Rick Michel's Blog

A new Frank Sinatra release is always exciting news, especially when it contains something we’ve never seen before, like the new footage of him singing Cole Porter’s “At Long Last Love,” but it’s ever more noteworthy because of the surroundings of the footage - a very special charity tour that demonstrates why we love Frank so much.

The new release is called World on a String and it’s a CD and DVD box set that also includes a number of different exclusive inclusions if ordered through the Sinatra store.  There’s a total of more than four hours of previously unissued audio and video footage - a veritable bonanza for his fans.  This set was just released a week ago.

What really makes the set special to my heart is the footage of The Voice’s “Frank Sinatra With All God’s Children” tour in 1962.  You see, the tour’s purpose was to raise funds for children’s charities in each of the countries it stopped and, according to Frank Sinatra Enterprises’ Charlie Pignone, it raised over one million dollars.

And that’s still not the whole story.  Sinatra paid the expenses of the tour himself so that all the proceeds were able to go directly to the children.  Still, other than this little bit of information, there’s not much written about the tour, which shows me just how much more Frank cared about helping than he did about publicity when he was able.  That seems like quite a change from all the reality television “celebrities” we’re inundated by now.

Are tours like this happening today?  I’m not aware of any.  And even though I’d like to think they are happening and we just aren’t hearing about them, I have a feeling it’s more likely that the big names just aren’t giving back like they used to.  Let’s hope I’m wrong.