Sinatra Faces the Final Curtain

My Frank 1993 Essay Generates Support and Dismay

It's a quarter to three. I'm sitting at home with the stereo on, quietly so as not to wake the family. The floor is strewn with more than 20 Frank Sinatra albums, from the Dorsey sessions of 1940 to my '50s favorite, One More for the Road. 

On a chair is Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), in which Sinatra takes an absurd Sonny Bono song and makes it sound as forlorn and lonely as something written for the man by my fondly remembered late acquaintance, Mr. Sammy Cahn. 

There's no one in the place except me . . . and two of the friends that Sinatra used to introduce at many of his concerts: "Mr. Chivas" and "Mr. Regal." (Frank would make a toast to the audience, saying something like: "May you live to be 115...and the last voice you hear be mine.") Soon they too will be gone. We're drinking, my friend, to the end of a long episode. Sinatra is singing "one for my baby, one more for the road." But soon he must sing it no more, for the road is coming to an end. 

It is difficult to imagine a wo…