What are you listening to in 2023?

I have a story about Frank Sinatra. He was scheduled to appear live at the Hershey Theater a week before Thanksgiving. This was about 2 years before he died, so he was around 80 at the time. I was still working with the PSP and was assigned to guard him from the hotel to the theater. I always very much disliked those assignments. I felt like a damn babysitter.

Frank’s getting ready to leave the hotel and he’s at his limo when he stops and said, “Damn, I forgot my lighter.” I found out later that Frank always carried this solid gold lighter his wife Barbara gave him on their wedding day. The one personal secretary to Frank handed me his keycard to his room and asked if I would mind retrieving the lighter. I told them sure, I would go get it. I was in that room for almost 15 minutes looking for this lighter. I couldn’t find it. I’m thinking now I have to go tell these people, I couldn’t find the lighter. As I’m going out to the car, here comes the male secretary and he said, “Never mind. Frank found it. He had it in his jacket pocket.”
When we got to the theater, Frank says he wanted to get done early. His son was leading the band that night. He said dad wanted to get out early, so we are going to kill the last 2 songs. One of them was “I Did It My Way.” I told his son, he can’t cut that song out. That’s the song everyone came to hear. He said he thought they wanted to hear “New York, NewFrank Junior tells his dad and he said OK, we’ll do that song last. We will close with it.

I never heard anyone sing as powerful as he did that night, although he was singing one song and forgot the words, even with using a teleprompter he couldn’t read it. The tickets were over a $100 each and I got to hear him for free. I had to thank my boss the next day for giving me that assignment. He said he knew I would like it.

 
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