Between 1949 and 1957, Frankie Laine had a series of Top 10 hits with his booming, almost operatic, baritone. Although mainly remembered for his somewhat melodramatic delivery, Laine was also capable of toning down his passionate style to invest a love ballad with a cooing tenderness. His records also testify to the growing importance of the record producer in popular music.
The son of Sicilian immigrants, Laine was born Frank Paul LoVecchio in Chicago, Illinois, on March 30, 1913. An early love of music drove him to sing in a church choir in childhood, and later to aspire to a career in show business. By his late teens he had become a dance instructor, and in 1932 he set a dance-marathon record. In his early 20s he switched his focus to singing, fronting several jazz-pop bands and eventually replacing Perry Como in Freddie Carlone’s touring band in 1937.
Laine left Carlone’s band to go solo in the early 1940s, and was initially employed as house vocalist with a New York radio station. In 1944 he teamed up with pianist Carl Fischer, who was to become a close musical associate over the next decade. (Together they wrote several songs, including the hit “We’ll Be Together Again.”)
In 1946 the legendary songwriter Hoagy CARMICHAEL spotted Laine singing in a Hollywood club and helped him get signed for a recording contract with Mercury Records.
Laine went on to score several huge hits for that label and later for Columbia Records. The first was the million-copy selling hit “That’s My Desire” (1947), a song from the 1930s, produced by Mitch Miller. This was followed by another million-copy seller, “Shine,” where his booming voice was matched by a big-band sound. “Mule Train,” from 1949, was the first of many lusty, Western-theme successes produced by Miller, who added the cracking whip and enhanced the “clippety-clop” rhythm of the music. Miller left Mercury to join Columbia Records in 1951, and Laine promptly followed. Many of the pair’s subsequent hits, such as “That Lucky O l d Sun” (1949), “Jalousie” (1951), and “I Believe” (1953), might seem excessively passionate or anguished. But the best of them, such as “Jezebel” (1951), remain greatly impressive for the singer’s astounding breath control, rich vocal timbre, and dynamic delivery.
The Laine/Miller sound was not limited to such bigvoiced ballads; they also released some quieter numbers with relatively sparse backings. These included “Music, Maestro, Please” (a 1950 hit in which Laine is accompanied only by Fischer’s piano), “Rose, Rose, I Love You” (1951), and duets with popular singers Jo Stafford (“Hey, Good Lookin’,” 1951) and Doris D A Y (“Sugarbush,” 1952).
Laine also pursued a screen career in the 1950s, playing both musical and dramatic leads in several movies. These included When You’re Smiling (1950), Sunny Side of the Street (1951), and He Laughed Last (1956). His performances as a screen actor may be fairly forgettable, but he made a lasting mark on film by singing the title songs for several popular pictures, notably Westerns such as High Noon (1952) and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).
Laine also recorded the theme song for the 1959 television series Rawhide, and later parodied his own robust style in the title song to Mel Brooks’s spoof Western, Blazing Saddles (1975).
Laine enjoyed his final Top 40 hit with a 1969 version of Marty Robbins’ “You Gave Me a Mountain.” His career continued through the 1990s, however, with international appearances in cabarets and on television.
Terry Atkinson
SEE ALSO:
COUNTRY; POPULAR MUSIC; RECORD PRODUCTION.
FURTHER READING
Laine, Frankie. That Lucky Old Son: The Autobiography of Frankie Laine (Ventura, CA: Pathfinder, 1993).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
The Essence of Frankie Laine;The Frankie Laine Collection.