But growing up in s Camden, N. Get Jewish Exponent's Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories We do not share data with third party vendors. Free Sign Up. And although Sinatra has been dead for 20 years, his popularity endures.
Podcasts and satellite have transformed the business, but Mark eschews digital conveniences, preferring to play each recording himself.
That reason is Sinatra, who Mark has been playing his way for more than six decades. How blessed am I? It could have been any other performer … but it was Frank.
A two-year broadcasting course got him no closer to a radio dial. The younger man took the teacher home to sample Mrs. For the next few years, the novice handled such luminaries as Count Basie and Duke Ellington. But one winter, Mark was alone in a California military barracks. The next day, sales of the album spiked around Philadelphia. While Mark was the less religious of the two, both men shared a deep respect for family and Jewish tradition, which Sinatra saw as akin to his own Italian culture.
The hard-living singer also gave the radio host advice on dealing with laryngitis. The broadcaster relies on tea, lozenges and an evening schedule. Photographs show the craggy, 6-footinch Mark towering over the singer, smiles intact as their hair whitens over the years. Annual Sinatra tribute concerts sell out; millennials regularly host Rat Pack theme nights. Sinatra is the convertible and the girls and the golf clubs.
Sinatra is a lifestyle. I have to admire Sid as a devotee of Frank. And that includes Sid and Frank. Mom with God and I always loved you. You were the total inspiration for my total involvement with jazz before we ever met. My family grew up listening to sat night with Sid and Frank. Now after all the years, Sid has become family and part of my Sunday routine. The show keeps me in touch with Philly the home of my alma mater.
Instead of listening at dinner, we listen at breakfast. Keep going Sid. Mark's " Sounds of Sinatra " show started accidentally. He was a deejay working the graveyard shift for WHAT in when a colleague failed to show up. With the extra airtime, Mark played a full hour of Sinatra.
He's been doing it now for 59 years. Cool J called it one of the finest live albums ever recorded. When it came out, Mark played it continuously, and Philadelphia-area stores couldn't keep it on the shelves. Though the British Invasion was in full force and the Beatles were in their prime, fans still were going nuts for Sinatra.
That's when Mark first heard from the people in Sinatra's camp, who were looking to show gratitude. He asked to meet Sinatra and eventually was invited out to Vegas. Mark had to decline because he couldn't afford it. Sinatra, you are his guest. The axiom is that it's usually not a good idea to meet your heroes, because disappointment is inevitable. That did not apply here. Meeting Sinatra changed Mark's life.
In addition to horrendous heat, Mark saw racism and encountered anti-Semitism. He recalls fondly, however, a gesture of support by one of his superiors who was surprised to learn of the tradition of fasting during Yom Kippur.
Sinatra was a celebrated singer, but he had a well-known streak of meanness that bordered on nasty. A dealer in Las Vegas told a story of the night Sinatra got so infuriated at the blackjack table that he poured his drink all over the cup that held the dealers' tips.
Mark knows the warts, but never discusses them on his show. He's kept a promise he made to Sinatra to never write a book even though an adviser recently told him it would be a "six-figure deal at least. He knows the B side to the fourth song on the 27th album.
To play one artist is extremely difficult to do unless you know the material like he does. One of the hallmarks of Mark's radio show is the commercials between the songs. Many of them are voiced over by Mark without a script.
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