MUSIC: Frankophilia.

Everyone should have at least one Frank Sinatra story; mine involves a seventy-year-old former member of the Soviet Politburo. One morning when I was in college, not long after the USSR crumbled, my Residential Advisor informed me that a certain Yegor Ligachev was visiting the campus and wanted to see what an American student's room looked like. Would I mind if he stopped by?

How could I refuse? Besides, I knew just what the comrade needed to shake those end-of-Empire blues. I cued up a copy of Come Dance With Me!, a brassy Sinatra album from the days when the Cold War was young. The first words the barrel-chested Bolshevik heard upon entering my room were: "Hey there, cutes /put on your dancin' boots /and come dance with me!"

Alas, Ligachev wasn't a Sinatra fan. He just muttered, "Why is there no order?"-apparently a reference to the state of my room-and left.

Comrade Yegor would have been bewildered by an academic conference held this past month at Long Island's Hofstra University dedicated to Sinatra's life and legend. The place was packed with Frankophiles (average age: 55; average no. of Sinatra albums: same), the kind of people who would never, ever, walk out on a Sinatra tune. Despite the scholarly surroundings, the three-day event had the feel of a high-class Star Trek convention, albeit one where those in costume wore pinky rings instead of pointy ears.

The whole thing reminded me of my grandfather. His record collection consists of two hundred albums, all by Sinatra, and listening to one of them with him is a lesson in what it means to be a fan. As the music begins, he sits back in his chair and closes his eyes, a look of delight on his face. Like Sinatra, he grew up in a working-class Northeastern neighborhood; a first-generation Italian-American in a time when being Italian was not easy. It matters to him that when bandleader Harry James asked the young Sinatra to change his name to the less ethnic-sounding Frankie Satin, he said no. When Sinatra died last May, my grandfather spent the whole day videotaping the television tributes.

Joining the fans at the conference were some of Sinatra's friends-Quincy Jones and Skitch Henderson, for example, and journalist Pete Hamill, whose recently published Why Sinatra Matters pays thoughtful tribute to his old friend. Their presence lent an almost mystical authenticity to the proceedings: they had touched the hem of His gabardines. "Everywhere I go, people are talking about Sinatra and listening to his music," I overheard a Frankophile say to his wife. "We're in Heaven now!" The music coming from speakers set around the hall certainly sounded like Heaven, or at least Vegas on a really good day.

A few clouds began to form, though, when the discussion turned to politics. For the most part, Sinatra's allegiances traced the same arc as the country's did. He visited FDR at the White House, and palled around with JFK, whom he called "Chicky Boy." But later on he campaigned for-can you believe it?-Ronald Reagan. One speaker, a professor of English at Manhattan College, lamented that Sinatra had "joined the Reagan juggernaut against America's disenfranchised."

As that bit of analysis suggests, there is some danger in handing Ol' Blue Eyes over to 1990s academics. I walked into one session just in time to hear a SUNY professor describe in quavering voice Sinatra's "I've Got You under My Skin." As the music crescendos, the professor explained, Sinatra prepares "a full assault on the citadel of love . . . with brass at high tide, sweeping away any vestige of impotence."

It was clear that the fans and the professors didn't always see eye to eye. Later in the day, the chairman of Hofstra's Sociology Department admitted he didn't quite understand Sinatra's appeal. After all, he said, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and Nat Cole, among others, were more talented. Sinatra, by virtue of his white skin, simply had "access to the channels of social communication. . . . Frank was probably lucky that his eyes were blue after all."

That was a very un-swinging thing to say, and one white-haired man sitting in my row would have none of it. He shot up from his chair, and said, "You come to a Frank Sinatra conference-a man who will be remembered as the entertainer of the century-and you have the unmitigated gall to tear down his reputation? Go back to Moscow, where you will be welcome!" The Frankophiles cheered. And somewhere, I'd like to think, Yegor Ligachev remembered my messy room.

Of course, Sinatra's legacy is best measured not in three days of panel discussions, but rather in minutes, and seconds-the hopeful 3:25 of "Day In, Day Out," the sadder-than-sad 4:26 of "One for My Baby," the rollicking 2:10 of "I've Got the World on a String." As Pete Hamill commented, in the end it is Sinatra's work that matters. "The greatest of all things to do," he said, "is to go home, sit in a chair, turn on the phonograph, listen to the music, and don't think about another goddamn thing." That point may be lost on professors and members of the Politburo, but it's one that my grandfather, eyes closed, has understood all along.