Young ‘Blue Eyes’ Does It His Way-- Well, Sort Of : Pop music: Frank Sinatra Jr. sounds remarkably like his father, which seems to delight his listeners. But the similarity has also worked against him.

If it looks like a Sinatra, and it talks like a Sinatra, and it sings like a Sinatra, it’s got to be . . . .

Right, a Sinatra. No electronic duets, no manufactured videos. Just a real, live Frank Sinatra. But, in this case, a real, live Frank Sinatra Jr.

And, although the face is a little more moon-shaped than the classic, gaunt look of the elder (at least in his younger years), and the macho style has been replaced by a gentle amiability, the sound--that ineffable Sinatra sound--is almost uncannily similar.

“I’m very happy to have people say I sound like Frank Sinatra,” said 50-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr. Tuesday afternoon while doing an audio check for a performance with his band that evening at the Moonlight Tango Cafe. “Don’t you think that Noel Blanc is happy that his father, Mel Blanc, taught him how to do the voices of Bugs Bunny and all those other characters? I mean, Frank Sinatra is one of the great performers in pop music history. Why shouldn’t I be delighted to carry on his tradition?”

If the size and look of the sold-out crowd for Sinatra’s two sets offered any indication, a lot of patrons also were delighted that he’s carrying on the tradition. The sidewalk outside the club was jammed with customers jostling to get in, cars were double and triple parked, and the palpable sense of urgency must have been very comparable to that in New York City’s Times Square during Sinatra Sr.’s Paramount Theatre appearances in the early ‘40s.

The Moonlight Tango, with its mirrored walls, crowded tables and scurrying waiters, already has the feel of a World War II-era nightclub. With a 20-piece band crammed onto a tiny stage, Sinatra singing such tunes as “Lover,” “Lollipops and Roses” and “Girl Talk,” and a well-dressed, overflow crowd dotted with Hollywood celebrities, the evening had a real deja vu quality.

“There’s one important distinction I make, though,” added Sinatra Jr. “It’s OK if people say I sound like Frank Sinatra. I just don’t want them to think I am Frank Sinatra.”

It’s a distinction the younger Sinatra has been trying to make for most of his life. In 1963, with his singing career just getting under way, he was kidnaped for ransom. Despite the ultimate conviction and jailing of the kidnapers, the case tended to underscore Sinatra’s visibility in the public mind, not as a performer in his own right, but as the offspring of a far more famous entertainer.

His quest for professional independence was further muddled by his persistent similarity to the elder Sinatra’s sound and rhythmic phrasing. It was all right for singers such as Steve Lawrence, Jack Jones and others to do their own versions of the classic Sinatra style. The public, to some extent, and the critics, in particular, seemed less accepting of the son’s far more legitimately earned extension of his father’s music.

More recently--for the last seven or eight years--Sinatra Jr. has been largely slowed by his work as his father’s orchestra conductor.

“I do about 24 weeks a year with him,” he said. Sinatra Jr.’s own bookings are placed “in between the cracks.”

Asked why he dedicates so much time to creating a supportive musical environment for his father, Sinatra looked puzzled by the question.

“Because he needs me,” the good Italian son finally replied.

Perhaps not so surprising a response from Sinatra, whose admiration for his father appears limitless:

“What can you say? He’s phenomenal. I tell young singers today, ‘Listen carefully, because you’re never going to hear that kind of singing again.’ And it took a real devotion. He had a sound in his head that he wanted to hear, and he kept working and working until he got it.”

Despite the superficial similarities, the younger Sinatra’s own approach to his music is focused differently--less self-centered and a clear reflection of a more guarded personality. He was quick to specify, both via individual conversation and in his announcements to the audience, that he does not work as a singer with accompaniment but as one member of a 20-piece musical organization. It is a statement that Sinatra Sr., who has been the unquestioned center of attention of every musical situation since his early days with Tommy Dorsey, would probably never have made.

But Sinatra Jr. means what he says. His arrangements, many of them modeled after the complex orchestrations of the Sauter-Finnegan band, gave equal billing to his talented players. His tunes--one of which featured his harpist--were chosen for their appropriateness as big band jazz numbers as much as for their value as vocal pieces.

Most curious of all was the manner in which he used his voice. Blessed with a superb natural instrument, Sinatra treated it in strikingly casual fashion.

Often, concentrating on making announcements, interacting with the audience and leading the ensemble, he simply tossed away his vocals--just another solo from one of the musicians. At other times, especially during his warm reading of “More Than You Know” and a duo with guitarist Ron Anthony (Sinatra Sr.’s longtime accompanist) on “Lollipops and Roses,” the inimitable Sinatra sound and phrasing took over.

His up-tempo vocals had the feel of a horn player, cruising across the top of the rhythm, dipping in and out of the charts.

“For me,” Sinatra said, “the arrangement should fit in the cracks, not the voice. The voice goes with the rhythm section; you make yourself one of the rhythm players. I really feel that the old show-biz adage is true: If you can get your audience to tap their toes on the swing tunes, you’re halfway home.”

In his better moments, and there were many, Sinatra’s singing was every bit the equal of some of his father’s best work. Heard in isolation, without the distracting presence of historical references and family predecessors, he would have to be considered one of the finest, jazz-based vocalists in contemporary mainstream music.

Was the Moonlight Tango jam-packed because of the quality of Frank Sinatra Jr.’s singing, or because of the sheer magic of the Sinatra name? It’s hard to say. Either way, the listeners got to hear a rare evening of quality, jazz-oriented music.

And if you’re wondering about the Heidi Fleiss/Frank Sinatra Jr. gossip, here’s Sinatra’s final word:

“I don’t know how all this stuff gets started. Heidi Fleiss I befriended because she and I went through something of the same nature. And when word reached the tabloids, bless their little hearts, they decided here was something they could make money with. They even had it in one of the papers last weekend that she and I were going to run off to Vegas and get married. That’s a lot of horse dump. Do you know what would happen if she left L.A. right now? They’d lock her up and throw the key away. She knows that and so do I.”

Case, hopefully, closed.

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* Frank Sinatra Jr. and his band also appear tonight and Friday night at Tatou. Shows at 8:15 and 10:15. $15 cover, with dinner reservations for the first show, two-drink minimum for the second show. 233 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills. (310) 274-9955.