What a great performer! Not exactly a sweet voice but what a seller of a song. In the 1950's he performed at the Liverpool Empire in the U.K., and at the end of the week after doing about 16 performances (twice a night and two matinees) he came out onto the balcony and sang to thousands of his fans unaccompanied. R.I.P Frankie and thank you for the memories.

I get depressed with the passing of each great performer. These were artists who knew how to sing, from mechanics to interpretation, to quality of voice. Wish that were true today.

Aw, man, I didn't know this. Laine was on a PBS concert a few months back, along with other ballad singers from the late 40s and 50s. With my poor reception on my TV, all I could see was an old man slowly walking to the microphone. Then a familiar voice boomed out. The man had some pipes. He and Tony Bennet could sing a duet with each standing in the oppostite ends of a football field, without any amplification, and be in tune and not miss a beat.

Not enough know about Laine's heart. Below from Wikipedia -

Along with opening the door for many R&B performers, Laine played a significant role in the equal rights movements of the 1950s and 60s. When Nat King Cole's television show was unable to get a sponsor, Laine crossed the color line, becoming the first white artist to appear as a guest (foregoing his usual salary of $10,000.00 as Cole's show only paid scale). Many other top white singers followed suit, including Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, but Cole's show still couldn't get enough sponsors to continue.

In the following decade, Frankie Laine joined several African American artists who gave a free concert for Martin Luther King's supporters during their Selma to Montgomery marches on Washington DC.

Laine was also active in many charities as well, including Meals on Wheels and The Salvation Army. Among his charitable works were a series of local benefit concerts and his having organized a nationwide drive to provide "Shoes for the Homeless." He donated a large portion of his time and talent to many San Diego charities and homeless shelters, as well as the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul Village. He was also an emeritus member of the board of directors for the Mercy Hospital Foundation.

Frankie Laine, who had a strong liking to African-American music, went so far as to include recording at least two songs that have being black as their subject matter, "Shine" and Fats Waller's "Black and Blue".

"I would sneak into hotel rooms and sleep on floor. In fact, I was bodily thrown out of 11 different New York hotels. I stayed in YMCAs and with anyone who would let me flop. Eventually I was down to my last four cents, and my bed became a roughened wooden bench in Central Park. I used my four pennies to buy four tiny Baby Ruth candy bars and rationed myself to one a day." -- Frankie Laine
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His career slowed down a little in the 1980s due to triple and quadruple bypasses, but he nevertheless continued cutting albums including Wheels Of A Dream (1998), Old Man Jazz (2002) and The Nashville Connection (2004).
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Frankie Laine's Bio on Wikipedia

Frankie Laine on the Internet Movie Database

Agreed with all the above, certainly. And just as a footnote, there's a warm obituary to Frankie Laine in today's UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph. The article bears a photograph of him in his prime and the caption reads:

"No one else could yell "yee-haw" with such conviction and make it sound sensible."

Thanks Frankie.