[Dixielandjazz] Frankie Laine Obit

[Mike]

My favorite of his was always Jezebel. Wonderful tune; timeless 
classic.

Mike




Steve Barbone wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
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