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I've got the world on a string

Sittin' on a rainbow,

Got the string around my finger . . .

Not long ago, Francis Albert Sinatra seemed at the other end of his string. The crooner and his career dangled hopelessly as one competitor after another zipped up the popularity and bestselling list, and Frankie's public and private relations (i.e., with his second wife, Cinemactress Ava Gardner) grew progressively worse. Over their coffee and cheesecake at Lindy's, the Broadway arbiters of show business pronounced their verdict: Frankie was about washed up.

By last week, the verdict had been reversed. Billboard had listed Sinatra's record, Young at Heart, as a bestseller for eleven straight weeks. Three others (Don't Worry About Me, From Here to Eternity, I've Got the World on a String) were selling fast, and jukeboxes across the land again reverberated with the voice that once launched a million swoons.

Having won an Academy Award for acting in From Here to Eternity, Frankie was sifting a stack of movie offers. The world was his yoyo.

The Age of Millerism. Sinatra, now 36 and still a skinny 135 Ibs., thinks he knows just what happened since the early '405 when bobby-soxers were curling their toes at his boyish glissando. Says he: 'I was weaned on the best popular music ever written. When I was bumming around with Tommy Dorsey and Harry James it was all good. Guys like Mercer and Berlin and Hammerstein were writing their best. In those days a singer was just another guy, and the one-nighters, listening to the band by the hour-this is the experience a singer needs. You learned what it was to be hungry, but you also learned about music."

As his popularity grew, Frankie decided to go out on his own. Somehow, with the decline of big-name bands, Sinatra's type of tune seemed to drop out too. In 1942 Sinatra signed with Columbia Records, whose artist and repertory chief is bearded Mitch Miller (TIME, Feb. 23, 1953). Says Frankie: "Came the age of Miller-ism. Mind you, I'll admit he's a great musician, but I can't go along with him. Instead of a real interest in the lyrics or the melody, all Miller cared about was gimmicks. One day he said to me: 'Frank, we're going to make a record with a washboard.' I looked at him and said: 'Mitch, you're kidding.' But he wasn't. I refused to do it. I guess I did a lot of refusing between 1949 and 1952."

Bark Worse Than Bite. Sinatra rejected so many tunes, in fact, that his worried business managers began hounding him to accept one. "Finally I told them: 'The next song Mitch suggests, I do.' You know what it was? Mama Will Bark-and I sang it with Dagmar. I growled and I barked on the record, and I guess it sold, but the only good it did me was with the dogs."

Frankie finally switched to a different firm (Capitol). Sales of his records began to pick up. His movie success helped. Audiences decided that he was not just a mannered crooner, but a mature pro.

Today, his style remains pretty much the same, but he has escaped gimmicks ("Sure there's a fast buck in the echo chamber, but it can't last"). His only trick lies in changing the pace of the songs he records (e.g., jump tunes, ballads, well-written novelty songs). "Music is getting better," Frankie says, and so is he. "Everything's ahead of me. Man, I'm on top of the world. I'm buoyant."

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