For four years in the early 1980s, Joe Piscopo was a cast member on Saturday Night Live. But simply calling him a cast member is selling him short. Alongside Eddie Murphy, with whom he frequently collaborated, he was the show’s MVP.
In fact, among the cast members of his era, he appeared in the most sketches of anyone. A gifted impersonator, Piscopo played everyone from David Letterman and Ted Koppel to Jerry Lewis and Joan Rivers and beyond.
But his signature impression was also the one closest to his heart.
In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Average Joe: The Memoirs of a Blue Collar Entertainer, Joe Piscopo recalls the origins of his Frank Sinatra impression, how it led to him being hired on SNL, and how important it was to him that the character be treated with respect. He also describes sneaking in to see Sinatra rehearse one day in an empty NBC Studio, only to be spotted by Ol’ Blue Eyes himself.
Mr. Sinatra
Frank Sinatra. I can’t imagine how my life and career trajectory would be different if not for his influence. A fellow New Jersey native, I felt the significance of Ol’ Blue Eyes every time I got my hair cut. On the barbershop wall hung two framed pictures: the pope and Francis Albert Sinatra. And Mr. Sinatra’s photo hung above that of the Holy Father.
Every weekend I host a radio show called Sundays with Sinatra from the power station WABC here in New York, playing two hours of Sinatra classics and giving historical context about the man and his music. And when I do my live entertainment shows, I always sing several Sinatra standards.
But the thing with Mr. Sinatra and me isn’t mere admiration for a gifted entertainer. It goes deeper than our shared New Jersey and Italian roots. My love for Frank Sinatra is really about my dad and his generation. Mr. S. and my dad were born four months apart and are so similar in how they talked and laughed and operated. With my dad being a lawyer, you might find that hard to believe, but it’s true. So, when I connected with Mr. S., it was like another connection with my father.
The Letter
I first started to develop my impersonation of Mr. Sinatra while working in the comedy clubs. I would record him from TV onto a VHS tape, and then I’d record just the audio onto a cassette tape. Between the video and the audio recordings, I had my source material for studying his mannerisms and rhythms for how he talked and sang. The singing voice I got easily because I just felt that instinctively. But how to talk like Mr. S.—that took more practice.
I’d drive around in my Ford Fairmont, listening to the cassette and repeating it over and over. And I studied the video relentlessly and obsessively. When you do that, you just start to catch it or you don’t, you know? It was trial and error.
Of course, Sinatra’s accent was Hoboken—a North Jersey Italian accent—which is distinct from the rest of Jersey, and very similar to mine. I would loosen it up a bit and make it a little more “street.” If you go to North Jersey, coffee is cawffee—that kind of thing. There are times when I hear Mr. S. fall into that North Jersey accent where he roughed it up—so I’d do that too.
So, I was doing Sinatra at The Improv. I did a “The Lady Is a Tramp” bit where I kept repeating the end verse—the kind of humor Andy Kaufman would do. I just kept singing, “That’s why the lady, that’s why the lady, that’s why the lady,” and never ended it. It got laughs and I was honing my Sinatra impression with each night’s performance.
Then I go to audition for SNL and do a Frank Sinatra impression, but this time it was crooning, “I don’t stand the ghost of a chance . . . with you.”
I did the whole thing, and they loved it and hired me. Which meant, of course, that they were going to want me to do the Sinatra impression on the show. But I was afraid to. I mean, I didn’t want to do it because of respect for Mr. S.
But they said, “You got to do this. We need it, Joe.”
The pressure was on.
So, I said, “OK, but I’m writing him a letter first.”
I figured that somebody at NBC would tip him off anyway. Someone would tell Mr. Sinatra that this young punk on that Saturday night comedy show was going to impersonate him. I knew that Sinatra was very close with Dave Tebet, who was at the end of a long career as being head of talent at NBC when I was just coming on board with SNL. The entertainment world is small, and people talk.
I wrote a letter to Sinatra before I did the impersonation on the show for the first time and laid out the case for getting Frank’s blessing. It went something like this: “Mr. Sinatra, I send this with the greatest of respect. You’re my hero. Like my father is my hero. He told me you’re the number one entertainer of all time. I mean no offense when I do the impersonations. They’re done with complete respect first and foremost. If you find them to be offensive in any way, I’ll cease and desist immediately.”
I sent it to his lawyer Mickey Rudin. I don’t even know how I got the address. I waited to hear back but never heard anything.
And so, I debuted my Mr. Sinatra. It was in a sketch where Charles Rocket played Ronald Reagan and Gail Matthius played Nancy Reagan. The joke was that Mr. Sinatra lobbied for Nancy to become the vice president. Ironically, during my four years on the show, I would go on to do President Reagan fourteen times.
Like I said, early on the SNL bosses just told me, “You got to do it, Joe. You got to do it.” And they meant it.
I did it, OK, but then I took possession of the character myself. I said, “I have to be more protective of this.” I just wanted to treat the Frank Sinatra character with more respect. We had fun. We laughed. But I always oversaw all the sketches.
I did Mr. Sinatra twelve times on SNL and a thirteenth time in 2015 for the fortieth anniversary show, in addition to forty-plus years of doing the impersonation on other shows. Mr. S. never sent word for me to “cease and desist.” I never heard from anyone.
Well, that’s not totally true. I never heard from anyone from Mr. Sinatra’s camp telling me to stop, but I did eventually hear that the Chairman of the Board himself approved of what I was doing.
Charlie Callas, the very oddball-funny guy who often opened for the old man, was downstairs with him one Saturday night at Caesar’s Palace. They were together in the dressing room and it was like 11:35 p.m. The TV was on in the background, and I came onto the screen—as Frank Sinatra.
Everybody stopped and there was dead silence in the room as Mr. S. watched it.
After the sketch ended, Charlie Callis said to Mr. Sinatra, “What do you think, captain?”
Frank said with a smile and a smirk, “He’s pretty good.” Then a pause before he added, “The little prick.”
Frank Sinatra and Count Basie at Rehearsal
“Hey Joe. You know Frank Sinatra is playing at Radio City Music Hall with Count Basie on Sunday?” an NBC security guard said to me. Even early on at SNL, my admiration of Ol’ Blue Eyes was a well-established fact around 30 Rock, and I considered Count Basie to be one of the greatest jazz artists ever, noted mostly for the impeccable synchronization and power of his “Count Basie Orchestra.”
“I know, man, but I can’t get tickets,” I said.
“Well, you want to watch him rehearse?”
“You could get me that?”
“He’ll be rehearsing in this building—of course I can,” he said, dangling a set of keys. “I’ll take you down there, and I’ll sneak you in.”
“You’ll do that?”
“Yeah, but he’s doing a three o’clock rehearsal, and he’s so punctual, so don’t be late.”
So, on Tuesday I’m in my office and the security guard shows up and takes me downstairs. We walk down the hallway of the third floor, and he kicks open a secret door that I had not ever seen in all my times walking by that area.
“Go right through there.”
I go in, and the door shuts behind me. I turn around to thank him, but he’s gone.
It’s the studio for The Today Show, but there are no cameras, no audience, no nothing. It’s all empty except for a big Steinway grand piano in the center.
I’m thinking, Ah, this is probably a Candid Camera joke on Joe. You guys are goofing on me.
Then I hear rustling on the far side of the stage, and then . . . I see Frank Sinatra. His head is down reading a music chart, and he has a guy to his left.
Sid Mark, the original Sundays with Sinatra guy, was to his right.
Mr. S. starts to walk toward the piano. And I’m just hiding against the wall, man. I don’t want to be seen, but I’m watching. I hear rustling at the door to my right, and Count Basie is brought into the studio in a wheelchair. He passed away about a year later, so this was near the end—but he still had it.
They wheel Count Basie in, and I hear Frank Sinatra say, “Hey, Bill, how you doing, baby?” Just like that. It was the thing. It was like—Sinatra, right there talking to Basie.
In pure jazz tones, Count Basie goes, “Hey, Francis, how you doing, man?”
I’m going like, Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m watching this. Everything I dreamed of.
So then Mr. Sinatra walks up to the grand piano, and he lays the chart on the top of the piano. They wheel Count Basie up to the piano, and they start “Pennies from Heaven.” I’m watching this, and Mr. S. is humming it. He’s not singing it—they’ve done it a thousand times, but he wanted to get the riff going.
And that’s when it happened.
All of a sudden Frank looked straight at me—still standing there in the darkness against the wall. Straight at me. He spotted me cold. And I froze, man.
I said, “Oh, now I’m in trouble.”
With the music still playing, he turned his head, registered, tilted his head to the other side, blinked his eyes like he would do when he was staring at a person. Then he went right back to the music and let me be.
After that look from Frank, I snuck back out because I didn’t want to be a pain in the neck.
I don’t know how, but he never missed a trick. He was such a different human being, Frank Sinatra was. Once in a century do they come along like that—and he was that. He knew everything about his music and his business and the way he was going to live life. You couldn’t mess with him, but he was also the nicest guy in the world. And he had instinct and talent like nobody else.
Excerpted from the book “Average Joe: The Memoirs of a Blue Collar Entertainer” by Joe Piscopo with Walter Scott Lamb published by Forefront Books, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Joe Piscopo. Reprinted by permission.
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