Frankie Laine (born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio; March 30, 1913 – February 6, 2007) was an American singer and songwriter whose career spanned nearly 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005.

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.

[citation needed] Even in the 1920s, his vocal abilities were enough to get him noticed by a slightly older "in crowd" at his school, who began inviting him to parties and to local dance clubs, including Chicago's Merry Garden Ballroom.

[4]Some of his other early influences during this period included Enrico Caruso, Carlo Buti, and especially Bessie Smith—a record of whose somehow wound up in his parents' collection: I can still close my eyes and visualize its blue and purple label.

During his marathon days, he worked with several up-and-coming entertainers, including Rose Marie, Red Skelton, and a 14-year-old Anita O'Day, for whom he served as a mentor (as noted by Laine in a 1998 interview by David Miller).

[citation needed] Other artists whose styles began to influence Laine at this time were Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong (as a trumpet player), Billie Holiday, Mildred Bailey, and, later, Nat "King" Cole.

Success continued to elude Laine, and he spent the next 10 years "scuffling": alternating between singing at small jazz clubs on both coasts and a series of jobs, including those of a bouncer, dance instructor, used car salesman, agent, synthetic leather factory worker, and machinist at a defense plant.

In 1943, he moved to California, where he sang in the background of several films, including The Harvey Girls, and dubbed the singing voice for an actor in the Danny Kaye comedy The Kid from Brooklyn.

It was in Los Angeles in 1944 that he met and befriended disc jockey Al Jarvis and composer/pianist Carl T. Fischer, the latter of whom was to be his songwriting partner, musical director, and piano accompanist until his death in 1954.

As music historian Jonny Whiteside wrote:In the Hollywood clubs, a new breed of performers laid down a baffling hip array of new sounds...Most important of all these, though, was Frankie Laine, a big 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, Big 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.

[13] Often called the first of the blue-eyed soul singers,[5]: 82 [14][15][16] Laine's style cleared the way for many artists who arose in the late 1940s and early 1950s, including Kay Starr, Tony Bennett, and Johnnie Ray.

– Patti Page[18] 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 O.K.

McPherson), a ground-breaking African-American songwriter and publisher, was believed to be based on a real-life friend of vaudevillian George Walker, who was with him during the New York City race riots of 1900.

In this decidedly gothic tale of a ghostly female spirit who inhabits a metaphorical "swamp", the femme fatale attempts to lure the singer to his death, calling "Come to the deep where your sleep is without a dream."

The swamp girl is voiced (in an obligato) by coloratura Loulie Jean Norman, who would later go on to provide a similar vocal for the theme song of the television series Star Trek.

Other Laine hits from this period include "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me)" (#5), "Jealousy (Jalousie)" (#3), "The Girl in the Wood" (#23), "When You're in Love" (#30), "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" (with Jo Stafford) (#26), "Your Cheatin' Heart" (#18), "Granada" (#17), "Hey Joe!"

His songs at Columbia included everything from pop and jazz standards, novelties, gospel, spirituals, R&B numbers, country, western, folk, rock 'n' roll, calypso, foreign language, children's music, film and television themes, tangos, light operetta.

The album was a mix of solo recordings and duets by the two stars, and of new and previously released material, including Stafford's hits single, "Make Love to Me", "Shrimp Boats", and "Jambalaya."

He was backed by trombonist Frank Comstock's orchestra, on a dozen classic torch songs including: "A Cottage for Sale", "I Cover the Waterfront", "You've Changed", "These Foolish Things", "I Got it Bad (And That Ain't Good)", "It's the Talk of the Town", and "Body and Soul".

Laine had helped pioneer the folk music movement a full ten years earlier with his hit folk-pop records penned by Terry Gilkyson et al..

Included are renditions of "Rocks and Gravel", "Careless Love", "Sixteen Tons", "The Jelly Coal Man", "On a Monday", "Lucy D" (a melody that sounds like the later Simon & Garfunkel hit, "Scarborough Fair", but depicts the murder of a beautiful young woman by her unrequited lover), "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", "Stack of Blues", "Old Blue", "Cherry Red", and "New Orleans" (better known as "The House of the Rising Sun"), which would become a hit for the British rock group, The Animals a few years later.

He was a kind of a household word like Frank Sinatra or Bobby Darin or Peggy Lee or Ella Fitzgerald—Frankie Laine was one of the great popular singers and stylists of that time...And his style...he was one of those artists who had such a unique stamp—nobody sounded like he did.

This album continued to play up Chicago-born Laine's western image with songs such as "On the Trail", based on the composition by Ferde Grofé, and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", written by one of the founding members of The Sons of the Pioneers", Bob Nolan.

The majority of its tracks focus more, however, on "the great outdoors", with titles such as: "Song of the Open Road", "North to Alaska", "Beyond the Blue Horizon", "Rolling Stone", and "The New Frontier", which appears to show Laine's support of President John F. Kennedy.

A string of hits followed including "Making Memories", "You Wanted Someone to Play With", "Laura (What's He Got That I Ain't Got)", "To Each His Own", "I Found You", and "Lord, You Gave Me A Mountain" (which was written by Marty Robbins).

His theme song for Rawhide proved to be popular and helped make the show, which starred Eric Fleming and launched the career of Clint Eastwood, a hit.

[32] His career slowed down a little in the 1980s due to triple and quadruple heart bypass surgeries, but he continued cutting albums, including Wheels Of A Dream (1998), Old Man Jazz (2002) and The Nashville Connection (2004).

Artists inspired and/or influenced by Laine include Ray Charles, Bobby Darin, Lou Rawls, The Kalin Twins, The Beatles,[39] Tom Jones, James Brown, Billy Fury, and many others.