Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan Read Free Book Online

to advance his career.
    Three of the musicians Frankie pestered that spring had a much better gig. They were a singing trio, Italian boys known all too presciently as the Three Flashes: Fred Tamburro, James “Skelly”Petrozelli, and Pat Principe were their names. Lost to history except as Sinatra witnesses. For a minute and a half in the mid-1930s they were hot stuff. Warm, anyway. Every weekend the Flashes traveled up the road to Englewood Cliffs, just north of the spanking-new George Washington Bridge, to perform with Harold Arden and His Orchestra at a western-style nightclub on the Palisades called the Rustic Cabin. The Cabin didn’t pay much, but what it did have was a wire hookup to WNEW, which—with its live remote broadcasts from New York–area nightclubs, as well as Martin Block’s
Make-Believe Ballroom—
was, by its own admission, “The NEWest Thing in Radio!” 6 For their gigs, the Flashes borrowed a car or, more frequently, hitched a ride with an indulgent musician. Still, indulgence had a way of wearing thin. Once or twice they’d had to take a cab all the way from Hoboken, eating up the evening’s profits. With what they were making, it would be a long time before any of them could afford wheels of his own.
    Then came salvation, in the form of this pesky runt.
    Little Frankie wanted in the worst way to become the fourth Flash. Sure—like that was about to happen. But when it turned out that Frankie Boy had a green Chrysler convertible, the Flashes got a lot more encouraging.
    Watch and learn. Soak it all in for a little while.
    He saw it and he wanted it: saw himself, so clearly, standing center stage in the Cabin, the mike beaming his voice to millions of people out in the night, including, of course, People Who Mattered.
    Then a remarkable thing happened.
    One Friday night while the Flashes were taking five, a sharply dressed fellow came up and handed them a business card. The card belonged to Major Bowes, who, with his
Original Amateur Hour—
the
American Idol
of the day—was the hottest thing on radio, all over the country, not just in New York. The Major was going to shoot some movie shorts, at the Biograph Studios in the Bronx, and he wanted the Flashes, who had cute, guinea-boy face appeal (not that he would have put it in precisely those terms to their faces 7 ), to appear in one or two.
    They slapped each other on the back in the parking lot. Frankie watched enviously, his pulse racing. This was It.
    He piped up and asked them to give him a shot.
    They looked at each other. Well, they needed a ride home, anyway. They’d think about it.
    He knew how long they’d think about it.
    He told Dolly the next morning that he wanted this more than anything he’d ever wanted before. Anything.
    And what did the fucking no-good bastards tell him?
    They told him they’d think about it.
    Dolly marched. The Tamburros—eight kids and two exhausted, non-English-speaking parents—lived in a railroad flat on Adams Street in Little Italy. Freddie, with his crazy singing, was kicking a little money into the family till. Dolly paid Mr. and Mrs. T. a visit, to make sure they fully understood the value of her good works—translation, authoritative intercession with landlords, school officials, cops, and so on. Except that this time it wasn’t a Democratic vote she was seeking.
    Frankie was in.
    Every day for a week, grinning at the wheel of the Chrysler, he drove his fellow Flashes over the great shining bridge (just four years old; an architectural marvel) to Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, home of Biograph. The movie shorts in question—it was an unapologetic era—were a filmed minstrel show. Every day Frankie painted on blackface and big white lips and donned a top hat. He didn’t sing, but he acted (playing a waiter), and
he was in the movies!
    But that was only the beginning. After seeing the footage, the Major himself sent word up to the Bronx: he wanted to audition the Flashes for his nationally