SINATRA: His Way : Frank Sinatra Jr.: Seeking Place in a Family of Note

He’s got a sure sense of swing and a robust baritone that can sound and deliver a song like “The Second Time Around”--decidedly without intention, he says--very much like Frank Sinatra. But despite his pedigree and obvious talent, wide-ranging success has not been his.

Perhaps things would be different if his name weren’t Frank Sinatra Jr.

Sinatra, who leads his 19-piece orchestra on Friday at Twin Palms in Newport Beach, has always tried to distance himself musically from the man who has been called the most significant popular singer of the 20th century.

“There are many separations between he and I,” said the 53-year-old native of Jersey City, N.J., who lives in Westwood. “Music is the star of my show. Everybody gets to solo; we pride ourselves on that.”

Sinatra names the members of his crew. “The finest studio musicians,” he said felicitously in a phone conversation from Houston, where he was visiting recently. Among the players who will be on hand at Twin Palms: saxophonist Jack Nimitz, trumpeter Warren Luening, trombonist Bill Watrous and guitarist Sid Jacobs.

“It’s a heavy band,” Sinatra said. The orchestrations are done by giants such as Nelson Riddle and lesser-knowns such as trombonist Bill Rogers.

The scion offers a show that covers many areas, from popular standards to show-biz shtick, and, yes, a Sinatra song or two. “My father,” he said, “with his massive half-century-plus success, can do show after show with just his hits. The point is, I have never had such good fortune, so I have to do what a lot of other people have done.”

Still, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and Sinatra, who has the same roundish face and close-cropped hair as his father, acknowledged the similarities in their voices and their relatively complementary styles.

“Oh yes, the voices are very similar,” he said, “especially as I get older”--to the extent that certain parts of Frank Jr.’s latest album, “As I Remember It,” scared him. “It was so eerily similar,” he said, quietly insisting that copying his father was not his design. “I’m just trying to sing.”

Talking about his early influences, Sinatra named Nat Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Williams, Peggy Lee and Keely Smith. But not Frank Sinatra. Queried about the impact of hearing his father sing when he was a child, he said, “He always realized the value of great backgrounds, great orchestration, great musicianship. That was a great school for me.”

Unlike his famous “saloon singer” father, Sinatra calls himself a “jazz singer”--sometimes.

“That happens when I sing jazz-singer songs rather than pop songs, tunes such as ‘If You Could See Me Now’ or ‘Invitation,’ and singing in that fashion,” he said. “Or when an orchestrator writes a jazz line rather than the actual melody, as many of my arrangers have.”

Sinatra started singing in the early ‘60s with saxophonist Sam Donahue, and his initial positive thrust was interrupted when he was kidnapped in 1963. Ransom was paid, the abductors apprehended, tried and convicted. Yet the blemish of “publicity stunt” followed Junior, as insiders call him, for years.

His career has been stop-and-go ever since.

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“It’s a struggle. I’m not exactly in demand,” he said in typical plain-spokenness. He hasn’t worked Las Vegas since 1995; his ventures into New York City in 1994 and 1995 were “losing propositions,” he said, and most of his engagements around Los Angeles pay enough for his band but not him. He lives on savings and trust accounts rather than on income generated by his own music career.

But all is not commercially bleak for Sinatra. He’s pleased to be a regular in Atlantic City, and he’s found a new home at Harrah’s in Laughlin, Nev. “It reminds me of Vegas in the ‘50s,” he said. “I work 10 days at a stretch with a 20-piece orchestra. It’s wonderful.”

Sinatra said that he and his father, who weren’t close when he was a child--”My father wasn’t very talkative”--have become closer since he worked as his father’s musical director from 1988 to 1995. And in light of the elder Sinatra’s recent illnesses, they see each other or talk every couple of days.

The younger Sinatra said that although his father is not in great health, he’s not about to die.

“When he found out on this last trip to the hospital that he didn’t have a heart attack, he commenced to give one to everyone around him,” Sinatra said.

Nonetheless, if the son outlives the father, will the Sinatra legacy finally belong to Frank Jr.? It seems unlikely, but it won’t stop him.

“I’ll keep singing as long as I can work,” he said.

* Who: Frank Sinatra Jr.

* When: 9 and 10:30 p.m. Friday.

* Where: Twin Palms, 630 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway or the San Joaquin Hills toll road (73), exit at Jamboree Road and head south. Or take Pacific Coast Highway to Jamboree and head north. Turn east on San Joaquin Hills Road, right on Santa Rosa Drive and right on Newport Center Drive. Twin Palms is on the right.

* Wherewithal: Cover: $15 after 9 p.m., or no cover with dinner purchase.

* Where to call: (714) 721-8288.