The kid Sinatra was back home in Chicago. Dakota Horvath has been doing Frank since he was five years old. Now 14 and a veteran of gigs in Vegas and Miami and at Brad Pitt’s wedding, he was preparing to take the stage at last month’s Heart of Italy Food and Wine Street Festival, at 24th and Oakley.
“He just got signed to a record label, and he’ll be going to New York in about two weeks,” Lawrence said while Dakota got dressed. “He’ll be starting recording in July for the album. They’re thinking of him as a romance singer. They said like in the 50s, when the rock ‘n’ roll started, Johnny Mathis was singing romantic songs. There’s always room for romantic songs. Young or old will listen to ’em. In 2000 they want to keep romantic songs going, and they still got Dakota to carry out these romantic songs.”
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But for the Heart of Italy festival Dakota was going to do one more night of Sinatra. He emerged from the basement in cuffed, baggy pants and a jacket with a beautiful three-button roll. Lawrence flipped up his son’s collar and knotted his silver necktie. They walked half a block to the stage on Oakley Avenue, between Miceli’s Deli and Maurice D. Russo, DDS. Dakota drank a bottle of water, and Lawrence carried a duffel bag full of copies of Dakota’s CD Just Wild About That Girl, recorded two years ago when his voice was changing.
The street was packed from curb to curb. Jack Miuccio, the tuxedoed bel canto singer who would follow Dakota, was bounding through the audience, shaking hands, hugging dark-eyed old ladies. Beyond the folding chairs were the sausage vendors, the cannoli vendors, and a set of Roman columns erected to remind the southwest side that this food, this wine, this music was part of a longstanding cultural tradition.
Lawrence stood beside the sound tent, arms folded. He smiled when an astonished woman pointed at the stage and exclaimed, “That’s a young boy!”
Lawrence immediately saw the show-business possibilities of a boy Sinatra. Dakota’s mother, Crystal, is Italian, so the kid had the right look, and when he was six he got his first gig, at Mickey Rourke’s nightclub. “We went up to his gym, because I’m a big boxing fan,” Dakota said. “A week later I sang at the opening of his nightclub. We were working at Mickey’s steady. We were also doing a convention for TV shows, and we went on Jerry Springer’s show. After that, we were getting all kinds of calls.”
This evening’s Sinatra act had been just for his old fans, the ones who knew him when he was a little kid in a black fedora. The hat doesn’t look so cute on a teenager, and Dakota wants to grow up now. He hopes his album will introduce him to the rest of the world as something other than Frank in miniature. “I’m trying to develop my own style,” he said. “I’m trying to develop an American version of a Luis Miguel. I think the novelty of Sinatra’s kind of fading. I’d like to have a lasting career. If the album sells, I’d like to go to New York or LA.”
