[Dixielandjazz] Frankie Laine Obit

[Steve Barbone]

Before he got popular, Frankie Laine was a jazz singer. After he got
popular, one song the obit doesn't mention was "That's Why They Call Me
Shine". It was a wonderful rendition IMO. See below for his ties to OKOM,
Louis Armstrong and Hoagy Carmichael.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



Frankie Laine, 93, the Hit-Making Crooner Who Used His Voice ŒLike a Horn,¹
Is Dead 

NY TIMES - By RICHARD SEVERO - February 7, 2007

Frankie Laine, a singer who achieved enormous popularity in the 1940s and
50s with a robust voice and a string of hits including ³That¹s My Desire,²
³Mule Train,² ³Ghost Riders in the Sky² and ³Jezebel,² died on Tuesday in
San Diego. He was 93.

The cause was cardiovascular disease, said A. C. Lyles, a friend and film
producer. Mr. Laine died at Scripps Mercy Hospital, where he had been
admitted for a hip replacement. He had lived in San Diego since 1968.

Mr. Laine¹s voice was electric, direct and clear. He took a lusty,
rough-edged approach to his music, even with the sweetest ballads, saying he
was inspired to do so by listening to Louis Armstrong play the trumpet. ³I
use my voice like a horn,² he told The Saturday Evening Post in 1954.

That voice was seemingly heard everywhere in Mr. Laine¹s heyday, not just on
radios and jukeboxes, but also on the soundtracks of movies and television
shows. His was the voice that sang of the American West in ³Gunfight at the
O.K. Corral² (1957), ³3:10 to Yuma² (1957) and ³Man Without a Star² (1955).
He starred in more than a half-dozen musicals on film. And on television, he
was the host of three different variety shows in the 1950s. He also sang the
theme song to the ³Rawhide² series, which was broadcast from 1959 to 1966
and starred a young Clint Eastwood.

He made a hit recording of the theme music from ³High Noon² (1952), though
the voice used in the movie was Tex Ritter¹s. Years later, Mr. Laine sang on
the soundtrack of the Mel Brooks comedy ³Blazing Saddles² (1974).

In all, he sold more than 100 million records. He first found success as a
jazz singer, performing standards like ³Black and Blue² and ³West End Blues²
on the Mercury label. With Carl Fischer he wrote the standard ³We¹ll Be
Together Again.² But his popularity took off after the impresario Mitch
Miller brought him to the Columbia label and steered him toward songs with a
more popular and sometimes western flavor. Mr. Miller liked what he called
Mr. Laine¹s ³blue-collar² voice.

Frankie Laine was born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio on March 30, 1913, the
eldest of eight children of John LoVecchio, a barber, and his wife, Anna,
both of whom had left Palermo, Sicily and settled in the Little Italy
section of Chicago. (Al Capone was a customer of Mr. Laine¹s father.)

As a boy, Frankie joined the choir of the Immaculate Conception Church in
Chicago. After just one practice session, he recalled, he knew he wanted to
be a singer, and by the time he was in his mid teens, his voice was being
heard in clubs and on stages around Chicago.

After graduating from a technical high school, Mr. Laine worked in cabarets
for 15 years, supplementing his income as a machinist, car salesman and
bouncer in a saloon. In the 1930s, he also took up marathon dancing to earn
money and once danced for 145 days straight at a club in Atlantic City.

In a 1993 autobiography, ³That Lucky Old Son² (written with Joseph F.
Laredo), he talked of traveling from city to city, broke, auditioning for
jazz clubs and working where he could. He was eventually hired as a
$5-a-week sometime singer at the radio station WINS in New York City and
dropped the name LoVecchio, replacing it with Laine.

The country was awash with great crooners like Russ Columbo and Bing Crosby
when Mr. Laine was making his start. He listened closely to Crosby and liked
his style but, he said, he had no intention of singing that way himself. Nor
did he try to emulate the phrasing of Frank Sinatra, another contemporary,
as so many other balladeers did.

Instead he developed an intense delivery and a quick vibrato, a style that
the songwriter Hoagy Carmichael heard one night in Hollywood when he dropped
into Billy Berg¹s Vine Street club. Hire him, Mr. Carmichael urged Mr. Berg.

³What for?² Mr. Berg was quoted as saying in a 1954 Saturday Evening Post
article. ³He comes in here every night and sings for nothing.²

Mr. Carmichael persisted, and Mr. Berg agreed to pay Mr. Laine $75 a week.

His salary level jumped exponentially in 1946, after he recorded ³That¹s My
Desire,² which made the charts, as did many of his early recordings. By the
late 1940s, Frankie Laine fan clubs had sprung up in cities across the
United States and all over the world: in Britain, Australia, Egypt, Malta
and Iceland, among other places.

With his burly physique and beaklike nose, Mr. Laine hardly had movie-star
looks. But in the 1950s, riding his popularity, he was invited to make a
handful of films, among them the musicals ³When You¹re Smiling,² ³Rainbow
Round My Shoulder,² ³Sunny Side of the Street² and ³Bring Your Smile Along.²

His first marriage, of 40 years, was to Nan Grey, an actress; she died in
1993. He is survived by his wife, the former Marcia Ann Kline, whom he
married 1999; a brother, Phillip LoVecchio of Chicago; his stepdaughters
Pamela Donner of Sherman Oaks, Calif., and Jan Steiger of Coeur D¹Alene,
Idaho, from his first marriage; and two grandsons.

Mr. Laine remained an active performer well into old age, though he twice
underwent coronary bypass surgery. He said he was afraid to stop working. He
wasn¹t used to being rich, he said, and feared that if he didn¹t work, he
might come down ³like a cement balloon.²