Thursday, September 2, 2010

Coda

In 1988 Frank Sinatra joined up with Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis to begin the Together Again Tour. After the fourth show in Chicago Dean Marting left the tour due to Frank pushing him into trying to drink and party into the night. Liza Minnelli replaced Martin and the tour went on. That year and the next Sammy Davis and Frank continued to do shows together.



In 1991 Sinatra started a world tour. He would go on to do 80 concerts that year and 87 in 1992. He then went on to do 97 in 1993 then 60 in 1994.
There was also a T.V. special to mark Frank's 65 birthday entitles The Best is Yet to Come. This special was critisized due to the fact that he had gained weight, voice cracks and notes being strained and often never reached. Frank began forgetting his songs, as well as needed various monitors to read the lyrics to his songs. In October 1992 Frank released the Duets album. Some of the artist who accompanied Sinatra were Barbra Streisand, Bono, Aretha Franklin, Carly Simon, Julio Iglesias, Luther Vandross and Duets eventually went No. 2 on the Billboard chart and sold three million copies. It became Frank's largest selling album ever.




In Early March 1994 Frank was awarded a Grammy "Legend" Award.




In 1995 on Frank's 80th birthday The Empire State Building glowed blue, and gigantic billboards along Fifth Avenue served as the nation's birthday cards. Frank appeared on television for the last time, in a two hour special.
In November of 1996 a month short of his 81st birthday, Sinatra was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital. He had suffered from a heart attack,complicated by pneumonia and cancer of the ureter. Although the cancer was not life threatening the heart and lung trouble was very serious. Brain scans had now confirmed Frank had dementia.

He spent the next two years at home, during which old friends came to visit and spend time with him. On May 14, 1998 Frank had another heart attack and was rushed back to the hospital. He was alive when he reached the hospital but not in good condition. According to his family Franks last words were "I'm loosing it." Frank was formally pronounced dead at 10:50 pm on May 14th, 1998.

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