SID MARK
In 62 years, Mark’s only absence was a two-week hiatus for heart
surgery, and he dismisses talk of retirement. “I promised Frank I’d
do it as long as I could,” explained Mark, a longtime confidant of
both Ol’ Blue Eyes and the late Frank Sinatra Jr. “It’s been a good
ride. How blessed am I? It could have been any other performer
… but it was Frank.”
Lucky indeed, because it’s hard to imagine a show with similar
longevity built around Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan or any of
the other bygone legends Mark worked with as a young jazz en-
thusiast. Indeed, Mark’s radio career was built on notable persistence.

He’d hoped to join Armed Forces Radio by enlisting for the Korean
War after high school, but spent two years in the infantry instead.

A two-year broadcasting course got him no closer to a radio dial.

Finally, Mark got a break when his sister’s out-of-town jazz teacher
asked Mark where to find a good Jewish meal nearby.

The younger man took the teacher home to sample Mrs.

Fliegelman’s cooking, and “when he took the second bowl of veg-
etable soup with short ribs in it, I knew I was fine forever,” Mark
chuckled. He started hanging around the teacher’s radio station,
which led to hosting a live broadcast of the Saturday jazz show at
the Red Hill Inn in Pennsaucken, N.J.

“My first band was Stan Getz — he was a Philadelphian as well,”
said Mark. For the next few years, the novice handled such lumi-
naries as Count Basie and Duke Ellington. One singer, though,
eluded the Red Hill Inn: Frank Sinatra, whom Mark discovered
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Continued from Page 13



through his sister. “She’d send me to the record store to buy 78s,”
Mark remembered. “It was kind of embarrassing for a teenage boy
to be buying Frank at the time, with all the girls screaming.”
But one winter, Mark was alone in a California military bar-
racks. “Frank came on singing ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas,’ and I
said, ‘My God, listen to that.’ Th ere was nothing like it!”
By the mid-1950s, Mark was hosting an all-night broadcast on
WHAT in Philly. One evening, instead of the rock ’n’ roll his pro-
ducers wanted, Mark decided to play Sinatra’s new album in its en-
tirety. Th e next day, sales of the album spiked around Philadelphia.

Th at fi nally got the attention of Sinatra’s agent; the next thing he
knew, Mark was invited to spend a weekend with the icon in Las
Vegas. As their friendship blossomed, “Sounds of Sinatra” became
a radio destination for listeners who prized their host’s insider
knowledge. Philadelphia was a passionate fan base for Sinatra, said
Mark, who frequented the singer’s Manhattan apartment. “He’d al-
ways joke: Are you sure you’re Jewish? Because I hear the way you
say marinara,” Mark laughed.

While Mark was the less religious of the two, both men shared
a deep respect for family and Jewish tradition, which Sinatra saw
as akin to his own Italian culture. “Frank was the most charita-
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“I promised Frank
I’d do it as long as
I could. It’s been
a good ride. How
blessed am I?”
SID MARK
ble man ever, and a tremendous supporter of the state of Israel,”
Mark noted.

Th e hard-living singer also gave the radio host advice on deal-
ing with laryngitis. “He’d say, ‘Your problem is you don’t drink
enough,’” Mark recalled. (Th e broadcaster relies on tea, lozenges
and an evening schedule.)
Photographs show the craggy, 6-foot-4-inch Mark towering
over the singer, smiles intact as their hair whitens over the years.

“He’s been a friend for as long as I’ve been in this business,” Sinatra
told a crowd in 1991. “It’s wonderful to have a friend like Sidney,
and I’ve had maybe four or fi ve in my career. People who’ve stayed
with me when things were dark, who didn’t change when every-
thing else changed.”
You might say the same of Sinatra’s own fans, for whom the
Chairman of the Board remains as alluring as ever. “He’s intergen-
erational,” noted Mark. Annual Sinatra tribute concerts sell out;
millennials regularly host Rat Pack theme nights.

Th at’s because, as Mark observed, glamour is eternal. “And that
was Frank,” he said. “All the guys wanted to be like him, and all the
women wanted to date him. Sinatra is the convertible and the girls
and the golf clubs. Sinatra is a lifestyle.” l
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