https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EukTlVga8M4



">Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio (Chicago,
March 30, 1913 – San Diego, February 6,
2007), was a successful American singer, songwriter and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first
concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance
of "That's
My Desire" in 2005. Often
billed as America's Number One Song Stylist, his other nicknames include
Mr.
Rhythm, Old Leather Lungs, and Mr. Steel Tonsils. His hits included "That's
My Desire", "That Lucky Old
Sun", "Mule Train", "Cry
of the Wild Goose", "Jezebel", "High Noon",
"I Believe",

"Hey Joe!",

"The Kid's
Last Fight", "Cool Water",
"Moonlight Gambler", "Love is a Golden Ring", "Rawhide",
and "Lord, You
Gave Me a Mountain".
He sang well-known theme songs for many movie Western soundtracks, including 3:10 To

Yuma, Gunfight
at the O.K.
Corral, and Blazing Saddles,
although he was not a
country & western singer. Laine sang an eclectic variety of song
styles and
genres, stretching from big band crooning to pop, western-themed
songs, gospel, rock,
folk,
jazz and
blues. He
did not sing the soundtrack song
for High Noon, which
was
sung by Tex Ritter, but his
own version (with somewhat altered lyrics, omitting the name of the
antagonist,
Frank Miller) was the one that became a bigger hit.

Style

A clarion-voiced singer with lots of style, able to fill halls
without a microphone, and one
of the biggest
hit-makers of late 1940s/early 1950s, Laine had more than 70 charted
records, 21
gold records, and worldwide sales of over 100 million records.^[1] Originally a rhythm and
blues influenced jazz singer, Laine
excelled at virtually every music style, eventually expanding to such
varied
genres as popular standards, gospel, folk,
country,
western/Americana, rock 'n' roll,
and the
occasional novelty number. He was also known as Mr Rhythm for his
driving
jazzy style.
Laine was the first and biggest of a new breed of black-influenced
singers
who rose to prominence in the post-World War II era. This new, raw,
emotionally
charged style seemed at the time to signal the end of the previous era's
singing
styles; and was, indeed, a harbinger of the rock 'n' roll music that was
to
come. As music historian Jonny Whiteside wrote:

In the Hollywood clubs, a new breed of black-influenced white
performers
laid down a baffling hip array of new sounds ... Most important of all
these,
though, was Frankie Laine, a big white lad with 'steel tonsils' who
belted out
torch blues while stomping his size twelve foot in joints like Billy
Berg's,
Club Hangover and the Bandbox. ... Laine's intense vocal style owed
nothing to
Crosby,
Sinatra or Dick
Haymes. Instead he drew
from Billy Eckstine,
Joe
Turner, Jimmy Rushing, and
with it
Laine had sown the seeds from which an entire new perception and
audience would
grow. ... Frank Sinatra represented perhaps the highest flowering of a quarter century tradition
of
crooning but suddenly found himself an anachronism. First Frankie Laine,
then Tony Bennett, and
now Johnnie (Ray),
dubbed 'the
Belters' and 'the Exciters,' came along with a brash vibrancy and vulgar
beat
that made the old bandstand routine which Frank meticulously perfected
seem
almost invalid.^[2]

In the words of Jazz critic Richard Grudens:

Frank's style was very innovative, which was why he had such
difficulty
with early acceptance. He would bend notes and sing about the chordal
context of
a note rather than to sing the note directly, and he stressed each
rhythmic
downbeat, which was different from the smooth balladeer of his time.^[3]

His 1946 recording of "That's
My Desire" remains a
landmark record signalling the end of both the dominance of the big
bands and
the crooning styles favored by contemporaries Dick Haymes and Frank
Sinatra.^[4] Often called the
first of the blue-eyed soul singers,^{[5][6][7][8][9]} Laine's style cleared the way for many artists who arose in the late 40s
and
early 50s, including Kay Starr,
Tony Bennett, and Johnnie
Ray. ^[10]

I think that Frank probably was one of the forerunner of ....
blues, of
.... rock 'n' roll. A lot of singers who sing with a passionate demeanor
--
Frank was and is definitely that. I always used to love to mimic him
with
'That's...my...desire.' And then later Johnnie Ray came along that made
all of
those kind of movements, but Frank had already done them. -- Patti
Page^[11]

Throughout the 1950s, Laine enjoyed a second career singing the title
songs
over the opening credits of Hollywood films and
television shows, including:
Gunfight at the OK Corral, 3:10
to Yuma, Bullwhip and
Rawhide.
His
rendition of the title song for Mel Brooks' 1974 hit
movie Blazing Saddles won
an Oscar nomination
for Best Song, and on
television, Laine's featured recording of Rawhide for the series of the
same name became a popular theme song.

You can't categorize him. He's one of those singers that's not in
one
track. And yet and still I think that his records had more excitement
and life
into it. And I think that was his big selling point, that he was so full
of
energy. You know when hear his records it was dynamite energy.-- Herb
Jeffries^[12]