The legend

The Life & Death of Tommy DeLamonte

In 1957 nobody in America was smoother. Tommy DeLamonte, six-foot-three of red velvet and pomade, sold out Vegas showrooms, filled front rows with fainting women, and picked up a nickname he never asked for: the Black Frank Sinatra.

On Christmas Eve 1959 he was gone. No note, no body, just a running Cadillac and a half-smoked cigar. The papers called it a tragedy. The people who knew him called it a getaway. Most folks still believe Tommy faked his own death.

In 2026, when record man Harlan Vance died at 97, his family opened a locked vault in his Manhattan brownstone and found a wooden crate nobody had touched in sixty-seven years.

Inside were reel-to-reel tapes of Christmas songs Tommy cut in secret. Too grown for 1959. Right on time now.

“Bounce That A$$ For Me” is the first one out of the crate. There’s more in there.