His dad's Frank Sinatra autograph almost went into the trash. Now it's on display

NORTH CANTON ‒ Almost three decades ago, Joe Fraley picked up a musical memory from the floor of his father's home.

The cocktail menu, a memento from the Hotel Astor in New York City, was dated deep in the big-band era. George Fraley obtained the piece of printed paper in 1940 during a trip with friends to New York to see a band performance at the hotel.

When the younger Fraley retrieved it from his father's home during a visit in the 1990s, the previously saved souvenir had, in his dad's mind, outlived its life as a collectible. It got tossed in the discard pile.

Then the son turned the drink menu over and saw four signatures.

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Renowned bandleader and trombonist Tommy Dorsey, "The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing," had signed the menu. So had young drummer extraordinaire Bernard "Buddy" Rich, arguably the most influential jazz drummer of his time. The name of respected jazz trumpet player and bandleader Roland "Bunny" Berigan also was scrawled on the decades-old menu.

A fourth name, the moniker of a singer who had cut his first record barely a year before, was scribbled in the top left-hand corner of the menu.

The signature simply reads, "Sincerely, Frank Sinatra."

"I'm no handwriting analyst, but you can tell these are the real deal," Fraley said of the souvenir his father had kept for decades with dozens of other items collected from his life.

"I've never gotten a valuation of this from an antique dealer, but I imagine that any one of these (autographs) is valuable. To get all four ..."

Fraley's voice trailed off in the midst of his memory.

A weekend train trip from Canton to New York City

Sinatra had been the guest singer for the Dorsey band on Saturday Aug. 17, 1940, the night that Fraley's research shows that his father, then 20, and a few friends journeyed by train from Canton to New York City to take in some big band music.

"He and his buddies did this all the time," said Fraley, 73, who said his father was working at the former Hercules Motors plant on Market Avenue S in Canton in 1940. "After work on Friday, they'd catch a train at the big station on South Market."

The group would arrive in New York late Friday night, Fraley said.

"They'd get a cheap fleabag hotel on the outskiers of New York City and share the cost. They couldn't stay at a hotel like the Astor."

But the Astor, or some other site where a band was performing, would be their entertainment destination on Saturday nights. Back in the day, "there were a lot of hotels that had ballrooms for Big Band concerts," said Fraley.

"They went to different ones. They'd catch a band on Saturday night, and at noon or so on Sunday they would hop on a train and come back to Ohio, get some sleep and get up in time to go to work in the morning on Monday."

On the night he collected his autographs, the elder Fraley was one of four friends sitting around a high table in the ballroom of the Astor. At the center of the table there was a list of cocktail drinks.

"When the band would take a break, they'd pass right by his table. Dad didn't carry around an autograph book, so he grabbed the cocktail menu and said, 'Could you sign this?'"

Cocktail memories and the old Astor Hotel

The cocktail list itself is an artifact of history.

"There are a lot of drinks listed at remarkable prices," Fraley said. "A Tom Collins was 50 cents. A daiquiri was 55 cents. A mint julep was 65 cents. Beer on tap was 35 cents and bottled beer was 55 cents.

"If it cost that much in Manhattan, while listening to a big band, imagine what it cost in Canton. It would have been only half of that."

Still, it was the famous musical names scrawled on the drink menu that turned it into a prized possession.

Dorsey, promoting his band, probably is the least rare of the signatures, believes Fraley.

"He might have been one of those guys giving out autographs left and right," explained Fraley.

Indeed, according to one posting at the website for the Jazz Lives musical history blog noted in 2020 that, "We might forget — 80 years later — just how popular Tommy Dorsey was. And his popularity meant that he signed autographs frequently."

The signatures of the trio of other signers, however, likely are less common autographs.

"I saw Buddy Rich three times (in the Canton and Akron area)," Fraley said. "Once he got established he didn't give autographs, so his was rare."

Berigan, whose life was shortened by alcoholism, died at age 33 in June of 1942.

"So, he wasn't signing autographs much longer," said Fraley.

Frank Sinatra? This 1940s Astor appearance was at the beginning of his career, Fraley noted. Later, his signing hand was protected by bodyguards.

"Once he got established, getting a Frank Sinatra autograph was like pulling hens' teeth."

A quick check on eBay and others sites shows Sinatra's autograph going anywhere from $100 to $2,500 or more.

Almost thrown out that day

George Fraley kept the drink menu stored in a closet for years. The Astor Hotel, opened in 1904 on Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, was demolished in 1967. Details of the elder Fraley's New York musical trips, though not forgotten, mostly were left unspoken until the day when his son came for a visit.

"This would have been in the middle of the 1990s," the younger Fraley said. "He died in 2005, and he and my mom spent the last 20 years of his life in Winston-Salem (North Carolina). I went there to visit. Mom was in the kitchen and she told me, 'Your dad is in the bedroom, sorting through stuff.'"

Fraley got to the bedroom door and found his father standing amid the refuse of a life well lived.

"He's got stuff all over the bed and all over the floor, things from 30 or 40 years or more ago," Fraley said. "He asks me, 'What am I going to do with all this junk? I'm throwing it all away.'"

The menu was on the floor, preparing to meet its moment of disposal.

"It must have been stepped on a couple of times," remembered Fraley. "So I come in the room and ask him, 'What's this?' And he tells me the story."

The elder Fraley didn't want it any more. But Joe did.

"Then take the thing," the dad said.

Joe Fraley brought the autographed artifact back home to Stark County. He had it framed in double glass.

"On one side you can see the name of the Astor Hotel and on the other side is the list of drinks and the autographs. I've got $400 in this thing."

Many of those who have had the opportunity to view the autographs are "pretty amazed," Fraley said of his serendipitous discovery of a family memory.

"If I had gotten to my parents' house even just a half hour later, it would have been out in the dumpster."

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com.

On Twitter: @gbrownREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: North Canton man saves autographs of Sinatra, Buddy Rich and others