Francis Albert Sinatra was born on this day in 1915 in Hoboken, NJ. Half a century later, I heard him on my parents’ stereo over in Phillipsburg. But I didn’t really discover him until 1982, when I was teaching English in Warsaw, Poland.
One of the “language” tapes I used contained half a dozen tracks, each one a scenario comprised of a sequence of various sounds. Students listened to the sounds and then invented a story to go with them.
My favorite featured gently splashing water – a woman taking a bath? – followed by a record of Sinatra singing the opening lines of “All Or Nothing At All.” It was a slow, wistful arrangement that went straight to my heart every time I played it. There was something about hearing that clear, strong, impeccably American voice in an English classroom in the middle of Warsaw that made its yearning brilliance apparent.
