It was all a rib, of course, but Sinatra, who was a mighty touchy lad in those days, full of ambition and the suspicions that usually go with it, didn't like it. It was instigated by Buddy Rich, Dorsey's drummer and probably the guy Frank hated most in the whole world. And so, just to prove to everyone how much he hated Rich, when Buddy cut out of the Dorsey band to start his own group, Frank put a whole hunk of thousand dollar bills into his band, and lost them. Which also proves how Sinatra changes.

Right now his biggest interest, outside of his family and career (perhaps even bigger than the latter), seems to be boxing. He's backing a fighter and according to reports, for several weeks he was considered very much in the running as promoter for the Joe Louis-Joe Walcott return bout. Few people know that he's at least partially responsible for the latter's comeback, having promoted the Walcott-Gans fight which started Joe on the road to Louis. Sinatra lost another hunk of thousand dollar bills there.

You'd think, of course, that the guy would stick to music, especially because he always wanted so terribly hard to become a success and because he worked so hard to be one. But if you know Frank real well, know how much he likes good stuff, know what basically good taste he has in everything artistic (he's recently started to draw and paint, has turned out some impressive stuff, and now plans to study intensively under a private teacher), you can begin to understand why he's pretty fed up with the music business and why his thoughts and his ever-prevalent ambition go roaming off into other fields.

Right now certain conditions in the music business really have him down. Chances are that he can't stand Your Hit Parade any more than most of us can. He hates almost all agents savagely, so much so that he's planning to start his own agency just so he can be rid of them, and also because he feels that good, young talent deserves more attention than it has been getting.

But his biggest gripe of all right now is the terrible trash turned out by Tin Pan Alley. Frank was a pretty weary guy when he sounded off during a short break on a recording date on what was wrong with music, but it seems that when you're really pooped you relax more, you lose your inhibitions, and you say what you want to say. Some of the stuff Sinatra passed along was so libelous that it's not printable, but all the rest is something The Voice feels just as strongly about, even though the language may be more pianissimo.

"About the popular songs of the day," pet-peeves Frankie, "They've become so decadent, they're so bloodless. As a singer of popular songs, I've been looking for wonderful pieces of music in the popular vein—what they call Tin Pan Alley songs. You can not find any. Outside of production material, show tunes, you can't find a thing. All you get is a couple of songs like Apple Blossom Wedding and Near You ... [censored] ...

"If the music business is to lead the public—and actually we do lead it as to the things it likes—we must give people things that move them emotionally, make them laugh, too. But we're not doing it and there's something wrong someplace.

"I don't think the music business has progressed enough. There are a lot of people to blame for this. The songwriter in most cases finds he has to prostitute his talents if he wants to make a buck. That's because not enough publishers are buying the better kind of music. The publisher is usually a fly-by-night guy anyway and so to make a few fast bucks he buys a very bad song, very badly written. And the recording companies are helping those guys by recording such songs. I don't think the few extra bucks in a song that becomes a fast hit make a difference in the existence of a big recording company or a big publishing firm. If they turned them down, it wouldn't do them any harm and it would do music some good.

"You know, I talk to a lot of kids. They're pretty smart; they've been around, buying records and listening to bands. They don't like those bad songs, at least not the kids with whom I speak individually. They know all the great Glenn Miller things, they constantly mention songs like When You're Awake, Polka Dots and Moonbeams—wonderful pieces of music the publisher took because they sounded good to him. But he never pressed the point and they never became hits. They just don't seem to work on songs like that. Instead, they'd rather take an easy song, one that's a novelty. It's a very short shot that will click right away, but over the years it doesn't last. Most publishers don't think that far ahead, though.

"I'm not classing all novelties as bad. Civilization is a novelty and it makes a lot of sense. At least the guy tells a story. I don't care where a happening takes place so long as the writer tells a story about it. But when a guy writes a song called Apple Blossom Wedding! What the hell does that MEAN? And you may quote me. I don't understand it, and I've been singing a lot of songs."

Sinatra's not the kind of guy who'll just sound off on what's wrong with music without offering some pretty constructive ideas about how to right those wrongs. As he has preached in his racial tolerance pleas in movies, on the air, and very often in person, education is probably the greatest remedy. Teach the kids what it's all about and as they grow older they'll refuse to accept the tripe that Tin Pan Alley feeds them. "I'd like to see popular music brought into grammar and high schools as part of the education, if the proper people were teaching it. Or possibly people in the music business could make appearances in schools and discuss these things. With all the people in the music business, we could get enough people to go to so many schools each year and explain the inner intricacies of making a song hit, the type of song that is bought, one that is considered a good song and one that is considered a poor song. Show the progress that jazz has made the past few years; explain where jazz is going, for instance jazz like Alvy West's Little Band, which is tasty and wonderful, or Joe Mooney's, which is interesting."

Surprisingly, Frankie has not kept up with most of the newer bands. He seems to be more interested in songs than in their instrumental interpretation. He remembers some Sauter, however, the stuff Eddie wrote for Goodman. "Actually, I haven't heard too much of Eddie's stuff recently," explains Sinatra, "because I've been so busy that I haven't heard anything. But the stuff I've heard Sauter write for years is wonderful because it goes someplace. Dizzy's and Raeburn's stuff I don't understand. Maybe it's a little too far ahead of me. I don't think, though, that as a national liking it has much of a future."

Altogether, then, the future of music doesn't look too bright to Frank. The song publishing business is beset by commercialism, apparently by people incapable of recognizing good songs and certainly incapable of promoting and selling them. Some progressive music, for him, has a good chance of becoming accepted. But he admits that he hasn't kept up with the times, so far as bands go. Chances are that if he ever did take time out from his various outside interests, he'd become progressive jazz's most powerful champion. Right now, though, he's much more interested in his new house, in painting, in boxing and, of course, in his championing the cause of all minorities. And so he'll even sing on Your Hit Parade and record things like The Dum Dot Song.

But Frankie, much like Tommy Dorsey, his former boss who influenced him more than just musically, is liable to blow up and off at the most unexpected moments. He feels things very keenly, just as all really sensitive people do, and after a while they affect him so much that he just has to do something about them. And so don't be too surprised if Sinatra should suddenly go ahead and open up a modern, progressive school of music, or something like that - anything to alleviate his pent-up emotions about what, to this progressive, far-thinking and thoroughly honest guy, is so very, very wrong with music.