Shortly after his father died in 1998, Frank Sinatra Jr. was hired to play a casino in Atlantic City. After taking the job, he discovered that it was the last place in Atlantic City his father had played.

So the son, a singer and his father's conductor and musical director, decided to stage a celebratory concert of his father's songs. He assembled the orchestra.

He started the concert singing a few songs not associated with his dad.

``Then I left the stage, and the lighting in the room got darker and darker and darker,'' Sinatra Jr., says. ``Pretty soon the stage was primarily silhouettes, and the orchestra looked like it was occupied by ghosts.

``And I came back on the stage. And the late Bill Miller, my father's accompanist for over 40 years, came on the stage and began to play his famous piano introduction to One for My Baby (and One More for the Road). He sat there in dark blue, and I sat there in dark blue.''

Sinatra couldn't hear anyone breathing as he sang. When he finished the audience applauded wildly.

``I figured we would do the celebrative show for maybe a year, 18 months,'' Sinatra says. ``But people have made it clear that this is what they want to hear. So we've been doing it ever since.''

Sinatra, 65, sings with an eight-piece orchestra. Four musicians are holdovers from his father's band.

He started singing professionally at 19, and he's been singing ever since. In 1988, at his father's request, he became conductor and musical director of what the son refers to casually as ``the Sinatra show.''

After a performance in 2003, Richard S. Ginell of Variety reported: ``If you closed your eyes, Frank Jr. made it seem as if the Chairman was back in the room again.''

Sinatra Jr. says being Frank's son has had positive and negative effects on his career. The relationship has opened doors, he says, but he sometimes has a hard time living up to expectations.

``The thing to do is just do your best. Be yourself,'' he says. ``I could not have maintained my position as a performer for 47 ½ years if I had dwelled on that. I would have ended up a dribbling madman.''

He never ventured into rock 'n' roll. He despised it.

``It was simplistic -- steps down the ladder, not up the ladder,'' Sinatra says. ``When I grew up, I was living in the world of Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Bing Crosby and Miss Peggy Lee. I was living in the world of Ella Fitzgerald.

``I used to go to shows in Las Vegas, and I heard these people perform live. I heard the emotional content of their music, and I witnessed the impact that had on their audience. It was incredible to me.''

Granted, he says, rockers in their 60s are the performers who fill arenas.

``They are much more popular than I ever was,'' he says. ``Fortunately, there are a whole bunch of people, not only in the United States of America but all across the world, who are not ready to give up their Frank Sinatra music.

``They have turned to me to make it for them, because they thought it was perfectly natural for me to carry on. I happen to believe it is the most superlative music of the era.''