Bing Crosby

by Gary Giddins

  One of Bing’s most eminent fans was Duke Ellington, visiting Hollywood to make his feature debut in the Amos ‘n’ Andy vehicle Check and Double Check. Duke’s spot required him to introduce the Kalmar and Ruby song “Three Little Words,” but at rehearsal it was evident that the three members of his brass section assigned the vocal could not handle it. When another trio fared no better, Ellington told the producer to hire the Rhythm Boys. Given the decree against exhibiting white singers with a black band (never mind that the stars of the movie were white actors in blackface), the boys were set up behind the backdrop with a separate microphone. The number was filmed and recorded live. As they sang, the three Ellington musicians lip-synched — it was the kind of charade parodied in Singin’ in the Rain. Ellington asked the Rhythm Boys to sing on the record, too, and by December “Three Little Words” topped every sales chart in the country. During the next decade Ellington refused to hire a male vocalist until he could find one (Herb Jeffries) who sang a la Bing.

  Another movie deal was sealed at the Grove, but this time the request was for Bing alone. Edmund Goulding, who was writing and directing a Douglas Fairbanks musical, Reaching for the Moon, was so entranced by Bing that he asked executive Joe Schenck to hire Crosby to sing “When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down,” the jazziest number in the Irving Berlin score. Bing’s screen time is little more than a minute: he bursts into an ocean-liner lounge with a greeting, “Hi, gang!” and sings one rocking chorus, arms waving in rhythm, then listens as the song is reprised by leading lady Bebe Daniels and June MacCloy, a Paramount starlet on loan. When the footage was edited, United Artists cut out all but one of the songs and released the film as a romantic comedy — enraging Berlin, who never allowed UA to use his work after that.

  Bing’s was the only number that survived. He shot it late at night (again, without prerecording), after finishing a set at the Grove. “We went in cold as cucumbers,” recalled June MacCloy. “We heard the song and they just told us where to come in. It seems to me Bing may have had a chance to sing the whole song and that it was cut down. I think he liked having the job, because we were well paid, but he was disgusted because we were supposed to do another song that was never shot. Edward Everett Horton was also in the film and he talked with Bing quite a bit. They laughed and talked a lot. Everyone liked Bing, he was very likable. He didn’t change keys on things. Everybody was pleased about that. Once in a while, when they were getting ready to take another shot, he’d be by the piano, but they never had to change the key for him.” 39

  Fairbanks insisted that the crew break every day at four for tea, and though Bing did no filming during the afternoons, he liked to drop by and the cast liked having him. Songwriters and musicians who visited to carouse with Fairbanks also wanted to meet Bing. As far as MacCloy could see, all Bing drank was tea. “We started laughing, like ‘What kind of sissy stuff is this?’ But we liked it. We were quite tickled that Fairbanks insisted that the grips have some too. There was caviar and everything on the table, and I’m talking about the real good stuff. They must have spent a bloody fortune on that. Bing used to come to those and everybody wanted him to sing, because we had been down to the Ambassador, always dressed to the nines, to hear him with Al Rinker and Harry Barris, who were flying. After that he still sang at the Ambassador, and every time I had a date and went down there, Bing gave me recognition from the stand. I was very pleased about that and my date would say, ‘Oh, you know him, you know Bing?’” 40

  Bing’s friendship with Louis Armstrong, presaged by Mildred Bailey, begun in Chicago, and advanced in Harlem, now deepened in Los Angeles. Louis reminisced:

  In 1930 I went out to California to join the band which was playing at Frank Sebastian’s Cotton Club. Bing and his Trio were really romping with Gus Arnheim’s Orchestra at the Cocoanut Grove Hotel in Hollywood. The Cotton Club was out in Culver City. Every night between their outfit and our outfit, we used to Burn up the air, every night…. Yea — Bing & Gus Arnheim & Co would broadcast first every night and leave the ether wave sizzling hot. Just right for us when we would burst on in there from the Cotton Club. Oh, it was lots of fun. The same listeners would catch both programs before going to bed. After Bing — the band — Mr. Arnheim and boys would finish work at the Grove they would haul ashes over to the Cotton Club where we were playing and swing with us, until Home Sweet Home was played. Sometimes he would come over wearing his sharp uniform, the one I admired so much. It was a hard hitting blue with white buttons, which made him look (to me) like a young Captain on some high powered yacht. That’s when he and Dixie Lee were CANOEING. 41

  On September 29, with Bing reaping what by Hollywood standards was at least a nascent success and apparently controlling his drinking, he and Dixie quit canoeing, discarded the advice of those who thought she was sacrificing a hot career to a ne’er-do-well, and tied the knot. Dixie applied for the license under her birth name, thereby keeping the wedding — at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Hollywood — a secret until the morning of the day it took place; the license made out to Wilma Wyatt and Harry Crosby raised no flags. Not even her mother knew until the day of the ceremony, when she and a dozen others received phone invitations from the couple. Dixie’s bridesmaid was a friend from high school, Betty Zimmerman. Everett served as best man and provided his home for the reception.

  The question of religious differences was kept quiet. Most people in and out of Hollywood assumed Dixie had taken her vows, but she remained outside the Catholic Church until a conversion on her deathbed. If Bing asked her to convert early on, he willingly accepted her refusal to do so. Kate Crosby, on the other hand, harbored a resentment that came roaring to the surface when the marriage almost collapsed in the 1940s. Dixie agreed to raise the children Catholic, though she did not attend church — a father-and-sons ritual — and was not pleased when the eldest boy, Gary, suggested he might like to become a priest. “Mom never bad-mouthed the church,” Gary remembered. “On the contrary. Even though she wasn’t a Catholic, she was the one who stayed on our case about showing up for mass on Sunday and meeting our other religious obligations. ‘If you’re going to be in a religion,’ she would lecture us, ‘if you’re doing something you believe in, then you do it all the way.’ Whenever Grandpa Wyatt started in on one of his tirades against the pope and big-time religion, she shushed him on the spot.” 42 Even in 1930 Bing never missed mass, no matter how late or wild the previous evening.

  One Spokane paper loyally reported, BING CROSBY WEDS ACTRESS, 43 but another accurately reflected the typical coverage: SPOKANE BOY WEDS FILM STAR. 44 Bing was thought to be coming up in the world. How far he had to go was implied by the account in the New York Times, headlined, DIXIE LEE IS MARRIED: “Dixie Lee, film actress, was married today to Murray Crosey, 26 years old, orchestra leader, at a simple church ceremony.” 45 Most of Dixie’s fans got Bing’s name right but were not particularly wowed by her choice of husband. Basil Grillo, who was “very enamored of Dixie Lee in those days,” remembered, “I was in college and absolutely heartbroken. I couldn’t figure out why she would marry a lousy crooner. “ Grillo would eventually direct Bing Crosby Enterprises, earn the crooner his fortune, and learn that “Dixie was a very bright, smart woman, with the sharpest tongue anybody could ever imagine. She cut him down to size fast. Man!” 46

  The Los Angeles Times concluded its report, “There isn’t to be any honeymoon trip as both young people are too busy in their professions at this time to be able to spare time to go away.” 47 Dixie later acknowledged that they did not honeymoon because they were strapped for money. They had yet to find a home and for two weeks lived in Sue Carol’s house while Sue visited New York. Carol had become one of Dixie’s closest and most protective friends, along with Pauline Weislow and Alice Ross, who later worked as Dixie’s secretary.

  Dixie was a magnet for mother hens. Flo Haley recalled, “She was damned sweet. She never hurt anybody. But she was sensitive, way down, and she didn’t have a sister. She
needed people around her, like someone to console you, to say, ‘Come on, we’ll go after this and do that.’ “ 48 Sue assuaged Dixie’s fears and sheltered her on and off the Fox lot. Eight years older than Dixie, she had social status and knew the ropes. The two women became inseparable; when Sue’s marriage to actor Nick Stuart came apart, she stayed with the Crosbys. They had both been relieved to marry and leave the business, though Sue demonstrated more than a touch of sentiment when she named her daughter Carol Lee, fusing the names Hollywood bestowed upon her (Sue was born Evelyn Lederer) and upon Dixie.

  Those two weeks at Sue’s were all the time Bing and Dixie had to cement their marriage. On October 14 Dixie, on loan to Paramount from Fox, was sent to New York (Astoria Studios) for a Clara Bow picture, No Limit, intended as the “It” girl’s comeback. Bing resented putting her on the train but was in no position to suggest she stop working. By the time she returned, more than two months later, things appeared to be turning his way. In preparation for Dixie’s homecoming in late December, he planned a reception at the train station and asked Louis Armstrong to preside: “Oh — Daddy Bing — Harry Barris and Al Rinker — they gave me all sorts of inducements, etc. to just go down to the station and sorta toot a few hot ones as she hit the ground from the train,” Louis recalled. 49 But Armstrong had romantic plans of his own that night. As the Rhythm Boys serenaded Dixie, Bing had more to commemorate than her arrival. In her absence, his confidence as a singer had turned a corner.

  * * *

  Bing made only eleven records with Arnheim, between October 1930 and May 1931, and they pack a wallop. They mark the end of Bing’s career as a dance-band vocalist and a redefinition of his style, from Jazz Age emoter to poised soloist. Moreover, they served as calling cards, bringing him to the attention of three men — Mack Sennett, Jack Kapp, and William Paley — who helped ignite the Bing Crosby Era, a quarter century stretch during which no other performer rivaled his dominance in popular entertainment.

  Significantly, only one of the Arnheim sides features the Rhythm Boys, yet the three best-remembered Bing vehicles are the work of Barris. Small wonder that Rinker was feeling “more dissatisfied” with his role in the Rhythm Boys. 50 The trio’s last appearance on records was a capable version of “Them There Eyes,” a song memorably claimed by Billie Holiday in 1939. The harmonizing is sure, but compared with Bing’s solo discs, the net effect is pallid; the sound of the trio could no longer compare with the sound of Bing alone. A scat episode dominated by the zealous Harry and a breezily swinging final chorus feel frozen and of a fading era. Still, the record was a hit, a last hurrah boosted by their frequent radio renditions. It was quickly swamped by the revelation of Bing’s new ballad style.

  If his microphone experience at the Grove cured him of the need to belt out a song, his jazz experience indemnified him from the temptations of anemic crooning. Bing soared beyond the restraints of the Arnheim band, which though adept at a jumpy rhythm was too hidebound to really swing. He pitched his vocals as much from the throat as from the diaphragm in an attempt to minutely control shading and breathing. This was a calmer, steadier Bing, even on inferior songs. He subtly winks at the lyric of “Fool Me Some More” and provides the record’s only rhythmic jolt by syncopating the first beat of his last eight bars. He imbues Berlin’s negligible “The Little Things in Life” (cut from Reaching for the Moon) with the authority of a man willing to sell a song on its own terms.

  On good songs his heightened authority is unmistakable. A major tune that year and a Grove favorite was James P. Johnson’s “If I Could Be with You (One Hour Tonight),” which became a jazz classic with the release of three highly inventive hit records by Louis Armstrong, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers (with Benny Carter), and the Mound City Blue Blowers (with Coleman Hawkins and Pee Wee Russell). The melody inspired jazz musicians, and Bing’s rendition inspired Barris to concoct a secondary theme, which Jimmy Grier arranged as accompaniment to Bing’s vocal. Bing liked the second strain so well that, at his suggestion, Harry asked Gordon Clifford to write a lyric, transforming a countermelody into a song, “It Must Be True.” Arranged by Grier over a lazy two-beat with a chorus of Bing’s most impetuous whistling to date, the recorded version was released as the flip side of “Them There Eyes” and exceeded it in popularity. The second Crosby-Barris-Grier record, early in the New Year of 1931, proved to be a milestone.

  “I Surrender, Dear” renovated Bing’s professional stature on several counts. Barris configured the melody after hearing Bing sing a variation on “Lover, Come Back to Me,” and Gordon Clifford wrote the lyric. From the time Bing introduced it, the song was hugely popular at the Grove and on radio; he was often asked to sing it several times in an evening. The recording is startling, calling attention to itself with an unconventional arrangement that defied dancers with its frequent change-ups in tempo and manner. Grier had written a concert-style orchestration of a popular song, and though the effect superficially resembled Whiteman’s more inflated numbers, the result was cogently novel. It begins with an introduction by trombones and strings, essays the verse with sixteen bars of fox-trotting strings followed by jazz trumpet and solo clarinet, and then sets the stage for Bing’s entrance with a splendid two-bar ensemble transition. Even his chorus, elaborately supported by the band, has a change-up: he sings the bridge over modified stop-time rhythm. The ensuing instrumental chorus starts with trombone and strings intimating an Eastern strain, and leads to muted trumpets and responsive violins, a stop-time clarinet, a bridge that suggests a Polish wedding dance, and a finish that combines rigidly marching trombones and a crescendo from which Bing’s voice glides for a brief reprise.

  With Bing wrapping the word dear around a shapely mordent, sculpting dynamics, and impeccably articulating every word and pitch in a climbing melody that parallels the rising ardor in his voice (or vice versa), the performance is if not his finest to date, then certainly his most paradigmatic. Bing’s huskiness is wonderfully captured by the Victor technicians (a perquisite of recording with Arnheim), and his projection is at once forceful and restrained. The success of the record amplified his national reputation and all but buried the Rhythm Boys; for as popular as they were, radio audiences wanted to hear that astonishing singer with the throb in his voice, not a trio of hepcats. Perhaps the prime indication of Bing’s elevated stature was Louis Armstrong’s cover of “I Surrender, Dear,” which Rudy Vallee — in recounting Armstrong’s influence on Bing, Russ Columbo, Mildred Bailey, and others — proclaimed a masterpiece. 51 Before the year was out, Louis covered two more Crosby signature tunes, “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” and “Star Dust,” and often paid homage (“I’m Confessin’ “) to his friend with crooning asides and telling mordents.

  Louis was not alone. Bing was now imitable, not only in the positive sense but also as an object of parody. When Bing leaned too heavily on mannerisms, he courted the kind of mockery that, on the heels of his movie breakthrough, unleashed a generation of bu-bu-bu-boo impressionists. Only Dixie had the temerity to emphasize the danger, and did so with devastating precision late in 1931, in Rudy Wiedoeft’s Vitaphone short Darn Tootiri’, singing Bing’s hit of the moment, “I Apologize.” She reveals no overt indication of parody, but her droll mordent-heavy performance is spot-on. Bing got the message, after a period of testing, indulging, and rejecting diverse affectations. At his next Arnheim session, Bing turned in a rigorous performance of “Thanks to You,” investing trite material with a glowing conviction as fresh and innovative as anything heard in American song. That same day he recorded the romping “One More Time” and the finest of Barris’s songs (lyric by Ted Koehler and Billy Moll), “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” in which Bing combines whistling and singspiel and finesses a bel canto second chorus variation. He continued to explore emotional range, from the vibrant “I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store),” with its jaunty release and soaring finish, to the amorous “At Your Command,” backed only by its composer, Harry Barris, a
nd complete with an interlude of fauxRachmaninoff pounding.

  With records like “Thanks to You,” Bing heralded the end of songpluggers and the tyranny of sheet music — although he appeared on more sheet-music covers than anyone else. Neutral or detached renditions designed to boost the song gave way to individualized interpretations. In blending and mainstreaming all he had learned from Jolson, Armstrong, Waters, and others, Bing personalized and deepened pop. Jazz adapts material with a brashness expounded in Trummy Young’s song “Tain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It).” Bing showed that a popular singer could be just as much in command. Yet he created an illusion of commonality. Bing, like Jolson, was unique, but unlike Jolson, he was at the same time Everyman. Jolson threw himself at his listeners; Crosby made his listeners come to him. Jolson inspired them to cheer him; Crosby seduced them into contemplation. Most radio fans did not know what he looked like, yet they responded to him with the sighs and blushes usually reserved for movie idols.

  Dixie was thrilled at Bing’s progress but distraught at the state of their marriage. In the two months since she returned from New York, Dixie exhausted herself trying to keep up with his nightlife while doing justice to her own career. On March 4, two days after the “Thanks to You” session, she announced her intention to file for divorce. “We have been married only about six months,” she told an Associated Press reporter, “but we have already found out that we are not suited to each other. Our separation is an amicable one, and the only reason for it is that we just can’t get along.” 52 Amicable it was, for the simple reason that she neglected to inform Bing, who learned she was charging mental cruelty when Everett phoned to read him the newspaper account. Dixie vanished and Bing didn’t know her whereabouts for ten days, until a friend persuaded her to call him from her hideout in Agua Caliente.