On The Trail

by

Frankie Laine

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I believe that's what Irving Stone wrote of Frankie Laine in the liner notes to one of his great Columbia theme albums from the early 1960s (some of the songs from which are included in this collection).

There is a mythic quality to a lot of these songs that perfectly captures the spirit of the great outdoors and the American west -- and Frankie Laine's voice is the embodiment of that spirit. One of my early childhood memories of my mother quoting a line from "Cry of the Wild Goose" as we watched a flock of geese flying south above our field ("My heart knows what the wild goose knows/And I must go where the wild goose goes..."). I still can't look up at a flock of geese without hearing Frankie's stirring rendition of this great song.

"Riders in the Sky" was one of my father's favorite songs -- I'd learned all the lyrics from him long before I ever started school. It's always been one of my all-time favorites as well. Through the years, I've heard well over two dozen versions of it by different artists (there must have been recorded over 100 times), and have to say that Frankie's version is the best. Frankie's version was recorded over ten years after the Vaughn Monroe mega-hit (a great version in its own right), but Frankie's is the one most people I know seem to remember -- and prefer.

As to the title songs from the movies ... for anyone like myself who grew up watching 50s westerns, Frankie Laine *is* the voice of the wild west. How could he not be? Any time a western had an opening song, you could bet that Frankie was singing it (the one big exception being "High Noon" -- but then Frankie was the one who had the hit record of it).

"Tumbling Tumbleweeds," "Cool Water," "North to Alaska" are songs I've known for decades as well -- though, unfortunately, only by other singers. Now don't get me wrong, Bing Crosby sings "Tumbleweeds" beautifully, but once you hear Frankie Laine's version -- slower paced in keeping with the tumbleweeds' "drifting, moving" motions, quietly impassioned delivery culminating in a spiritually uplifting crescendo with the line "A new world's born at dawn" -- well, nothing else compares.

"Bowie Knife," "Wanted Man," "Gunslinger," etc., are songs I've only been able to hear for the first time a few years ago (once they became available again on cd) -- and it's now hard to imagine that for 30-odd years I hadn't known them. (For some inexplicable reason, my folks didn't have the "Hellbent for Leather" album.) How "Bowie Knife" never managed to be a number one hit, will forever remain one of life's great mysteries.

What more can I say? When it comes to the American west/the great outdoors this is *the* album.