Rick Apt, Proprietor
Frank Sinatra and I are both Jersey boys.
This blog and its accompanying Sinatra store has always been a labor of love for me. I can’t think of a day in four + decades that I haven’t listened to his music.
I’ve attended over 300 Sinatra performances and had the honor of meeting him several times.
I was hired by Atlantic City’s Sands Hotel & Casino to put together an exhibit of FS memorabilia for his debut performances there in 1990.
After writing several Sinatra articles for the Atlantic City Press, I was proud to contribute a chapter for the hardcover book, Sinatra and Popular Culture.
In the last two decades, I organized and hosted many fan gatherings featuring guests like Sid Mark, Sam Butera, Connie Haines, and Vincent Falcone Jr.
For 14 years here at Blue-Eyes.Com, we’ve done our best to help keep the Great American Songbook alive. Your patronage and support is greatly appreciated.
Keep Swingin’,
Contributors
Ed Walters
Ed Walters – Sands Hotel, 1965
As pit boss at The Sands Hotel and Casino during its glory days, Ed Walters came to know Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and other entertainment greats during the heyday of The Rat Pack in the 1960s.
Ed’s Pit Boss series of articles, which recount the early days at The Sands, are often funny, informative and, at times, touching.
His tales have become legendary among Sinatra fans, and we are proud to have him as a contributor to this site, where his man-on-the-scene reports can be recounted to a new generation of fans.
Vin Reda
Vin Reda recalls the strains of “It was winter in Manhattan, snowflakes falling in the air . . .” emanating from the family radio as one of his earliest Christmas-time memories.
He also records a night in 1957 when his uncle Tony brought home the Come Fly With Me album, and jaunty sounds filled the household. (“Autumn in New York” was too wistfully sad for his 5-year-old ears to bear.)
Frank Sinatra played in the background of Vin’s life until his late undergraduate days at UAlbany, when he decided that trying to find something worthwhile in Grand Funk Railroad was dooming him to hell.
He found Sinatra in earnest then, and this proved quite valuable. Although Vin got a job as a beat reporter and columnist in 1975 for the Troy Times Record, and later served these functions, plus theater and movie reviewer, in the Albany area for both the Albany Times Union and Schenectady Gazette, non-rock music reviews were always a part of his repertoire — sometimes exclusively — until he finally left the newspaper business completely in 1995.
Ten years before, he’d gotten a job in the marketing office of his alma mater, and he’s still there. A former college cross-country all-American, he ran about 15 marathons — about the same number of Sinatra concerts he attended (and usually reviewed).
Those also stopped in 1995, when his daughter Amber was born and he and wife Cheryl had to adjust priorities.
He still runs to keep his old body fit, reads economics and theology to keep his mind and soul active, and listens to Sinatra to keep his mind and soul delighted. He writes about Frank’s music because he needs to — simple as that.
Tony Sachs
Tony Sachs is a former music retailer who currently writes about music, alcoholic spirits, baseball and anything else that strikes his fancy for the Huffington Post and elsewhere.
An obsessive Sinatra fan for 20 years, he recently collaborated with famed musician/songwriter Irving Fields on his hopefully-to-be-published autobiography, “The Pianos I’ve Known.”
Tony’s daughter was born in June 2010, and he has the bags under his eyes to prove it.