A monologue by Frank Sinatra
I would like to tell you a short story about Mr. Porter and myself. Many many years ago when I was a
young man, I was working in what we used to call in those days, a roadhouse, in an area called
Englewood, New Jersey, on the Route 9W. It was just across the river from New York, across the George
Washington Bridge.
One Sunday evening, when there were about thirty or forty people present in the club, I was working
with an orchestra where I was the head waiter, vocalist with the orchestra, answering telephones, and
making out the regular programs. It was the usual quiet Sunday evening, sometime about August or
September, and a party of people arrived. I noticed, because of photographs, a man who resembled Mr.
Porter. Of course I was absolutely astounded to be in the same room with him.
I have been singing only a year and a half or two years, and have tried to sing as much Cole Porter as
I could. I enjoyed singing his lyrics. And for another reason. Mr. Porter, unlike Mr. Rodgers,
doesn't go out and get loaded because of any arrangements that somebody else made of his music. Mr.
Porter was a very liberal man in that sense. He really didn't care how you arranged it as long as you
did the song in its entirety, even if you change the tempo from a slow fourth or a twelve eighth. It
did not make any difference to him.
He came into the room and I very bravely said to the poor souls sitting in the dark room: "We have
with us this evening, ladies and gentlemen, one of the greatest artists of our musical world in
America, a man of great renown," and I went on and on and on, and gave him the greatest build-up since
Charles Lindbergh. I proceeded to have him take a bow. I asked him would he take a bow and he did,
and stared daggers at me. That
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