Music: Favor for a Friend

Jukebox and symphony orchestra got together in Cleveland last week. Jukebox favorite Frankie Laine appeared with the Cleveland Summer Orchestra, a reduced (71 men) hot-weather edition of George Szell’s fine Cleveland Symphony, and belted out pop songs in his familiar foghorn voice. An audience of 6,000, some sipping soft drinks, enthusiastically listened to Jezebel, Jalousie, High Noon, etc. The musicians, having swept the last delicate strands of cold-weather classics out of their instruments, backed Singer Laine with grace and good humor.

Biggest hit of the evening: the premier of the gentle, lightweight Indian Suite by Carl Fischer, eight musical sketches that proved as pleasant and obvious as their titles—e.g., Maiden’s Prayer, Big Brave Song, War Dance. For Singer Laine it was a sentimental occasion. Composer Fischer, a three-quarter Cherokee who died of a heart attack last March at 41, was Frankie Laine’s close friend and musical arranger. Fischer, then a nightclub pianist, first met Frankie Laine eleven years ago when Laine was working as a screw machine operator, encouraged him to get out of the factory and helped him on his way to jukebox fame. Last week after the Cleveland audience enthusiastically applauded the Suite, Laine said: “You don’t know how much this would have meant to Carl.”