Western theme songs by Frankie Laine

One thing leads to another.

Last week, I posted about the Elmore Leonard short story, “Three-Ten to Yuma," which started me thinking about the two films based on it, one from 1957 with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, and the other from 2007 with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. As much as I liked the Leonard story, I cannot say I cared much for either picture. But, I do like the theme song from the original movie performed by Frankie Laine.

Laine was born Frank LoVecchio in 1913 in Chicago. During the 1930s, he sang with bands in nightclubs. In 1946, he recorded “That’s My Desire” for Mercury records. The song became a hit, and made Laine a national star along with fellow Italian-American recording artists, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como.

In 1949, Laine recorded “Mule Train,” which seems to be the song that opened up a new track in Laine's career – singing theme songs for Westerns.

Some of the movies he contributed to are the Burt Lancaster-Kirk Douglas “Gunfight at the OK Corral” from 1957, the Kirk Douglas “Man Without a Star” from 1955, and “3:10 to Yuma.” Along with the movies came TV theme songs. Perhaps the most famous was “Rawhide,” for the show starring a young Clint Eastwood. “Rawhide,” like “Mule Train,” is punctuated with whip cracks.

Then, in the 1970s, the story goes, funny man Mel Brooks was preparing a Western comedy and put out a call for someone to sing the theme song who sounded like Frankie Laine. How about Frankie Laine? the singer himself asked Brooks. And that, they say, is how he came to record “Blazing Saddles.”

Laine passed away in 2007.

Here are some links to Frankie Laine’s songs:

That’s My Desire

Mule Train

Gunfight at the OK Corral

Man Without a Star

3:10 to Yuma (the movie version)

3:10 to Yuma (another version)

Rawhide

Blazing Saddles 

And here is Laine with Perry Como in 1951 on The Frank Sinatra Show

FFB: Three-ten to Yuma by Elmore Leonard

Recently, my friend, Prashant, who blogs at Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema, posted a piece about the 2007 movie, “3:10 to Yuma.” The film is a remake of a 1957 movie with the same title. Both are based on a story by Elmore Leonard.

While I have read many of Leonard’s contemporary crime novels, I have read few of his Westerns. I went in search of a copy of this one and found it is not a novel. Elmore Leonard’s “Three-ten to Yuma,” is a fairly short, short story – about 17 pages, in the hard cover collection of Leonard’s Western stories called, The Tonto Woman.

The two movies beefed up the back-story and tacked on motivations that are not present in the short story. In Leonard’s version, first published in Dime Western Magazine in 1953, Paul Scallen is a deputy sheriff in Arizona tasked with getting outlaw Jim Kidd from Tucson to the Yuma Territorial Prison, near the border of California. To transport him the roughly 250 miles, Scallen will escort Kidd on a train leaving at 3:10 in the afternoon.

He and the prisoner arrive in Tucson just before dawn and wait in a hotel room until it is time to walk down to the railroad station. While waiting, word gets out that Kidd is in the hotel, and members of his gang arrive in town and wait for him and the lawman to come out into the open.

Elmore Leonard’s tough, lean tale holds up as model of good storytelling, quickly setting up the situation, providing just enough background, building tension and bringing the tale to its violent conclusion.

Although the date is not stated, the story takes place between 1876 and 1909. Those were the years the Yuma prison was in operation. It was closed when a new prison was built and is today a museum.

(For more posts on books, please visit Patti Abbott’s blog.)