight prize-fighter, who boxed under the name of Marty O’Brien. This earned him the respect he needed to later find a place on the Hoboken Fire Department, where he served for nearly a quarter-century, retiring as a captain.

Dolly liked Frank to be the
best-dressed kid on the block. 

But Frank’s mother was probably the most dominant influence on him growing up. No shirker either, Dolly eschewed the passive role of many Italian immigrant wives and exuded ambition. She built a business for herself as a mid-wife, charging fifty dollars per delivery (a lot of money at that time). And in between deliveries she is said to have been the go-to abortionist for Italian Catholic Hoboken girls who got “in trouble”. So much so that she garnered the nickname of “Hatpin Dolly”.

Frank’s mother was forward and driven and managed to become influential in local politics through the Democratic Party. In that role she also often served as an Italian-English interpreter for local politicians and legal professionals.   

Dolly was ambitious not only for herself but for her only son as well. She was, by all accounts, tough on Frank and frequently, “knocked him around” to keep him in line. But she made sure that he got well-connected on his turf in Hoboken, dressed him in style and made certain he had the money to socialize from the time he was a teen. By that time, Dolly and her husband had opened a small tavern and recognizing Frank’s talent for pop-singing, she got him exposure, while adding an attraction to her saloon by having her son sing to the patrons, accompanied by a player-piano.

Legend has it that Dolly was also the one who pressured a popular local singing group, The Three Flashes, to let young Frankie sing with them. The story goes that they finally let him hang out with them because none of them had a car and Frank did, so he drove the group around to their gigs. But Frank was also falling in with a fast crowd that got him a rep at a tender age as a wild kid and would-be hood—a facet of his personality that he would exploit in many of the movies he would later star in.

Carlos Gardel

Enter Carlos Gardel. By the time Gardel’s path crossed that of the young, unknown Francis Sinatra, he was at the peak of his career and was known worldwide as the greatest tango singer-composer who ever lived.

There’s a lot of mystery surrounding Gardel’s origins, but most tango historians agree that he was born in December of 1890 in Toulouse, France, as Charles Romuald Gardès, the son of a twenty-five-year-old unwed mother named Berthe Gardès, who earned her living as a laundress. The father was listed as “unknown” since he failed to recognize the baby, but Berthe identified him as Paul Lassere, a married man.

To avoid the shame associated in those times with being an unwed mother and “brazen hussy”, Berthe fled Toulouse to settle briefly in Bordeaux. It was from that river port city that she and her two-year-old infant son set sail on the SS Don Pedro for Buenos Aires in 1893. On passing through Argentine Customs on her arrival in that city, Berthe listed her marital status as “widow”, thus leaving her past behind forever. She almost immediately found work pressing clothes in a fashionable French style that appealed to the impeccably fashion-conscious upper classes in the then progressive and wealthy city and she was relatively well-paid for her work.

Abasto Market, heart of the neighborhood of Gardel's youth

Gardel grew up speaking Spanish. He had lots of friends, who called him Carlos, the Spanish equivalent of his birth name, Charles. They also called him “El Francesito” (the little Frenchman), very likely because of how he rolled his R’s in his throat like French rather than on the tip of his tongue, like Spanish. Like Sinatra, Gardel, in his youth, fell in with some of the rougher elements of Buenos Aires. But fortunately, that shady quasi-criminal element was also inextricably tied to that iconically porteño (Buenos Aires) musical genre, the tango. And Gardel proved to have a unique and extraordinary voice that was made to order for that “city music” art form, as well as the poise and stance of the compadrito, the type of guys who wore the clothes and attitude of the tough guys and the wise guys, but who, given a femme fatale dance partner, could find their way around a smoky, dimly-lighted dance floor with grace and sensuality. Gardel was destined to reign over that world from an early age until his untimely death. And well beyond, since, even now, true porteños with tell you that “Gardel sings better every day.”

By the time Gardel’s father, Paul Lassere, suddenly showed up in Buenos Aires in 1918, Gardel was already twenty-eight and was enjoying the fame that sprang from his first recorded tango hits. His reputation had already spread to the rest of Latin America and would shortly go global. After all those long years of his mother’s being the only family he ever knew, Lassere now came to Berthe with a much belated proposal of marriage, to legitimize his bastard son and give “the boy” his name. Always the thoughtful mother, Berthe refrained from chasing Lassere out of her house with a rolling pin and decided to first ask Carlos what he thought, even though formalizing a relationship with her former lover would have exposed the falsehood of her well-preserved widow narrative. Without hesitation, Gardel told his mother that if they hadn’t needed the man up to then, they certainly didn’t need him now, and they sent Lassere packing.

The Abasto in 1945

As of 1917, when his first recorded hit, Mi canción triste, sold ten thousand records in a matter of days, Gardel was destined to almost explosive fame. He became variably known as “The King of Tango”, “El Zorzal” (The Thrush), “The Magician” and “El Morocho del Abasto” (The Dark-Haired Boy from The Abasto). This last was a reference to El Mercado del Abasto, the old Buenos Aires Central Market in Midtown and the surrounding neighborhood that was the scene of Gardel’s youth—a neighborhood that would become a veritable shrine to the singer after his death. After his untimely demise, Gardel would also garner the ironic moniker El Mudo (The Mute).

For the next decade and a half, Gardel would top tango charts with his recordings, and, like his North American successor, Sinatra, he would also become a movie star, first in Argentina, and later, in the US and France under contract with Paramount Pictures. As a singer and Hollywood film star, he would tour the capitals of Latin America and Europe and on his first public appearance in Paris, his records sold close to eighty-thousand copies to avid French fans in just a couple of weeks.

So now, the year is 1934. Paramount contracts tango superstar Carlos Gardel to film several movies on location in New York City. NBC Radio hears about this and decides to air a show from nine to ten each night in which the famous Argentine singer would be asked to sing his hits to a live audience for broadcast.

In nearby Hoboken, a young couple, eighteen-year-old Frank Sinatra and his then girlfriend (later to be wife) Nancy Barbato, never miss one of these shows. Nancy loves Gardel’s music and Frank deeply admires the Argentine’s brilliant voice and incredible fame.

Frank himself is going through a rough time. There’s nothing he wants more than to be a great singer. And although he tells his buddies to watch and see, that he’s going to be “the greatest star in history”, that seems to all be bravado. There’s no reason to believe that this will ever happen or that he’ll ever sing anyplace but at parties and sitting at the player piano in his mom and dad’s tavern. So he’s at odds with himself. He has been kicked out of school and every menial job he’s held has ended up in his quitting or being fired.

But then, one night, legend has it, Nancy talks Frank into going into the city, to the NBC radio studio and seeing if they can get tickets to form part of the live audience for Gardel’s show. Frank agrees and they indeed get in.

By the end of the show, Franks is absolutely dazzled by Gardel’s talent as a performer and by his incredible voice. When the show is over, he screws up his courage and asks Nancy to accompany him backstage to try and get in to see the tango-singer. Gardel graciously lets them into his dressing room and they sit down for a brief chat. Nancy gushes, telling Gardel what fans they are of his and how wonderful his show was.

Gardel thanks her and, turning to Frank, asks, “So what do you do, pibe?”

The question is met with sullen silence. But Nancy quickly intervenes. She tells Gardel that Frank is an absolutely wonderful singer, but that he can’t seem to get a break. She says, as if talking to her father confessor, that worse still, Frank has fallen in with a bad crowd and she’s worried what might happen to him. He’s wasting his incredible talent, Nancy tells the famous singer.

Gardel empathizes. “Look,” he tells Sinatra, “when I was your age, I was as lost as you are. I was hanging out with a bad crowd and every now and again ended up spending the night in a jail cell. My voice is what got me out of all that. I might not be a saint now either, but at least there’s a pretty good chance I won’t die in a prison cell or knifed in some back alley. I just made a choice to put every ounce of energy I had into tango, and it paid off.”

Sinatra listens attentively, or so the story goes, and, relaxing his tough guy pose, finally asks, “Mr. Gardel, there’s nothing I want more than to be a famous performer like you. What do you advise me to do?”

Gardel says, “Listen, NBC has a show that’s a contest for new talent. It gets the winners a lot of exposure. If you believe in yourself and in your voice, you need to get on that show.”

This would have been late in 1934. In 1935, Frank has begun hanging out with the Three Flashes, singing occasionally with them besides acting as their driver. When he finds out that the group is planning to audition for Major Bowe’s Amateur Hour, the show on NBC that Carlos Gardel had told him about, he begs the trio to let him sing with them. He eventually convinces them and they try out for the show as The Hoboken Four.

The Hoboken Four on Major Bowes Amateur Hour

And they win! Receiving forty thousand votes from the radio audience. Major Bowe is so impressed with the group that he keeps having them back as “a new act” under different names. And their winnings include a tour of stage shows and radio stations elsewhere in the country. Frank is clearly the stand-out voice, and it isn’t long before he lands solo gigs with increasingly famous swing bands, rising quickly to becoming the headliner with trumpet-player Harry James’ renowned stage band.

Frank was eventually lured away from James by trombone great and Big Band leader Tommy Dorsey. Dorsey became Sinatra’s mentor and Frank took him as a sort of surrogate father authority figure. He once said there had only been two people he’d been scared of in his life: his mother, Dolly, and Tommy Dorsey.

The rest is a well-known story. Frank Sinatra became one of the biggest names in popular music and films in the history of swing and Hollywood. His name, in the US, has come to be synonymous with quality class acts. Much in the same way that, in Argentina, when one person hears another bragging unjustifiably about his skills, the patent sarcastic response is, “Go sing it to Gardel.”

As for the Argentine singer, the same year that The Hoboken Four won the radio contest and Sinatra initiated his ascent to fame, Carlos Gardel did his last performance in Bogotá, Colombia. At the next stop on his tour, the city of Medellín, the plane he was traveling in crashed and burned, ending the life but not the immortal fame of The King of Tango. The world of tango was plunged into mourning, and so remains today, since there will never be another Gardel.

So, fast-forward to August 1981, South American winter. The now sixty-six-year-old veteran singing star, Frank Sinatra, visits Argentina for the first time and performs before an adoring crowd of twenty thousand people in the Luna Park auditorium. They would never think of their immortal and unique idol, Gardel, as the “Sinatra of South America”, but they do indeed think of “The Voice” as the “Gardel of North America”.

According to the continuing saga, on the eve of the show, Frank spends the day with a group of Argentine tango musicians who take him out on the town. Having been advised of Sinatra’s admiration for Carlos Gardel, one of the stops the party makes on this chilly winter’s day, can’t help but be the old Abasto Market, scene of Gardel’s youth. Still active but falling into abandonment as plans advance on the building of a new Central Market outside the city limits, parts of the enormous building are now shuttered and in three more years it will be closed permanently and will stand empty and in disrepair until the 1990s, when Geroge Soros’s real estate development firm, IRSA, buys it and turns it into a modern shopping mall. Shabby or not, however, when Frank pays his visit, it remains a temple to Gardel’s fans. And Sinatra treats it as such.

According to the Gardel-Sinatra legend, as Frank stands there in reverence at the entrance of the Abasto gazing at its partly shuttered arches, he reaches inside his coat and pulls out a yellowed NBC radio studio audience program dated 1934. Slowly, thoughtfully, he brings the dog-eared, half-century-old program to his lips, kisses it, and shoves it through a chain-link shutter into the dark interior of the market. As he does, someone hears him mutter, “Thanks for helping me live, Mr. Gardel.”