Bing Crosby

by Gary Giddins

  Roberts’s observation underscores the great paradox about Crosby: he was a man whom the audience thought it knew almost as well as a member of the family but who was, in fact, known to very few. Cool and efficient in his private manner, he was, in Roberts’s words, “exceptionally intimate when he sang. He never bellowed. He never sang out as he did when he was with Whiteman, as on ‘High Water.’ Once he got his show he learned what a microphone was. We liked his easiness, the intelligence behind his interpretation of the lyrics. Everything he did depended upon intelligence and he certainly had that.” 31

  Bing was now shaking up the entertainment world. In March 1931 CBS had seventy-seven affiliates. Three months after Bing’s debut, it had ninety. The November issue of Radio Log and Lore categorized the new radio voices (Columbo was “King of Crooners”), describing Bing as “recording artist and entertainer extraordinary.” At the close of his first week on the air, two of the top five sheet-music hits — “Just One More Chance” and “I Found a Million Dollar Baby” — were songs he had sung on his first broadcast. His success was contagious. Four days after he premiered, Kate Smith found a sponsor, raising her salary sixfold. A few weeks later Jesse Crawford interpolated Bing’s record of “Just One More Chance” in his performances at the Paramount; that raised eyebrows because Crawford was contracted to NBC. Seven weeks into Bing’s broadcast, Variety noted that Rudy Vallee impersonators had given way to something new: “Radio circles and song pluggers who have just returned from road tours report that they heard at least one or more Crosby-Columbo imitators locally in every city they visited.” 32 Variety’s tabulation of October record sales showed Bing with three of the five top sellers in New York (no. one, “I Apologize”; no. two, “Sweet and Lovely”; and no. five, “Goodnight Sweetheart”) and Los Angeles (no. one, “Dancing in the Dark”; no. two, “I Apologize”; and no. four, “Sweet and Lovely”). 33 The Groaner from Tacoma, as Tommy Dorsey tagged him at a rehearsal, 34 was now, in Duke Ellington’s words, “the biggest thing, ever.” 35

  Bing’s sustaining program lasted as long as it did — two months — because Ralph Wonders, encouraged by Everett, told prospective sponsors they would have to pony up $3,000 a week, which was considered exorbitant for an artist who had yet to prove himself more than a fad. (Actually, as noted, Kate Smith received that amount, a far greater raise for her than it would have been for Bing, who was already paid half that by Paley.) Before long, however, a contract was negotiated with Certified Cremo, a cigar-making subsidiary of American Tobacco, ruled by the notoriously despotic George Washington Hill. For four months Bing was infelicitously known as the Cremo Singer. Carl Fenton conducted the orchestra, which included few (if any) regular jazz players except Lang and Venuti, and David Ross announced — the ideal choice for a ludicrously pretentious company, known for its bizarre obsession with clean tobacco. Ross rolled his rs and contrived fancy pronunciations in reading copy that might have reduced a lesser man to giggling:

  Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! The manufacturers of Certified Cremo present for your listening pleasure Bing Crosby, the Cremo Singer. While you are listening, light up a Cremo and discover real smoking enjoyment. Your eyes can’t tell you whether a cigar is clean or whether it is made by unsanitary methods. Smoke Certified Cremo and know that your cigar is clean. Cremo, made in the famous perfecto shape that is the mark of fine cigar quality, is the only cigar in the world finished under glass. Fifty-six health officials endorse Cremo’s crusade for cleanliness. And now, Bing Crosby, singing… 36

  Ross, who pronounced singer “sing-ah” and might have served as inspiration for Groucho Marx’s “thank yow” sketch in A Night at the Of Opera, was the typical radio announcer of the era and, in fact, had just received the annual gold medal in the field, which titillated Cremo’s sense of status. Younger announcers like Ken Roberts and Harry Von Zell were trying to humanize the medium but faced an uphill battle. Ross had the sort of delivery that Bing — who ultimately did more than anyone to popularize a chummy radio style — routinely parodied, once he was allowed to speak. His early sponsors would not permit Bing to utter a word on air. Ironically, this constraint worked to his advantage, as the contrast between the naturalness of his singing and the announcers’ pomposity intensified the sense of intimacy he cultivated.

  The most important result of the Cremo series was that it established Bing as a prime-time performer from coast to coast. The sustainer had originally been aired at 11:00, in part so that it was heard at 7:00 out West (California had not yet accepted daylight saving, so there was a four-hour difference in 1931), where CBS hoped Bing might put a dent in Amos ‘n’Andy. That hopeless cause was teased in Sing, Bing, Sing, the Sennett short that Crosby made the following year. Bing’s character, a radio singer, signals his plans to elope over the air; then that night, the girl’s father intercepts and taunts Bing with the line “Thought I’d be listening to Amos ‘n’Andy, didn’t you?” CBS attempted to increase Bing’s New York following by adding an early show to his schedule on Tuesdays at 8:45. His success in that time slot motivated the network to broadcast him exclusively at 7:00 P.M., causing much consternation among West Coast fans who were working or did not otherwise have access to radios at three in the afternoon. With Cremo writing the checks, however, the issue was solved: Bing made two nightly broadcasts Monday through Saturday, at 7:00 for the East and 11:00 for the West.

  For all his notoriety and success, Bing was not breaking any ratings records. But three days after he debuted for Cremo, he began setting the first of many career records that would never be broken. On November 6 he embarked on a ten-week stint at the Paramount Theater (the stage where he and Al Rinker had bombed) for what turned out to be the longest streak by any entertainer in the theater’s history. Midway through the initial engagement, Paramount renewed his contract for another ten weeks — four more at its Broadway theater and six at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn. When he closed in Brooklyn, Bing returned to the Broadway theater as the vocal star in a George Jessel revue for an additional three weeks. In total, he commanded Paramount’s two New York stages for five months without a break. During most of that time, Bing’s daily grind consisted of four stage shows — at $2,500 a week — and two fifteen-minute daily broadcasts, plus various charity shows, guest appearances, recording dates, and concerts.

  Inevitably, Bing’s vocal problem — the huskiness — returned. Paramount, concerned about its contracts, sent him to the same specialist who had treated him before the CBS debut. This time, Dr. Ruskin found him “happy-go-lucky” 37 and assured Bing that his only problem was a minor node, a hard blister, on one of his vocal cords; because of it, a slight cold might generate congestion and swelling. Ruskin told him he could have it surgically removed but advised against it. An operation could have an unforeseen effect on his voice, while the harmless node contributed to an appealing timbre. Over the next few years, an echoey and pleasing throatiness served as Bing’s signature sound. (It could also render him downright hoarse, as on the record “Snuggled on Your Shoulder.”) He suggested that Bing rest his voice, allowing it to heal on its own. Bing compromised; he curtailed its use when he was not working. For years fans debated whether Bing secretly had surgery, so completely did the huskiness disappear in the mid-1930s, but he evidently did not. In 1933, when Paramount Pictures signed Bing to a contract, his voice was insured for $100,000 by Lloyd’s of London, which insisted on a proviso: Dr. Ruskin had to stipulate that he would not operate, as the node was an essential component of Bing’s “vocal charm.”

  On opening night of the Paramount engagement, Lillian Roth, Gus Edwards, and the dancer Armida made stage appearances to wish him well. As was customary, Paramount stage shows changed weekly, along with the movie — he opened opposite Ruth Chatterton in Once a Lady — and supporting stars. Bing’s duties required him to emcee as well as sing and act in sketches, all good preparation for the movies and the kind of radio shows he would pioneer in a couple of years. He began to draw on hi
s inveterate fascination with the sauruses. Though prohibited from speaking on the air, onstage he could be quite “gabby,” as he put it. 38 Blending verbal gimmicks (“alliteration and other fancy devices”) 39 with jaunty phrases and current slang, he produced a distinctive speech pattern all his own. “I can only go so far with big words,” Bing explained, “then I have to return to the vernacular to finish what I have to say.” 40

  Because Bing was a radio persona, Paramount management decided to actually introduce him as a disembodied voice — or something close to it. During his first number he was displayed as a dark blue silhouette. Billboard complained that all one could see of him as he sang “Just One More Chance” were his white flannels. Where was the logic in that, the reviewer wondered, especially as Bing “registered heavily” in his second number, “As Time Goes By,” bathed in white light and seated on an ascending pipe organ played by Helen Crawford (Jesse’s wife). 41 In a more bizarre setup, Bing had to swing over the first few rows in a seat welded to a crane. The theater was dark except for a spotlight on his face. Once, the controlling mechanism got stuck during a performance, and Bing was forced to crawl along the crane’s shaft — amid gales of laughter — until he could safely drop to the stage.

  Microphones were stationed everywhere, two in the open and the rest hidden, so that Bing could perform freely in just about any position. Diversity was key. In one show he sang “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” as a lead-in to a dance by the scantily clad Vanessi, who rumbaed; then he serenaded ballerina Harriet Hoctor with “I Surrender, Dear” as she danced on her toes and leaped over hurdles in a simulated steeplechase. A mike was hidden in each of the hurdles, and Bing walked from post to post, singing one phrase at each, until finishing the song.

  Variety praised his professionalism: unlike most singers, “he saw an audience before he saw the inside of a radio studio.” 42 But business was not much better than average the first week. The theater manager, Jack Mclnerny, remembered Bing occasionally having an attack of nerves and bracing himself with a drink — though nothing like in the Rhythm Boys days, he added. Mclnerny recalled him as “very pleasant, talked to the stagehands, joked with everybody, easygoing, but a little nervous before a show.” 43 He relaxed when the Mills Brothers, one of the most ingenious and melodious of close-harmony groups, appeared for three delightful weeks. Bing never felt more at home than when surrounded by good musicians, and though he performed only one number onstage with the brothers, between shows they repaired to the steps out back and jammed.

  In October Bing and the Mills Brothers participated in a two-sided record, Gems from George White’s Scandals, sharing the platter with Victor Young’s orchestra, the Boswell Sisters, soloist Tommy Dorsey, and radio tenor Frank Munn, whose contribution includes the unspeakable “That’s Why Darkies Were Born.” The highlight of the session was “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” for which Young asked Bing, the Boswells, and the Mills Brothers to devise different interpretations that he could juxtapose into a single arrangement. Engineer Edgar Sisson recalled that “Bing rehearsed one-tenth the time the others did” and amused everyone present by spontaneously altering the line “You can’t take your dough when you go-go-go” to “You can’t take that good dough when you go” because, Bing explained, go-go-go “seemed awkward.” 44

  Yet the arrangement permitted no interaction between Bing and the Mills Brothers; after sharing three weeks with them at the theater, Bing was determined to rectify that. On December 16 he arranged — accidentally on purpose — to record with them. Taking a busman’s holiday, Bing wandered into the studio to watch the brothers rehearse with one of Bennie Krueger’s units. After a while he asked to get in on a number. They ran down a routine on “Dinah,” a jump tune chiefly associated with Ethel Waters. Bing began fooling around, scatting. He asked the engineers to record a take simply as a test. Everyone liked it so much, a second take was made. Kapp was probably not present, for no actual recording was scheduled, but when he heard it he knew he had a jewel. He released the second take of “Dinah” on a disc with Bing’s earnest version of Victor Young’s “Can’t We Talk It Over,” recorded days later at the Paramount Theater, sedately accompanied by Helen Crawford’s Wurlitzer. In the first days of 1932, “Dinah” was the hottest record in the country, the second top-ranking hit for the Mills Brothers and the fourth (under his own name) for Bing. It endures as an irresistible pop classic.

  “Dinah” is emphatically a record of the early thirties; Bing slightly overdoes the parallel mordents and scats with a two-beat stiffness. Yet his phrasing is sure and inventive, and he swings buoyantly, especially when riffing with the brothers. The entire performance is dazzling fun, flowing with energy and good cheer. Bing was most expressive in his lower midrange, as here, sculpting every note while breezing over the rhythm. After the Millses sing a unison double-time chorus, Donald Mills scats a two-bar platform from which Bing leaps into a sixteen-bar improvisation. The Armstrong influence is evident in his ensuing riffs (especially on the long-unissued and more larkish “test” version), yet he is utterly himself. Donald, not yet seventeen at the time, recalled, “Crosby and us were great friends. We enjoyed one another. He was a wonderful person. When we made ‘Dinah’ or ‘Shine’ [two months later], we didn’t rehearse. We just said, ‘Well, we’ll do this, you do that,’ and we recorded. No arrangement.” 45

  Over time, business at the Paramount improved. Reviewers noted Bing’s equanimity — he did not appear to mind having to sing while obscured by a bevy of dancing girls — as well as his “quiet line of clowning” and his innovative decision to plant his main microphone in the orchestra pit, several feet in front of him, so that he stood bare before the audience, like Al Jolson. The front office (Paramount Publix) booked Russ Columbo into the Brooklyn theater during part of Bing’s Broadway run to exploit the battle of the baritones. But it tilted its booking powers toward Bing, whose shows were more elaborate and included several of the most talented and popular performers of the era, notably Kate Smith, Eleanor Powell, Lillian Roth, Cab Calloway, the Boswell Sisters, and Burns and Allen. Paramount increased his salary to $4,000 when it extended his contract (it did not renew Columbo’s), a tribute as much to his personal stability as to his drawing power.

  Which is not to say he didn’t slip up a few times. Frieda Kapp, Jack’s widow, recalled the Paramount run as the period when Jack began pressuring Bing to dispense with the trademarks that had given him cachet ever since the Whiteman years. Jack summed them up as the “bu-bu-bu-boos,” by which he also meant scat singing and jazz. Kapp was determined to establish Bing as the first entertainer who was all things to all people, and as his instincts usually proved sound, Bing grew to depend on them. But it was not always easy, and one of their discussions apparently sent Bing on a bender. “That was the beginning of Bing’s success, taking away the bu-bu-bu-boos at the Paramount Theater,” as Frieda remembered it. “I remember very well that [Jack] took the bu-bu-bu-boo away from him and he did not appear that night at the Paramount. They found him drunk somewhere. After that, of course, he went back and became a great success.” 46

  His sporadic unsteadiness was also apparent on the air. “A couple of times during the early weeks, I remember him fumbling on the radio,” said Burton Lane. “I never saw him drinking, but if he blew a lyric,there would be talk on the street, you know, around the music publishers.” 47 Artie Shaw remembered a broadcast when Bing “was so drunk he was staggering. He wouldn’t stay near the mike, somebody had to hold him there.” 48 In Shaw’s opinion, the problem was Dixie. The scuttlebutt had it that she had come to New York to keep him off the sauce but was drinking too much herself.

  Shortly before Bing took off for New York, Dixie Lee embarked on a nightclub engagement in Los Angeles at the Embassy club. She arrived in New York after completing the gig, and friends said they seemed happy together. “Bing and Dixie were living at the Essex House, which was very new, and Mildred and I were married and staying with Joe and Sally Venuti,
nearby on Fifty-fifth Street,” Red Norvo recalled. “And so we gave parties at Joe’s apartment, the six of us, and they were wonderful.” 49 Bing and Dixie bought a white terrier and named it Cremo. “Dixie came to the studio once or twice,” Ken Roberts remembered, “and she was like a little waif. I heard after that she drank a lot. I don’t know. Bing had a reputation for drinking, but I never saw him drunk. When he was working he was very serious.” 50 Yet a turnabout was taking place. At Dixie’s urging, Bing had straightened out, but in trying to keep up with him and in warding off loneliness when he worked late, she now turned increasingly to alcohol.

  Meanwhile, Everett ran rampant, pulling strings, making deals. “Everett was running Bing’s life at that time,” or so it seemed to Gary Stevens. “He was all business, looking out for Bing’s welfare on a very strict, cold basis.” 51 He was not greatly liked or respected. Ken Roberts thought that “he just kind of latched on to this brilliant young brother.” 52 Everett was known as a tippler and a chaser. Members of the Paramount stage crew 53 described an incident that occurred when Everett followed Bing onstage as he was about to climb onto the seat of the crane that suspended him over the audience. During their hurried conversation, before the curtain rose, Everett noticed they were standing near a trapdoor that opened on the girls’ dressing area. Somehow he managed to fall through the trap as the crane took Bing on his ride. The orchestra had to play extra loud to cover the shrieking from down below.

  In the all-time classic Everett story, however, he plays a bit part. “There was a shoeshine boy near CBS at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood,” Artie Shaw recalled, “and he was working on one man, when the man he just finished gave him a dime tip, which was a normal tip back then, and walked away. So the shoeshine boy says, ‘Thanks, Mr. Crosby,’ and the new customer says, ‘Was that Bing Crosby?’And the kid says, ‘No, that’s the wrong Crosby.’ Everett was known as the wrong Crosby for the rest of his life.” 54