BEVERLY HILLS, CA - Singer and entertainer Frank Sinatra Jr., son of the legendary singer and actor Frank Sinatra, died Wednesday while on tour, his family said. He was 72.
In a message posted on Facebook, his sister, singer Nancy Sinatra said the singer died suddenly of cardiac arrest in Daytona Beach, Fla.
Her post did not provide any details other than the family mourn the untimely passing of their son, brother, father, uncle."
Sinatra was scheduled to sing some of his father's hits at the Peabody Auditorium on Wednesday night, but the venue canceled the event when the singer fell ill, according to the auditorium's Facebook post.
Born on Jan. 10, 1944 in Jersey City, N.J., Francis Wayne Sinatra gained international attention when he was kidnapped Lake Tahoe, and held for ransom at the age of 19. Sinatra Jr. was released two days later when his father agreed to pay the $240,000 ($1.86 million in today's money) ransom.
At the time, he was trying to launch his singing career, leading some to speculate the kidnapping was a publicity stunt.
The three kidnappers were later arrested and sentenced to prison.
Sinatra Jr. was an accomplished singer and composer in his own right but has said he was living in his father's shadow but never resented his father for it.
"At first I felt like I was living in his shadow," he told The Guardian in 2012, "but I did develop my own following eventually, so I must have been doing something right."
Growing up, father and son were never close. The elder Sinatra had divorced his mother when Sinatra Jr. was 6. The two rarely saw each other as Sinatra Sr. was constantly busy with concerts and making movies.
All that changed, however, in 1988 when Sinatra Jr. put his career on hold, at the request of the elder Sinatra, to act as his father's musical director and conductor, a role he held until his father's last performance in 1995.
Sinatra Sr. died in 1998 at the age of 82.
"And in that church on that afternoon in 1998, when I was looking down at his casket covered in flowers, I was grateful that at least he hadn't died with us as strangers, that I had been able to get to know him, and he had been able to get to know his son," he told the Guardian.
Sinatra Jr. is survived by his mother, Nancy, his sisters, Nancy and Tina, and son Michael.
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— Photo credit: Phil Konstantin/Wiki Commons
