Frankie Laine Didn't Give A Damn

[JSngry]

Tony Bennett vomited. Frankie Laine said fuck it, I can sing this shit too.

It's more nuanced than that, but..is it? 

[sgcim]

My first guitar teacher used to talk about working with him on the phone during lessons. He was always like a mysterious figure to me.

[Teasing the Korean]

He lived to age 93.  I think I had an LP he did with Legrand, but I unloaded it.  He wound up doing a lot of C&W stuff by the late '50s/early '60s.  I never really got a handle on him, and what little I heard over the decades did not necessarily inspire me to.  I was surprised to learn that he co-wrote the standard "We'll Be Together Again."  

[Rabshakeh]

That record with Budd Johnson and Buck Clayton has some really good playing on it, particularly by Johnson. Laine's voice isn't quite strong enough to make it work, but it's an album that's worth checking out if you haven't. 

[JSngry]

 

Before he got signed by Mich Miller and Mercury, he sang at Billy Berg's, and his records were popular in the "Race"market.

 

 

[Teasing the Korean]

The first of those three was pretty good.  I did not care for the other two.

[gmonahan]

It's interesting to see this. I recently got that "Jazz Spectacular" album with Buck Clayton, J. J. Johnson, Kai Winding, and Budd Johnson, and was listening to it when I saw this thread. I think it's a fun album, and Laine's voice sounds as strong as usual. He often said it was his favorite album.

 

[medjuck]

I heard him interviewed once and he talked about how he had been influenced by Charles Brown. 

[JSngry]

Doing my homework, it seems that Laine had quite an impact on White Pop as the transition began into a more rhythmically emphatic and more emotionally infected style. And the thing about the "race records" and people assuming he was Black seems absurd until you hear the Atlas records (and where are they today anyway?).

This would have been lost on me, since I only knew Laine as a big-lunged belter of Rawhide type stuff. But the history is there, in print and on record. History has kind of faded, it seems. It's not a narrative at all these days, much less a popular narrative 

Listening again to the record with Clayton, Laine swings just fine in a pre-bop kind of way. And Frankie Laine was swinging, genuinely swinging, comfortably swinging, some years before Sinatra got it going like that.

So I'm like, who knew? Not me. But there it is, hidden by time and narrative though it may be. Narrative is not history. 

 

 

[bertrand]

I helped track down the music for the tribute album that Mark Masters put together, High Noon, featuring Gary Smulyan. I was flattered to get a shout out in the liner notes.

[Big Beat Steve]

7 hours ago, gmonahan said:

It's interesting to see this. I recently got that "Jazz Spectacular" album with Buck Clayton, J. J. Johnson, Kai Winding, and Budd Johnson, and was listening to it when I saw this thread. I think it's a fun album, and Laine's voice sounds as strong as usual. He often said it was his favorite album.

Agreed. I picked up that album as a "File under Buck Clayton" item, of course, but Frankie Laine fits in well enough to make it very palatable in that setting.

 

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

Doing my homework, it seems that Laine had quite an impact on White Pop as the transition began into a more rhythmically emphatic and more emotionally infected style. And the thing about the "race records" and people assuming he was Black seems absurd until you hear the Atlas records (and where are they today anyway?).

This would have been lost on me, since I only knew Laine as a big-lunged belter of Rawhide type stuff. But the history is there, in print and on record. History has kind of faded, it seems. It's not a narrative at all these days, much less a popular narrative

 

Arnold Shaw dwells quite a bit on this aspect of Frankie Laine in his "The Rockin' 50s" book, using his "Mule Train" hit as a starting point. I never did quite make that connection and found this assessment overrated compared to the Black shouters as pre-rock'n'rollers. A batch of his 78s (all on Mercury) that ended up here when I bought a larger 78 collection (mostly jazz and R&B but with a sizable dose of 40s and very early 50s US pop too) almost 20 years ago did not do much for me either and almost all of them ended up in the "78s fleamarket items" crate. But I must admit I never explored his discography in depth.
Two of Laine's Atlas recordings are on the below CD, BTW (yes, the Yurpeen PD labels have been at it again 😁 ) :

https://www.discogs.com/release/8803423-Various-Boogieology-The-Atlas-Records-Story

Probably not that surprising that he was thought to be Black by some, considering that on these recordings he was backed by the Three Blazers.

 

Edited February 8 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

This ain't bad. 

[JSngry]

 

[Teasing the Korean]

I wonder if Dean Martin was influenced by Frankie Laine.  Hearing these videos posted above, I hear some similarities.  I think Dino is a better singer than Frankie, although Dino recorded at least as much schlock as Frankie did, maybe even more so.

Edited February 10 by Teasing the Korean

[sgcim]

2 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I wonder if Dean Martin was influenced by Frankie Laine.  Hearing these videos posted above, I hear some similarities.  I think Dino is a better singer than Frankie, although Dino recorded at least as much schlock as Frankie did, maybe even more so.

His family came from Sicily, so maybe he had some influence on someone like Dino. Sinatra tried to deny it all his life, but he had a Sicilian background, also. They came from the same town as my mother's side of the family, Lecara Friddi. I wonder if Laine hung out with Sinatra at all?

Edited February 10 by sgcim

[JSngry]

Barbi Benton, Jess Stacy, Marty Allen, and of course, the pipe. 

[JSngry]

Pretty sweaty for 1955 TV;

Or 1951 white pop:

Put that one in the + column for Mitch Miller, and do you get prime Roy Orbison without this? 

[JSngry]

 

Jack Teagarden, all of a sudden! 

[JSngry]

 

[JSngry]

1950 white pop singing...this was not the norm, correct?

 

[JSngry]

Ok, I have used Spotify and YouTube to research Frankie Laine through gto the end of his Columbia contract.

Some conclusions:

* The traditional narrative the pre-Elvis White Pop was all bland and sexless and shit is mostly true, but for a while, Frankie Laine was definitely not that.

* Frankie Laine "sounding black"... maybe you had to be there? But there's also no denying the he was plugged into a certain black "feel" rhythmically that was rare for it's time.

* It's also true that Frankie Laine could and did swing naturally in his own way before Sinatra was able to figure that out for himself. The Laine records with Paul Weston more often than not are a toe-tapping delight!

* Evolution was not kind to Frankie Laine. His switch to more "folk" styles might have been sincere, but...I can't care for or about that. Both albums with M. Legrand are pretty dire, worlds colliding with neither being even slightly aware of the other. And a later album with Frank Comstock, Torchin',  is built to be a Sinatra album, but Laine is having none of it and stays true to his earlier, more rhythmically bouncy style. It's not bad, but it's not right either. Too bad.

* Still, Frankie Laine had a certain pop mojo, and for a bit of a window there, he seems to have been very, very popular with a style of singing that was an exception to the rule of White Pop of the era. And his voice seems to have stayed true all his life. So...attention should be paid, imo.

* YouTube can give you some of the Atlas 78s. The Mercury collection is not complete and seems to have a hard break where good stuff stops and Mitchy Millery stringy stuff takes over.

* Spotify is your friend (mostly). Check out Mr. Rhythm, Rockin', and Command Performance.  These are mostly Paul Weston joints, and mostly are very pleasing to my tastes. Avoid any and all off-brand looking stuff, because it is indeed sketchy and worse.

I've enjoyed this little research project and now feel comfortable in rejecting the traditional narrative, at least the point about there being no life at all in post-Swing White Pop until Elvis. 

Now - what about Kay Starr? 

[Big Beat Steve]

9 hours ago, JSngry said:

I've enjoyed this little research project and now feel comfortable in rejecting the traditional narrative, at least the point about there being no life at all in post-Swing White Pop until Elvis. 

Now - what about Kay Starr? 

Good point about Kay Starr.

As for Frankie Laine proving that not all post-Swing white pop was sugary and watered down - again, check out what Arnold Shaw wrote about Frankie Laine in his "The Rockin' 50s" book. He acknowledges his "belting" style as the opposite of "crooning" but after a quick glance through the book it seems he took him as the "exception proving the rule" in white pre-R'n'R pop ("Mule Train" 'n' all ...). (I cannot provide verbatim quotes because I have the German translation of this book)

However, on a more general level, if one cnosiders that by the early 50s white teenagers on the WEST Coast,for example, were already flocking to Big Jay McNeely et al., then I guess the jury would still be out when deciding to what extent Frankie Laine was NOT geared to "adult" pop and therefore all that relevant to the burgeoning teenage music buying market.

 

[JSngry]

There's a bigger equation beyond just teenagers here that involves the overall "loosening up" of the White Pop market. And this is where Laine (and maybe a very few others) fit in.

And the "conventional wisdom" don't seem to get that. So we end up with all of a sudden Elvis and all of a sudden Sinatra came back and 'm now like, all of a sudden my ass!

Boomer vanity/history again, it all started with them.

Besides, even if Laine was being directed in that direction, the point is that he was STILL bringing a drive and a bounce that was more 'black" in feel than not. So, the influx was coming from both sides, so to speak. And as the saying goes, resistance was futile.

This is competent, unaffected swinging. I can't stress enough how Laine was in this pocket years before Sinatra, so that's another corrective to the traditional narrative. Of course, Laine did not have Sinatra's overwhelming power of personality/mojo, but he certainly was soing the "Swingin'" thing first. And imo, pretty well.

Just sayin'...

[JSngry]

And then there's this oddity(?) from early 1956, Laine and the Four Lads?!?!?!?! going full-on Statesmen Quartet

Go figure that.

[Big Beat Steve]

By aural evidence (of those last few YT snippets) - yes ... there is some blackness (or should one say, "non-clean-whiteness"? ) there that needs to be acknowledged. 

I did enjoy "Someday Sweetheart" (he would not have been totally out of place on jukeboxes alongside Nat Cole, Charles Brown and the like). But I am underwhelmed by his singing on that tune with the Four Lads. To my ears he is straining too much to make a "singing statement". I suppose this was post-"Mule Train", right?

But that RCA LP cover of a "Rockin'"(???) Frankie Laine LP with Paul Weston (of all bandleaders) providing the "Rockin'" backing?? WTF?? Who were they trying to fool? Trying desperately to grab a piece of the R'n'R action and cashing in at its most blatant while it lasted? And I pity those teens who received platters like this from their uncles and aunts ("Look, I've got a "Rockin'" birthday present for you!") 😁
These records would have been OK as somewhat more lively adult pop with swing-tinged after-hours overtones if the A&R execs had remained reasonable in their marketing, but beyond that they'd fall straight into the bracket that reissuers such as Bear Family have compiled on CDs aptly titled "Rockin' is NOT Our Business".
Platters like this can be fun in retrospect, of course. There were many "hopping on the R'n'R bandwagon" jobs like this and I've explored quite a few of them for the fun of it as they do fall into the fringes of my musical "Big Beat" interests. They usually range from the interesting (and sometimes surprisingly competent if you have open ears and are not given to pigeonholing) to the grotesque, bizarre and sometimes downright awkward. But teen credibility??

Edited March 20 by Big Beat Steve