Bing Crosby

by Gary Giddins

  To hip musicians in Chicago, however, scat had been the rage for months. Bing and some of the other adventurous musicians in Whiteman’s band heard it that very week from the master himself, Louis Armstrong. If mobster Al Capone ruled the city, Armstrong ruled its music. Whatever he played was instantly picked up by other musicians. The previous spring OKeh issued his Hot Five recording of “Heebie Jeebies,” and it caused a sensation, selling some 40,000 copies thanks to his inspired vocal chorus — a torrent of bristling grunts and groans in no known language. Pianist Earl Hines later claimed he knew musicians who tried to catch cold so they could growl like Louis; and Mezz Mezzrow, the marijuana-pushing clarinetist, recalled, “You would hear cats greeting each other with Louis’s riffs when they met around town… scatting in each other’s face.” 33 Before Louis, scat singing could be heard on records by Cliff Edwards (Ukelele Ike) and Red McKenzie (Mound City Blue Blowers); Bing and Al had admired and imitated them in Spokane. But the ad libs on those records were often disguised by kazoo or comb. They had little of Armstrong’s rhythmic thrust and none of his melodic ingenuity.

  At the time Whiteman pulled into town, Louis was fronting the Sunset Cafe band, with Hines as his musical director. The place was run by Joe Glaser, a Capone acolyte who several years later would become Armstrong’s manager, building the powerful Associated Booking Agency in the process. In Chicago he billed his star in lights as “The World’s Greatest Trumpet Player.” The Sunset was located on the main stem of black Chicago but served an integrated audience. Because its band played a good two hours after most others retired, the club became a second home to many of the best white musicians in town, among them Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Tommy Dorsey, and Frank Trumbauer.

  Whiteman introduced Bing and Al to the Sunset and other hot spots in Chicago. One can only imagine Bing’s initial response to Louis’s irrepressible genius, especially if Mildred Bailey had primed him for an experience bordering on the Second Coming. All his life Bing surrounded himself with people who made him laugh. In Armstrong, music and humor were inseparable. Bing was bowled over one evening when Louis revived a routine he had developed in New York in 1924, putting on a frock coat and dark glasses and preaching as the Reverend Satchelmouth. The Gonzagan found Armstrong’s irreverence almost as revelatory as his music. He had a front-row pew and knew exactly what he was hearing. When asked in 1950 who had influenced him most, Bing replied, “I’m proud to acknowledge my debt to the Reverend Satchelmouth. He is the beginning and the end of music in America. And long may he reign.” 34

  The band headed east, and at every Paramount-Publix theater it played — in Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Youngstown, Cincinnati — Bing and Al went over well. As the old year turned new, Whiteman broke the house record at St. Louis’s Missouri Theatre and was held over for a second week. Throughout January 1927 the band traveled through one triumph after another, until it boarded a train out of Cincinnati bound for New York’s Grand Central. White-man’s return generated the usual hoopla: a motorcycle escort to Times Square for festivities at the Paramount Theater, then downtown to City Hall, for Mayor Jimmy Walker’s greeting; finally, the motorcade headed uptown for lunch at the Hotel Astor.

  Whiteman had five days before opening at the Paramount on February 12, and little time to rest. When he was not supervising and ballyhooing Club Whiteman, which was set to open February 18, the last night of the Paramount engagement, he was recording. On February 10 he used his Walla Walla boys in tandem with Fulton, Young, and Gaylord on an ersatz Asian novelty, “Shanghai Dream Man,” complete with gong and woodblocks. The five-man choir (Bing and Al disappear in the soup) carols “shing-a-ling-a-hi-lo.” Grofe’s gloomy arrangement seemed to foretell the events of two days later, when Crosby and Rinker became the punch line in one of show business’s fabled Waterloos.

  On screen: Dolores Costello in The Third Degree. On organ: Jesse Crawford. Main attraction: “The Jazz King (in person).” 35 The Paramount, flagship of the Publix chain, was a jaw-droppingly opulent theater and the quintessence of big-time entertainment. Whiteman’s musicians liked to pretend it was just another gig — even if it paid them $9,500 for the week. Variety loved their show, complaining only that it was short. “Whiteman could do an hour easily without really getting started,” yet he crammed “the smartest, quickest, snappiest routine of his career” into forty-two minutes, beginning with Jack Fulton piping “In a Little Spanish Town.” 36 Toward the end of the set, Whiteman introduced his dynamic find “from the coast.” Variety was pleased: “Rinker and Crosby, a smart two-man piano act who sing ditties differently and are of the Van and Schenck class. After Whiteman gets through grooming the boys, they will be plenty in the money.” The critic went on to note that they “vocalised two numbers and accepted as many encores.” 37

  No one else remembered it that way. Not only were there no encores, but the audience sat on its hands, quiet as the grave, a freeze-frame. For the next two days, Bing and Al repeated the act that had always wowed them in the Midwest — to more silence. The theater manager wanted them out, and Whiteman complied. “They laid dinosaur eggs,” he recalled. 38 No one could explain it. “Wistful and Blue” was a successful record and pleased every audience, except in Whiteman’s citadel. On the road to New York, he attempted to integrate Bing and Al into the orchestra rather than bring them on as a specialty act. The idea of carrying singers who did nothing else was unheard of, so Whiteman had them sit with the band, pretending to play prop instruments — violin for Bing, guitar for Al, each with rubber strings. Audiences throughout the heartland had been pleasantly surprised when a small piano was rolled onstage and the two young men stood up to do their numbers.

  Yet in New York, Whiteman could not give them away, and he tried, situating his boys in the lobby, where fans who could not get in to one show milled around waiting for the next. Bing and Al wheeled a spinet into the vestibule to entertain, but the crowds there were no more appreciative than those inside. Whiteman used them as backup singers: “We sat in the band and we hummed background for Johnny Fulton, who sang solos, and for Skin Young and things,” Bing recalled. 39 He says in his autobiography, “I couldn’t explain it then. I can’t now.” 40

  After years of thought, Al concluded: “New York taste very much leaned toward the Jewish type of thing,” 41 meaning Jolson, Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, and others “who put over songs with much more emotion and broad showmanship.” He and Bing “were more intimate and sang our songs in a more modern way.” 42 That fails to explain why the warblings of Fulton, Gaylord, and Young were so well received. Some said the Paramount itself defeated them, particularly since they sang without microphones or megaphones. But that fails to explain the hostility they faced in the lobby. Al noted, “We had been influenced by the new jazz feeling popular with young people and understood and appreciated by audiences outside of New York.” 43 Yet in 1926 New York was running over with jazz bands. The reason for the boys’ failure may lie in a combination of all these factors, plus an undefinable negative vibe, nothing more concrete than that they were perceived as young and impudent. One observer referred to their “collegiate and cocky air.” 44 Whiteman, trying to fix the blame twenty years later, told columnist Ben Gross that a Paramount executive sent a telegram forbidding him from allowing Crosby a solo.

  The second-story blocklong Club Whiteman opened on Broadway and Forty-eighth Street to a packed, star-studded, bring-your-own-hooch crowd in which Prohibition agents mingled with Governor Al Smith and Mayor Jimmy Walker; two rival club owners, Jimmy Durante and Texas Guinan; Charlie Chaplin, Jeanne Eagels, Gloria Swanson, and Harry Warren. Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson dropped by a few days later, bringing greetings from Whiteman’s father, who was conducting her choir. Entered by a carpeted staircase, the ornate black-and-gold room could accommodate between 900 and 1,000 customers. As a result, what passed for a full house in other places (a hundred filled tables) was a disaster at Club Whiteman. The bandleade
r introduced a singer he discovered in Chicago, but in her first New York visit, Ruth Etting did not fare much better than Crosby and Rinker.

  In three months Paul would unload his 50 percent interest and retract his name. Meantime, he used the club to give Bing and Al another shot at New York. But he scheduled them during intermissions between the floor shows. They worked by the side of the stage under a spotlight, Al at a white piano adorned with Paul’s caricature. Without microphones, they were unable to claim the attention of the audience. After two nights the perplexed Whiteman dropped their act. He allowed them to earn their keep, however, opening and closing the bandstand curtains.

  Bing and Al served as stagehands for nearly three weeks, a humiliation they accepted with aplomb, not that they had much choice. On at least one occasion, Bing was assigned a mallet to pound the chimes, offstage, during the climax of the 1812 Overture. Describing his “heartbreak” in his 1954 memoir, Bing insisted, “We were prepared to go back to Los Angeles or even to Spokane,” 45 but he was more candid to his biographer Charles Thompson in 1976: “I couldn’t care less, really. I knew that Whiteman had to pay us — we were contracted and I just felt something’d show up.” 46 Besides, Bing had the chance to disport himself in the speakeasy and musical life of New York. He basked in a world he could scarcely imagine back in the listening booths of Bailey’s House of Music. He was bedazzled by glittery Harlem: the Cotton Club, where the late-night audiences sparkled as much as the elaborate revues; Connie’s Inn, where Allie Ross’s band invited top jazz soloists to sit in; Smalls’ Paradise, an enormous basement that accommodated 1,500 people and offered Charlie Johnson’s band and sometimes Willie “the Lion” Smith; the Lafayette Theatre, where you could catch Duke Ellington when he wasn’t midtown at the Kentucky Club or the Plantation Cafe. Another midtown mecca was the Roseland Ballroom, where you could hear the best black jazz musicians, in Fletcher Henderson’s band, or the best white ones, in Jean Goldkette’s. Bing was in the right place at a transitional time. Come December, Ellington would debut at the Cotton Club, an engagement that would bring New York jazz to the attention of the world. If Bing was inclined to soak up too much bootleg whiskey, he was soaking up just as much music.

  The results were soon evident. A week after Club Whiteman opened its doors, Paul scheduled the band for a week of recording sessions at Victor’s New York studio. (Crosby recalled them taking place in Camden.) At the first session, he asked Bing and Al to blend with his three tenor voices on a selection only slightly less risible than “Shanghai Dream Man.” “That Saxophone Waltz,” on which the five men hum “do-do doodle-doodle do” in indistinct unison, is of interest only because Bing’s tones are vaguely discernible and the eight-bar setup for the vocal was pilfered after three decades by Richard Rodgers for “Edelweiss.” Three days later Paul gave them another shot at “Pretty Lips,” something of a companion piece to “Wistful and Blue,” yet a distinct improvement. After a natty theme statement by saxophone virtuoso Chester Hazlett, a transition ignited by thumping bass sets up the vocal episode, again with Matty Malneck’s viola echoing the singers. The distinction between Bing’s round lower tones and Al’s flavorless higher ones is unambiguous, yet they blend well, especially in the chase section with Malneck.

  Whiteman knew he had something special in Bing, and if New York put any doubts in his head, Malneck was there to allay them. Three days later Whiteman recorded Matty’s intricate arrangement of a wonderful recent song by Will Marion Cook and Donald Heywood, “I’m Coming, Virginia,” with Bing taking his first solo and Al harmonizing only on the final scat chorus. Yet four tries failed to produce a satisfactory take, and they left the studio in a state of bitter frustration. Three days after that, on March 7, at New York’s Liederkranz Hall, Whiteman’s faith was rewarded as the band essayed another Malneck arrangement, “Muddy Water,” a song recently introduced by Harry Richman, the egocentric headliner who graduated from burnt cork to top-hat-and-cane elegance. It was the work of white composer Peter De Rose, at the outset of a career that produced “Deep Purple” and “Wagon Wheels,” and black lyricist Jo Trent, whose “Georgia Bo-Bo” Louis Armstrong had recorded the previous year. This time Al was left out altogether.

  “Muddy Water” did not electrify the music world. It was no “Heebie Jeebies” or “Heartbreak Hotel,” though sales were respectable. Yet Crosby’s first recorded chorus — thirty-two measures — was every bit as radical. Nothing remotely like it had been heard before. The song, with its bucolic theme of an idyllic life “down Dixie way,” was cannily appropriate for a Dixiephile like Bing. Yet his delivery is never patronizing or sentimental. He bets everything on his rhythmic phrasing and gives each word its due. The introductory trombone, answered by strings, and a bold unison ensemble chorus promise a jazz record; but only the vocal, backed by viola and rhythm, make good on the promise. Though stilted and even formal, Bing’s time and articulation are assured, especially on the bridge, where he emphasizes there and care with trilling vibrato that displays his growing affinity for swing.

  No singer had ever come close to swinging on a Whiteman record or with any other white ballroom band. For that matter, in early 1927 hot vocals were practically unheard of on records by black orchestras. Except for a single brief scat break by Armstrong that he strongly disfavored, Fletcher Henderson confined vocals to Don Redman’s singspiel. The earthier territory bands of the Midwest tended to limit vocal choruses to novelties. Crosby’s very presence was singular. He was the first ever full-time band singer, not an instrumentalist who doubled on vocals.

  As an indication of just how standout a performance “Muddy Water” is, one need only listen to it in tandem with other vocal records issued the same year. The bestselling singer of 1927, by far, was Gene Austin, with three number one hits. An innocuous tenor who two years earlier was little more than a Cliff Edwards imitator, Austin hit paydirt with “My Blue Heaven,” considered the all-time top seller for years, some say until Bing’s “White Christmas” in 1942. The four other most successful vocal records of the year were White-man’s “In a Little Spanish Town” (vocal by Fulton), Sophie Tucker’s “Some of These Days,” Ben Bernie’s “Ain’t She Sweet” (with singers Scrappy Lambert and Billy Hillpot), and Whispering Jack Smith’s “Me and My Shadow.” 47 Sophie, a rowdy alto with a vibrato that could hold its own with a tailgate trombone, was the lustiest and most masculine of the lot. Smith, true to his name, whispered his songs into lullabies. The others piped in an effete manner that suited the gender-bending tastes of an era when transvestites were among the top attractions in vaudeville.

  Variety reckoned 1923 as the peak year for cross-dressing acts, most famously the phenomenally successful Julian Eltinge, who a decade earlier had a Times Square theater named for him. Indeed, transvestism had become another school of minstrelsy, about which one critic opined, “Just as a white man makes the best stage Negro, so a man gives a more photographic interpretation of femininity than the average woman is able to give.” 48 Bing had played black and female in grade school and would again, but as a singer the primary quality he projected was one of virility. The women fans who would ensure his success on radio were less smitten with his soft microphone crooning than with the fact that he was unmistakably of the opposite sex, which could not be said of Gene Austin and company. In the collective memory of popular music, the nasal Rudy Vallee is thought of as Bing’s predecessor; he did, in fact, precede Bing as a star. But his breakthrough came in 1929, two years after “Muddy Water,” and was less the youthful step forward it was claimed to be (especially by Vallee) than a brief throwback to the effete style Bing ultimately put to rest. Vallee does not speak to us; but Bing in 1927, though far from the finesse of his maturity, does. He makes one telling misstep in “Muddy Water,” inflecting “down on the delta” with a Jolsonesque tremor that suggests the old Broadway aesthetic. Otherwise, he is ours — a modernist.

  Two days after “Muddy Water,” Whiteman reinstalled Bing and Al as performers at his n
ightclub. Two weeks after that, the band opened on Broadway in the musical comedy Lucky, with Mary Eaton, Walter Catlett, Skeets Gallagher, and Ruby Keeler. The show, a tale of a Ceylonese pearl diver and her conniving father, boasted lavish sets and a score by two great songwriting teams, Kern and Harbach and Kalmar and Ruby. But nothing could induce people to buy tickets. Whiteman appeared for nearly thirty minutes in a cabaret scene that began at 11:00 P.M., allowing the band time to perform nightly at his club as well. The song assigned Bing and Al, “Sam, the Old Accordion Man,” was ignored by the critics; theatergoers were apparently no more hostile to it than to the rest of the evening, which closed after seventy-one performances. Whiteman rewarded Bing with a solo number at the club, but by then the room was draining more money than it brought in. (Whiteman shuttered it on May 24, three days after Lucky folded.) Knowing the show and the club were fading, he could think of nothing to do with his proteges beyond dispatching them on vaudeville tours.

  Once again, Matty Malneck came to the rescue. He arranged for Bing and Al to meet a friend of his from Denver who was having a rough time in New York — a wildly kinetic singer, pianist, and tune-smith named Harry Barris.

  10

  RHYTHM BOYS

  They were trying to get him to make a solo record, but he laughed — said it was silly, no one wanted to hear him alone.

  — Cork O’Keefe ( 1946) 1

  As frenetic as Bing was calm, Harry Barris, at twenty-one, was the quintessence of Jazz Age show business, or at least thought he was. He played piano, sang, joked, and wrote songs (though he had yet to sell any) and was brazen with confidence. Small, wiry, and moonfaced with glittery eyes, and dark hair slicked back and parted in the middle, Harry had already logged more miles than Bing and Al combined. He was born in New York, on November 24, 1905, to a Jewish family that relocated to Denver when he was in his teens. He studied music in high school with Wilberforce Whiteman, who took a liking to him, and at fifteen played local dances with a small band that included Glenn Miller, Ted Mack, and Matty Malneck. He enrolled at the University of Denver in 1923 but did not last long. Harry liked to claim he was expelled for playing piano after hours. (Told he could play until 10:00 P.M., he cracked, “That’s when I get up.”) 2 His predicament was exacerbated by incipient signs of the alcoholism that tormented him all his life.