55 Years Ago Today In Music
Frankie Laine with Percy Faith & His Orchestra collected 4 weeks at the number one slot with the famous “A Woman In Love” from the musical “Guys and Dolls” after Frank Sinatra turned it down.
The 1950’s Broadway musical Guys and Dolls was powered largely by Damon Runyon and his “gangster yarns” as well as the writing of famously bad tempered Frank Loessner.
Frank is the writer responsible for the song of topic. On the week beginning 19th October 1956 is exactly when the song went number one and the soundtrack of the by then long running Guys and Dolls was still very much a household name, anchored by a menagerie of famous faces. Frank Sinatra as Nathan Detroit and Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson. Brando’s number was eventually dropped from the plays bill as he couldn’t hit the big “Money Shot” note. Which is incidently our number one song.
Frankie Laine lost most of his appeal to the young audience during the rock and roll era, but he still enjoyed success with the TV series Rawhide which ran upto 1959, which was again revived with hilarious consequence by Jake and Elwood Blues, as well as being the mighty Tom Jones’ inspiration for signing at all.
Laine did continue to tour but was plagued by illness and had quadruple bypass in 1985. I did nothing to effect his performance though as he still favoured his signature big endings and celebrated his 91st and last birthday in 2004.