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Frankie Laine Filmography
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Frankie Laine: Background
Eldest of eight children, Frankie Laine was born to
Italian immigrant parents in Chicago's "Little Italy". He got his first taste of singing as a member of the choir in church of the Immaculate Conception's elementary school. At 17 he sang before a crowd of 5,000 at The Merry Garden Ballroom to such enthusiastic applause that he ended up performing five encores on his first night.
Signing as a member of The Merry Garden company, Laine toured with them, working dance marathons during the Great Depression (setting the world record with partner Ruthie Smith in 1932). He replaced
Perry Como in the Freddy Carlone band in Cleveland in 1937, but success eluded him until 1946 when
Hoagy Carmichael spotted him during a gig at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles led to a Mercury contract. At Mercury and Columbia he worked closely with impressario Mitch Miller, and Carl Fischer who co-wrote many songs with Laine including the great standard
We'll Be Together Again.
The first and biggest of a new breed of black-influenced singers who came to prominence in the post-WWII era, signalling the end of both the big bands and the crooning styles favored by contemporaries
Dick Haymes and
Frank Sinatra, his 1946 recording of
That's My Desire remains a landmark record. Often called the first of the blue-eyed soul singers, Laine's style cleared the way for many artists who arose in the late 40s and early 50s, including Kay Starr,
Tony Bennett, Johnnie Ray and
Elvis Presley.
Frankie Laine's name was synonymous with jazz in the late 40's when, accompanied by Carl Fischer and some of the best jazz men in the business, he was swinging standards like "All of Me," "Black and Blue," "Rockin' Chair" and "Sleepy Ol' River" on the Mercury label. But Mitch Miller, who became the A&R man at Mercury in 1948, recognized a universal quality in Laine's voice which he began to exploit via a succession of chart-topping popular songs often with a folk or western flavor ("That Lucky Old Sun," "Swamp Girl," "Cry of the Wild Goose," "Mule Train"). "Mule Train" has been cited as the first song to utilize an "aural texture" that "set the pattern for virtually the entire first decade of rock."
(Will Friedwald, "Sinatra! The Song Is You," Da Capo Press, 1997.)
In 1951, he was signed by the biggest label of the time, Columbia Records, where he immediately scored a double-sided hit with the single "Jezebel"/"Rose, Rose, I Love You," confirming his reputation as the premiere hitmaker of the early 50s. Other Laine hits from this period include, "High Noon," "Jealousy (Jalousie)," "The Girl in the Woods," "When You're in Love," "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans," "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Granada," "Hey Joe!," "The Kid's Last Fight," "Cool Water," "Someday," and "Moonlight Gambler." A consummate duettist, he also scored hits with Patti Page ("I Love You for That"),
Doris Day ("Sugarbush"), Jo Stafford ("Hey, Good Lookin'," "Gambella," "Hambone"), Jimmy Boyd ("Tell Me a Story," "The Little Boy and the Old Man"), the Four Lads ("Rain, Rain, Rain") and Johnnie Ray ("Up Above My Head").
In 1953 he set two more records on the UK charts: weeks at No 1 for a song ("I Believe," which held the number one spot for 18 weeks), and weeks at No 1 for an artist in a single year (27 weeks: a little over half the year, when "Hey Joe!" and "Answer Me" became number one hits as well). Fifty-plus years later, both records still hold. Always exceedingly popular in the U.K., he broke attendance records at the London Palladium in 1952 gave a Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth II in 1954.
Throughout the 1950s, Laine had a second career singing the title songs over the opening credits of Hollywood films and television shows, inluding:
Gunfight At OK Corral, 3:10 To Yuma, Bullwhip and Rawhide. In the 50s and 60s he released many great theme albums as well including Rockin', Jazz Spectacular (with jazz trumpet great Buck Clayton),
Frankie Laine And The Four Lads (a gospel album that truly rocks),
Reunion In Rhythm (with Michel Legrand),
Hell Bent For Leather, Balladeer (folk songs),
Torchin', Call Of The Wild, Wanderlust, etc.
Along with opening the door for many R&B performers, Laine played a significant role in the equal rights movements of the 1950s and 60s. When Nat King Cole's television show was unable to get a sponsor, Laine crossed the color line, becoming the first white artist to appear as a guest (foregoing his usual salary of $10,000.00 as Cole's sustainer show only paid scale). In the following decade, he joined several African American artists to give a free concert for Martin Luther King's supporters during their march on Washington DC.
After switching to ABC Records in the late 1960s, he was topping the charts again with songs like "I'll Take Care of Your Cares," "To Each His Own" and "Lord, You Gave Me A Mountain" (which was written for him by country legend Marty Robbins. His following switch to Amos Records proved less successful commercially, but produced two wonderful albums in a modern, rock-influenced vein which have developed a following through cd rereleases.
His career slowed down a little in the 1980s due to triple and quadruple bypasses, but he nevertheless continued cutting some terrific albums including "Wheels Of A Dream" (1998), "Old Man Jazz" (2002) and "The Nashville Connection" (2004).
Frankie Laine's 70-plus year career spanned most of the 20th century and has continued into the 21st. Laine was a key figure in the golden age of popular music, and remains, quite possibly the greatest singer of all time. On June 12, 1996, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 27th Annual Songwriters’ Hall of Fame awards ceremony at the New York Sheraton
His first marriage was to actress Nan Grey, (June 1950 - July 1993) and Laine adopted her daughters from a previous marriage, Pam and Jan. His second marriage was to Marcia Ann Kline in June 1999.
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