Frankie Laine's First Columbia LP, with Bonuses

Frankie Laine is not the kind of singer I usually respond to - he's brash and bigger than life - but I love him even so. He was a most skillful artist.

It's sometimes said that Laine represented a new way of singing in response to the Sinatra-style romantic vocalists of the war and postwar years. His approach was not new, though. Before electric amplification came along, popular singers had to project their voices to be heard. Frankie was a throw-back to the days of Al Jolson (who had a career renaissance in the postwar years), and such blues singers as Bessie Smith.

It's true that these days, Laine is most remembered for such lung-busting exercises as "Mule Train" ("Hee-YAAHH") for Mercury and "Jezebel" ("Jez-e-BELL-lll-LLL") for Columbia. But while Laine possessed a powerful voice, he was not always unsubtle and he was an accomplished technician. You only need to hear his smooth duets with the great Jo Stafford to realize that he was in many ways her peer. And his sense of rhythm was second to none.

Laine had been singing for some time before he began making records, first for the small companies Bel-Tone and Atlas, then for the new Mercury label. He and Mercury immediately enjoyed a huge success with 1946's "That's My Desire," which became Laine's theme song. Some of Laine's Mercury sides and his Bel-Tone disc can be found via this link.

This post and its companion present his first Columbia LP, a 10-incher, and add the special sides that the label issued to promote it. 

'One for My Baby'

Laine's producer at Mercury was the influential Mitch Miller. After Miller departed for Columbia, Frankie followed, in early 1951.

The two almost immediately hit pay dirt with "Jezebel" and such emphatic successors as "Jealousy." They saved the more subtle sides for a long-playing outing, which was soon underway.

Frankie's first LP for his new employer was titled for the number one saloon song of all time, "One for My Baby," written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the great Fred Astaire and his 1943 film The Sky's the Limit.

Astaire was another skillful singer, but one whose approach could not be more different from Laine's. Fred gave the impression that his voice wouldn't reach patrons in the second row of a theatre. Frankie sounded like he might knock those same people out of their seats. Somehow, both Laine and Astaire are equally persuasive in this famous lament for lost love.

The album begins with the welcome and not often heard "Tomorrow Mountain." Duke Ellington and John Latouche wrote the song for a 1946-47 adaptation of Beggar's Holiday, where it was introduced by Alfred Drake, playing Macheath. To me, most of the musical interest is in the extended opening verse. Latouche's lyrics (and even the song's title) resemble Harry McClintock's "Big Rock Candy Mountain," first recorded in 1928 and a major country hit in 1939.

Frankie and Mitch made a point of choosing diverse songs for the record (they even talk about it on their promo record) starting with the Hawaiian "Song of the Islands," followed by a 1934 opus from the talented Harry Revel and Mack Gordon, "She Reminds Me of You" - an excellent rendition of an infrequently heard song.

Laine was the first to record "To Be Worthy of You," a melody by Walter Gross, who was famous for writing "Tenderly." "Worthy" is not as good as "Tenderly," however.

"When It's Sleepy Time Down South" was the theme song of Louis Armstrong, one of Frankie's idols. Even though the piece was written by three black composers - Clarence Muse and the brothers Otis and Leon René - it reflects stereotypes about race and the South, and would soon become controversial, if it wasn't when Laine recorded it. It has a memorable melody, though, and Frankie is great in it.

"Love Is Such a Cheat" is another song based in stereotypes - "The gypsy came from Bucharest / The girl she came from Budapest / Now you can guess the rest." This was a new song in 1951, also recorded by the Andrews Sisters.

Finally, we have "Love Is a Necessary Evil," a good tune by the accomplished singer-songwriter Redd Evans ("Let Me Off Uptown," "No Moon at All" and unfortunately "The Frim Frim Sauce").

The transfers of these songs come from two sources - my copy of the LP and the 78 album on Internet Archive. I used the 78s where possible because the sound was more vivid - not unusual with records of this vintage.

Bonuses on Buster's Swinging Singles

To interest disc jockeys and listeners in Laine's latest efforts, Columbia issued a promotional record, one side of which involves Mitch and Frankie introducing three songs from the LP above; the other with Laine providing two singing salutes, four song intros and a photo offer, all of which could be programmed by DJs more flexibly.

On my singles blog, I've put together a dual program to go along with the LP. First are the Mitch-Frankie LP intros along with relevant songs themselves. Second is a program with Frankie's "singing salutes" and generic song intros, which I've interspersed with several of his singles - including "Jezebel," "Jealousy" and two duets with Jo Stafford. They make for a fun listen that you can find here.

Carl Fischer's 'Reflections of an Indian Boy'

Carl Fischer had a dream of finishing a suite of music reflecting his Native American heritage. He never was to fulfill that dream during his brief lifetime, but after his death, his powerful friends in the music business - Frankie Laine, Victor Young and Paul Weston - brought his ideas to life in the beautiful composition, Reflections of an Indian Boy, released by Columbia on LP in 1956.

Fischer (1912–1954) - who, despite his German name, was three-fourths Cherokee - was best known as Laine's pianist. He also was a talented composer, writing the songs "We'll Be Together Again," "Who Wouldn't Love You," "It Started All Over Again" and "You've Changed," all of which became popular. But his ambition was to compose a more elaborate work, and he had been working toward that end at the time of his death. The suite, however, had never been written down - it existed only in a piano recording made for composer Victor Young. After Fischer's death, Marvin Wright transcribed the tape, Young orchestrated it, and Laine set about arranging a performance. Only a few months later, he succeeded - a premiere with the Cleveland Orchestra during its summer season, Victor Young conducting.

Carl Fischer, Frankie Laine and a gold record -
I believe for their "We'll Be Together Again"

Reflections of an Indian Boy is a lovely piece of music, handled beautifully in this performance conducted by Paul Weston. The cover calls it a "tone poem," but it actually is a series of tone poems illustrating the young man's life, presumably "reflecting" the composer's own experiences. It does not use Native American musical themes, and there is little here that would be identified as stereotypically "Indian." It is most similar to the compositions of Ferde Grofé and reminiscent of film music, surely because of Young's orchestrations.

Columbia put its promotional might behind the LP, and it sold well. That said, far more people have heard it through its second life as the soundtrack to a popular outdoor drama, Tecumseh!, which has been performed for the past 45 years at the Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheatre in south central Ohio. The producer of Tecumseh! was familiar with Weston's record, and decided to use it as a backdrop to the outdoor drama he was planning on the life of the Shawnee leader. For this purpose, he enlisted Erich Kunzel, the longtime conductor of the Cincinnati Pops, to make a new recording with the London Symphony, which is available today via Amazon and presumably other sources.

This post is the result of a suggestion (really more of a plea) from David Federman, and is a collaboration between me and my friend Ernie, who often contributes materials to the blog. The flawless transfer is Ernie's work; the scans are my doing. Columbia's sound is excellent.

Fischer and Laine at a recording session