Chairman of the Boards Also Was King of Karaoke in O.C.

Frank Sinatra had a voice like no other, and a style that could pierce the hardest of hearts with the simplest of lyrics--gifts, critics generally agree, that made him one of a kind.

It also made Sinatra the King of Karaoke, one of the most imitated singers--for better or worse--in bars, clubs and private parties across Southern California.

“He’s always been one of the top sellers, especially for the older gentlemen,” said Terry Lee, owner of Laser D Entertainment, a karaoke dealer in Yorba Linda. “I expect to sell a lot of stuff this weekend.”

Sinatra’s death Thursday night came less as a shock for his legions of fans than as an expected benchmark. He’d been ailing for months, and few expected he’d ever perform again publicly.

So the death was more epilogue to a career than an end to it.

“I knew he was ill, but he’s a fellow entertainer, so we all feel a

pain,” said jazz pianist Les Czimber, a regular performer at the Odessa Bar in Laguna Beach. “You just hate to lose somebody like him, a great entertainer and singer. I just wish I could have played piano for him.”

Billy May did play for Sinatra. In fact, the San Clemente man was known as one of the premier arrangers of the Big Band era, who did the musical charts for many of Sinatra’s recordings from the 1940s into the ‘70s.

They met, fittingly enough, in a New York saloon in 1939.

“It was the beginning of the Big Band era, and the musicians, we all hung out at two or three saloons,” May recalled. “He was playing with Harry James and I was with Charlie Barnet.”

They worked together off and on through the ‘40s and began a full-time relationship with the now-famous “Come Fly With Me” album in 1958.

The last time May saw his old friend was two years ago, when Barbara and Frank Sinatra renewed their wedding vows.

There was a mystique to Sinatra for his die-hard fans, but the charisma was rooted not in magic but in talent and hard work, May said.

“He was a good singer. He knew what he was doing,” May said.

Sinatra studied not only his contemporaries but was well-versed in classical music, May continued. “He had a great deal of natural talent and he had a good ear. He paid a lot of attention to what was going on.”

The payoff landed in the ears of fans like Dennis Dudney, 51, of Buena Park, whose parents were fans and who grew up on a steady diet of Sinatra.

“He’s a great singer, with wholesome songs,” said Dudney, a Vietnam War veteran who stopped in for an afternoon drink at American Legion Post 354 in Buena Park. When he arrived, he said, the jukebox was playing “New York, New York,” and the older regulars were reminiscing.

“I don’t think anybody was real surprised,” Dudney said, explaining the relative lack of sadness around the bar. “It’s kind of been in the news for a while that he was sick. But there was only one Frank Sinatra.”

Sinatra’s slow fade might have helped him avoid one of the more ghoulish elements of modern society--the rush for memorabilia whenever a celebrity performer dies suddenly. Friday, Everett Caldwell, owner of Mr. C’s Rare Records in Orange, said he had surprisingly few customers looking for out-of-print Sinatra records.

“He’s been very collectible for the last few years,” Caldwell said. “I’ve sold a lot of his stuff today, but not what I expected. But they’ve been anticipating it for a long time.”

The death affected others more deeply. Jack Wood of Huntington Beach leads the Los Angeles-based Frank Sinatra Touring Band, composed of Wood and five musicians who toured with Sinatra in the latter years of his career.

Wood said the band was onstage at Restaurant Kikuya in Huntington Beach at the exact moment Sinatra died.

“We didn’t know about it until after the gig, but sometime after the third set, he died,” Wood, 52, said from his home.

Wood, who on Thursday night sang such Sinatra standards as “One More for the Road,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “Witch Craft,” said Sinatra’s death left him deeply saddened.

“He was a hero of mine,” Wood said, “a mentor that I never met.”