RECORDING: Backgrounder: Frankie Laine Jazz Spectacular

In the mid-1940s, Frankie Laine was an up-and-coming club singer with a jazz feel. His first recordings were in Los Angeles in 1944 and ’45, but by the summer of 1946 he signed with the newly formed Mercury Records, where Mitch Miller was head of AandR. So began a string of jazz-flavored pop hits that included That’s My Desire, By the River Sainte Marie, Black and Blue and others…