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Sonny Rollins: On my first album, I recorded one of Sinatra's songs, "This Love of Mine." When I went to high school, I lived in Harlem, but they build a new school on 116th Street and Pleasant Avenue, which was right in the middle of an Italian area. They needed more kids to fill up the school so they bused some of the kids from my neighborhood down to the school. Now coming into this Italian neighborhood, as black kids, we were resented. People in the neighborhood used to throw stuff out the windows and us and swear. It was like walking through Beirut, and then of course in the school, there was a lot of bad feelings.
The problem was so bad over there that they had two famous artists come to the school, to perform and try and talk to the kids. One of them was Nat King Cole and the other was Frank Sinatra. Nat Cole played, I don't think he talked too much, but Sinatra sang and lectured the kids about not fighting and being brotherly. Things actually got better after that. He's also a guy like Louis Armstrong was, he took care of his friends. But he didn't do it to get notice in the paper..
Miles Davis :
"Now it ain't that I don't love Frank Sinatra, but I'd rather listen to him than get in his way by playing something I want to play. I learned how to phrase from listening to Frank, his concept of phrasing..."
"You know, I learned to phrase years ago from Frank Sinatra. I still go to see him, still go backstage and talk to him."
Somewhere else, Miles credits Frank's phrasing to Charlie Christian's influence.
My two favorite artists, mainly because of the fierce streak of uncompromising individuality they both possessed...in their art, and in their lives."
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