Frank Sintara: One For My Baby, Johnny Mercer, P.J. Clarke's...

For the 12 Days of Sinatra, I did a post on Frank Sinatra homes. Here is one of Frank Sinatra's bars that deserves special mention because of a song Frank Sinatra sang his entire career...

P.J. Clarke's, Upper East Side, 3rd Avenue and 55th Street (Frank's table was #20).

One For My Baby is one of Johnny Mercer's best songs and he wrote it at this bar on a napkin sometime in 1943.

Bob featured a great TV version of One For My Baby at #9 of his Sinatra song list and Mark wrote about it in his Angel Eyes post

Pundette has another great Johnny Mercer saloon song

Here it is performed in the film Young At Heart, which starts as an Angel Eyes crowded bar setting and then transforms to something more intimate between Frank and Doris Day.

Here is the 1958 version arranged by Nelson Riddle with Bill Miller on the piano.

Bill Miller played One For My Baby at Frank Sinatra's funeral

Frank was once on Catalina Island years ago at a place called Christian's Hut, and Duke Wayne was at the bar. Suddenly, on the jukebox comes Frank's recording of 'One For My Baby,' and John Wayne turned to Frank and says, 'What the hell do you listen to when you're alone at three o'clock in the morning?"

Jilly Rizzo and Frank Sinatra, Jilly is buried in the Sinatra family plot

How Sicilian-Italian is that!

P.J. Clarke's was just one of a few places Frank ate and drank at regularly in New York. Frank had a select list of restaurants and bars he frequented, Patsy's (which is still there) opened for him special on Thanksgiving so he wouldn't eat alone (and Frank only found out about that many years later), but his favorite of all was Jilly's. 

A video reading of Frank Sinatra Has A Cold-Jilly's (here is the famous Gay Talese's Frank Sinatra Has A Cold article).

Mark Steyn has Time After Time as his Song of the Century #93.  It really is one of Frank's (and Cahn and Styne's) most terrific (yet under appreciated) songs. I had this song too  referencing It Happened In Brooklyn.

Mark Steyn: One For My Baby is his #100 Sinatra Song of the Century.

Don’t forget to also keep checking out

Pundette’s Sinatra 100 countdown,

Ms Evi’s Sinatra Celebration,

Dispatches from the Camp of the Saints Sinatra,

& Mark Steyn’s Sinatra Songs Of The Century.

It’s a swingin’ world.

Esquire: Frank Sinatra's Favorite Haunts