The Right Song, The Wrong Name

by Peter Selgin

If enough people think someone is really, really uncool, then there must be something cool about him.
Frank Sinatra, Jr.
The very name is enough to strike terror into the hearts of men and boys with famous fathers. It is a name designed to break in two, not down the middle, but three-quarters of the way across, where the comma stabbed between tra and JR. divides the power and fame of the first twelve letters from the obscurity of the final two. How that abbreviation abbreviates; how it clings like a rusty tin can to the tail of that legendary kite.
And yet... and yet.
Frank Sinatra, Jr. is a phenomenon. One look at him in the flesh proves the point. In his mid-fifties, he looks not a day younger than his father. The jowls, the receding, crew-cut gray hair, the lobe of flesh at the base of his skull that used to be a neck, the shoulders rolling up into a Quasimodo hunch... a face that seldom smiles held up by a body that has never known exercise. From head to toe he might be made of rubber.
At Tavern on the Green he stands near the entrance of the Charter Oak room, waiting as his twenty-piece orchestra warms up. Few would guess he's the leader of the band. The one, the crowd -- mostly busloaded from New Jersey -- has come to see. A half-smile on his face suggests he is not waiting to go on so much as enjoying the music. No grand entrance for Frank Jr. Amid scant applause (which he does nothing to encourage) he takes center stage and sings.

It's the wrong time
it's the wrong place,
though your smile is lovely
it's the wrong face...

Yes, you say to yourself, it is the wrong face. It's not his face, it's his son's face. You can almost hear the comparisons -- the eyes, the nose, the lips, the hair... the voice. It's thinner, weaker, more frontal, almost nasal. He's got the phrasing; he doesn't have the timing. No, the timing's okay. It's the vocal chords, or maybe the larynx, or maybe the lungs. He's got his father's larynx and his mother's lungs...

Though your lips are lovely,
they're the wrong lips...