FRANKIE LAINE--ABOUT THIS SITE
....I am a die hard Frankie Laine fan , and always have been.
When I was ten years old, the radio was filled with the sounds
of "MULE TRAIN" and "THE CRY OF THE WILD GOOSE", I was hooked.
........After joining the army in 1956, I finally
had some money to start collecting the records I
had before just heard on the radio. The first
record I bought (which I still have) was the album
"ROCKIN", on the Phillips label. I now have everything (almost) that Frankie has
recorded.
.....In the late seventies, I retired from the army and moved to
Northern Virginia, not far from Washington DC. It was at this time that
I started work on my Discography of Frankie Laine's work.Uptill then, I had never
even heard of a "Discography". I had started just to see what
was out there that I didn't have. I spent hours at the Library of Congress,
going through old record catalogs, going back to the early forties. I also went through tons of back issues of Billboard and other
mags. of the music industry. I also read all the books I could find on the music
of the post world war II period. Most of these books I later bought for my own personal collection.
.......If you do a lot of web surfing you will find dozens of sites
that have Frankie Laine on them. So why am I making another? Most of these
sites offer Frankie's records or CD's for sale and some even have short
BIOS's or list some of his many hit records. But none of them, not even
Frankie's own site, gave a complete listening of his recordings. If you are a young collector how are you
going to know what your looking for if you don't know what's out there? If no one else
was going to fill this void then I would.
........I was not interested in doing his biography here, because if you're
a Frankie fan, you must have read his book, if not, do so it's great. You
can buy it from Frankie's own web site. I wanted to just put out the
information on his recordings and a few comments to hold them together.
After awhile this project seemed to take on a life of it's own.
......A lot of Frankie's early LP's and most of his singles have
been put out on CD's in the last few years. So if you can't find a new
needle for that old High FI of yours, you can still hear the material.
I haven't listed all the CD's that come from early albums. A look on the
web and I'm sure you can find them.
.....When it comes to listing of the million sellers, there is always
some controversy over what should be included. Some books list his million
sellers as only 14. They count only the sales in this country and when it was
on the charts or shortly after. Some recordings were popular for a long
period of time and made the million through longevity. Such a record was
"RAWHIDE", which never made the charts in this country, but sold well throughout
the run of the TV show. This is the approach I took in listing mine. But I
had to have two sources saying that the record went gold before I put it
on my list. I found some sources that said some other records sold a million,
such as "WHEN YOUR SMILING" and "BLACK AND BLUE", but I didn't include
them.
.....This is my first try at building a web site. I'm learning as
I go along, so forgive me if you find mistakes, I'm correcting them as
fast as I can. I have found that it is a lot of fun.
.......Below I have listed most of the reference books I used in
putting my lists together. These are not all, as I stated before I went
through a lot of old dealer catalogs dating back into the mid forties.
I also did a lot of research through many years worth of Billboard Mags.
Other Sites Which is a Must For Any True Frankie Laine Fan:
FRANKIE'S OWN WEB SITE:
http://www.frankielaine.com
THE LAINE INTERNATIONAL FAN CLUB:
http://www.flias.com
.........................................................................................Mark Gallagher
........................................................................................Creator of this Site
The Frankie Laine Society Of America
has closed operations
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...........If you have any comments or suggestions.......
...........about this site please E-Mail me at.........
...............markalson@comcast.net
Go To Links to Some Of Frankie's Contemporaries
A GAGGLE OF LAINE FANS
Mark and Christel Gallagher with Marlene and Craig Cronbaugh
