Bing Crosby

by Gary Giddins

  No feeling of competition intrudes, however, on the records Bing and Bob made that fall. The music appears to reflect their overall satisfaction with the reunion. If the incident with the bookies came up, it failed to dispel the warm feelings. Dixie instantly hit it off with June, who at nineteen (Dixie’s age when she married Bing) was bewildered by her new circumstances. Bob was grateful to Dixie, and his affection for her never faltered. “She was a wonderful woman,” he said, describing her as Bing’s salvation. 25

  With Dixie and Gary listening in the control room, Bing recorded three numbers with the band. Two were covers of current Victor hits by bandleader Larry Clinton, “My Reverie” and “Old Folks” (Mildred Bailey covered them for Vocalion). Matty Matlock arranged “Old Folks,” a new song by Willard Robison, the master of pastoral ballads, whose folklike melodies and nostalgic images influenced Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. After a deft four-bar intro by clarinet and brasses, Bing enters brightly, in utter control of the narrative lyric, as if the consonant-heavy words and tempo changes presented no difficulties whatsoever. He floats over the rhythm like a kite on a breeze. Bing’s version helped establish the song as an unlikely yet durable jazz standard, with interpretations ranging from Jack Teagarden to Charlie Parker to Miles Davis.

  Bob Haggart initially arranged “My Reverie,” Larry Clinton’s adaptation of the Debussy theme, with an eight-bar introduction. “Jack Kapp came in and says, ‘Wait a minute, we’re playing “My Reverie,” not “Clair de lune.”’ And Bing says, ‘Leave it alone, he worked all night on this thing.’ And it was true. So he left it in.” 26 Haggart, though, realized that eight bars at a slow tempo might kill the record, so he cut the intro in half. Bing attacks the number with authority, enlivening the tempo to rid it of any dawdling. His articulation denatures the labored rhymes, even the dreadful couplet “My dreams are as worthless as tin to me / Without you, life will never begin to be.” He sings the h in whirlpool and uses his entire range, plus head tones and mordents — his timing is as natural as a heartbeat. The record was a solid hit.

  But the blockbuster of the session was a new song by Mercer and Harry Warren, written for a Dick Powell movie (Hard to Get). “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” is quintessential Bing, a rejoinder to those who thought jazz was something he relegated to his past, the kind of performance that inspired pianist Ralph Sutton to marvel: “He’s right there, right on the button, man. You know — a musician. And so loose. Jesus Christ, it’s unbelievable.” 27

  Here he is: swinging with such poise that he lifts the whole band, but with that choirboy voice that speaks right to you even as it suggests a sleepy-eyed nonchalance. This is not a singer to commune self-consciously with his muse or to emote for the hipster musicians. His approach is disarmingly, almost nakedly, artless, yet so artful that he never shows his hand, never shows off his phrasing or his easy way of rushing or retarding a phrase, never does any of the things singers do to show you how hard they are working. He is so smooth, you may not notice the flawless diction of the rhymes startin’ and kindergarten in a phrase that ends with a model mordent on the last word (wild); the impeccably timed cadences of the phrase “I can see the judges’ eyes as they handed you the prize”; and the neat embellishment on the reprise of “judges’ eyes.” Haggart’s excellent arrangement puts the verse in the middle for a change of pace and shows off the ensemble and tenor saxophonist Eddie Miller in an interlude that begins with a hint of “Muskrat Ramble.” The sustained chords at Bing’s return have the effect of suspending the rhythm. A number one hit, “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” was reckoned as one of the top sellers in a year dominated by big bands. Bing won the Down Beat poll as best jazz singer of 1938.

  Hits aside, Bing enjoyed a state of musical grace in the late 1930s. Having pared away the most avid of his youthful mannerisms, he now personified a style beyond style. He made singing seem so easy that amateurs imagined they could sound as good as he did, an illusion that flattered Bing. In his own way, he was as much a musical populist as the self-styled people’s singers, like Woody Guthrie, who disparaged Crosby as the commercial tool of a soulless industry. Many of the same people who wanted to be Guthrie around a campfire became Crosby in the shower. Nineteen thirty-eight turned out to be Bing’s busiest year as a recording artist since 1928, when he was at Paul Whiteman’s beck and call. In fifteen sessions he recorded forty-seven songs (as opposed to an average of thirty during the preceding decade), of which twenty-three were important hits, scoring among the year’s bestsellers. As most of his other records were issued on the flip sides of hits, virtually every number made money, an average he sustained in 1939 (again forty-seven songs) and 1940 (sixty songs). In terms of quantity, his most fruitful year was 1947 (seventy-nine songs), but that was a time of spoken-word albums and a rush to stockpile material before the recording ban of 1948. For a ratio of bull’s-eyes to discards, the years 1937 to 1940 were nonpareil.

  In addition to Hawaiian songs and tailor-made Johnny Burke lyrics, duets became a major element in Bing’s recording regimen. Even more than Kraft Music Hall, they emphasize his spontaneity and good humor, partly because they concentrate so much interplay in such a brief span, but largely because the interplay is conducted over musical rhythms with people Bing admired and enjoyed. One might argue that of all the manifestations of his art, duets best exemplify the real Bing.

  The pop vocal duet is a peculiar art. Though obviously assisted by compatible vocal ranges, it is absolutely dependent on personal empathy. Sinatra, attempting to replicate Bing’s career in his early years, tried to blend with several colleagues and almost always proved too stiff to bring it off, until he and Bing chimed in High Society (1956). Bing, on the other hand, was never more honestly and affably himself than in duets. He employed the format more frequently than anyone else — on records, radio, and television. Near the end of his life, he cited the High Society duet with Sinatra (“Well, Did You Evah?”) as his favorite scene from any of his movies. Among his many other partners were Connie Boswell, Johnny Mercer, Al Jolson, Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee, Bob Hope, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Jack Teagarden, Louis Jordan, Frances Langford, Jimmy Durante, Ella Fitzgerald, Lee Wiley, Gary Crosby, Mary Martin, Mel Tormé, Burl Ives, Donald O’Connor, Mildred Bailey, Perry Como, Trudy Erwin, Danny Kaye, Mitzi Gaynor, Dean Martin, Maurice Chevalier, Patty Andrews (and her sisters), and Rosemary Clooney — a particular favorite, as their vocal ranges and esprit were a perfect match.

  The duet gave him a challenge, like golf, with a modified degree of competition. He was as generous to other singers as to fellow actors, and his supreme confidence relaxed and inspired them. The laughter in a Crosby duet is never scripted, while the scripted material often sounds improvised; it is generally impossible to tell just how much was planned. An illuminating example of Bing’s disregard for safety nets and his ability to get another performer to share his derring-do comes from late in his career, when he recorded with Fred Astaire, an inveterate rehearser. Ken Barnes, who produced their 1975 album, recalled that Fred “treated every vocal like a choreographic routine. He would want to know what happened here, did he hear the brass there — he was really very precise. Whereas Bing would just say, ‘Well, the tempo’s good, the key’s fine. I’ll leave it to you fellows.’” 28 The week prior to the recording date, Astaire fretted in London while Bing toured Scotland’s golf courses.

  Barnes tried to track him down at various courses but kept missing him until he returned to London, two days before the session. Reaching him at Claridge’s, he explained that Fred required six or seven hours of rehearsal. Bing laughed and said that was impossible: “I’ve got nineteen appointments tomorrow” (Bingspeak for eighteen holes and a drink after the game). Bing asked, “What does he want to rehearse for? Fifteen minutes in front of the piano. How sweet it is. No problem.” Bing finally offered to arrive half an hour early on the morning of the session. When Ken phoned Fred to tell him the plan, there was a long silence before he erupte
d: “Oh, my God. I should have known. He has always been like this. I’ll tell you what he is, he’s irresponsible!” Ken pointed out that Bing had never let him down and was always delightful in the studio. Fred remonstrated, “Well, we all know the great Crosby can just walk in and turn it on. I can’t do that. I’m not his kind of performer. I’ve got to be prepared.” 29

  Fred insisted he had to rehearse with somebody, so he and Barnes went to the home of musical director Pete Moore, where Ken sang Bing’s parts. Fred began feeling more confident, but he was concerned about the confusing lead sheets and asked for one that had only his lines. “Can’t I have a part of my own so I know exactly what I’m doing? Why must I know what Bing’s doing?” Barnes said, “Well, I think you have to. It’s a duet. You guys have to interact.” 30 Another eruption. In Barnes’s recollection, their conversation went like this:

  Fred: Interact? That’s another thing. Crosby’s a great ad-libber, I can’t ad-lib at all. He’s going to destroy me. I shouldn’t have done this.

  Ken: Fred, I’m sure it’s gonna be fun, it’s gonna be like a party. We’ve got the band there. You’ll like the songs and you’ll like Bing.

  Fred: I love Bing, he’s great. But he’s gonna crucify me. He’s a much better ad-libber than I am. And these parts, I don’t know what I’m looking at.

  Ken: Well, look, it says Bing, very clearly there, and then Fred, and then both.

  Fred: I know how to fix that. 31

  Whereupon Fred took out two colored pencils and proceeded to underline his own lines in red and Bing’s in blue.

  On the morning of the session, Bing arrived to run down the material with Fred, accompanied by Pete Moore on piano. As they sang, Bing looked over Fred’s shoulder at the red and blue lines, then down at his own part, and kept singing. “I could see he was up to something,” Barnes recalled. When they finished, Bing said, “You know, I think it would be much better if I sang these lines and you sang those. It’s better for your personality, Fred.” “Oh my God. Are you sure?” Fred asked. Bing reassured him. So Fred took out the pencils and scratched out the blue and replaced it with red and vice versa. They sang it again. Bing said, “No, I think it was better the way it was before.” Fred said, “I can’t see anything now.” Ken offered a clean copy, but Fred declined, asking, “Now, Bing, are we gonna stay with those lines?” 32

  They proceeded to the studio, where the forty-three-piece orchestra awaited them, and handled the material like the pros they were, completing most numbers in two takes. Fred was so loosened up by the morning’s experience that he parried every Crosby thrust with aplomb, answering each in kind. “It was just beautiful,” Barnes said, “and I can tell you Fred’s ad-libbing on that record was genuine.” Bing made him laugh several times, cracking him up at the finish of “Pick Yourself Up,” with an improvised spiel about teaching him to sing; you can hear the musicians roaring as well. “Ken, what a lovely album,” Fred enthused at the end of the day. Bing invited Fred to dinner and asked him to appear on his next Christmas special, telling him, “We got on so well.” 33 As to billing on the jacket, A Couple of Song & Dance Men, Fred overruled Barnes’s inclination and insisted that Bing’s name come first.

  Bing’s penchant for duets resounded in 1937 and 1938, when he recorded the Gallagher and Shean parody with Johnny Mercer and several numbers with Connie Boswell. “He loved Johnny Mercer,” Rosemary Clooney recalled, “got along with him brilliantly. He liked Johnny’s patterns of speech.” Clooney explained a technique Bing used for duets, adapted from his radio work: dummy lines at rehearsal to mask the real lines. “For example, we did ‘You Came a Long Way from St. Louis,’ and on the verse, I say, ‘You breakfast with Bardot,’ and he says, ‘Oh, my, she’s something,’ so I know he has a line there. But when we get down to the final take, he says, ‘You know, somebody ought to knit that girl a hug-me-tight,’ which is a little shrug old ladies used to wear in the South. Well, I started to laugh, you know, because it was just so out of left field — a hug-me-tight for Bardot. He would do a dummy line until you were close to the take and then hit you with the one he had worked out.” 34

  One of Bing’s most compatible partners was Connie Boswell, who embarked on a successful twenty-five-year career as a soloist in 1935, after her sisters Martha and Vet married and left show business. Struck by poliomyelitis at three, she performed in a wheelchair rendered invisible by lighting and the drapery of her gowns; she disdained sympathy. After her death in 1976, Bing remembered her as “a dear woman, a brave woman.” 35 Connie (she changed her name to Connee during the war so she would not have to dot the i while signing countless autographs for servicemen) played cello, piano, and saxophone, and her instrumental skills enhanced her rhythmic poise, as did her admiration for Louis and Bing, whose slurs and syncopations suited her sultry timbre. She was a singer’s singer and a favorite of musicians. Ella Fitzgerald acknowledged Connie as her idol, and Harry Belafonte once called her “the most widely imitated singer of all time.” 36 Bob Crosby’s band accompanied her at her first solo engagement and on many of her best Decca records, evading the radar of Kapp, who tried to tone down her jazziness.

  Yet it took the compound of her molasses drawl and Bing’s brisk virility to secure her a couple of chart-topping hits, the winningly imaginative “Bob White” and an offhanded sprint through “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” The last, backed by a raucous, swinging Victor Young band, was released with an Eddie Cantor speech asking for help to fight infantile paralysis. The performers and Decca donated the disc’s royalties to the cause.

  The first Boswell-Crosby encounter, “Basin Street Blues,” was a gift to Connie. She dominates the number while Bing plays straight man, harmonizing or humming obbligato, never singing more than eight consecutive solo bars but blending dreamily with her on the last unison chorus. When Bing sings a trombone-style counterpoint, his deep authority makes her shine. Their comportment suggests a family affair, as they call each other by name and refer to John Scott Trotter, practically extending an invitation to the listener to join them on “the street where all the light and dark folks meet.” Andy Secrest’s fine trumpet solo pays homage to Louis Armstrong, incorporating figures from Louis’s two celebrated recordings of Spencer Williams’s tune. Bing messed up a phrase, “where welcome’s free,” but let it ride, an instance of his credo (expressed to Les Paul at another session) to “let them see I’m human.” 37 Bing and Connie are more equal and ebullient on Johnny Mercer’s “Bob White,” a tantalizing confection packed with puns about birds and singing. 38 This time Connie plays it straight, and Bing turns in one of his most playful performances, indulging the staccato and vibrato called for in the lyric.

  Bing’s solo sessions of this period also produced gems, but sometimes you had to pan through a lot of silt to find them. The biggest risk in taming Bing was the threat of a middlebrow blandness, imposed not through songs or arrangements but coming from within Bing himself. As the all-purpose troubadour, he could no longer play the jazzman who subverts corny material with the tact of his own musical impulses, who subordinates the “what you do” to the “how you do it.” Kapp didn’t want that from him, and the Decca schedule, with its relentlessly diverse range of material, made such knowing detachment almost impossible to sustain. Bing had a genius for popularity. His major achievement was to plait the many threads of American music into a central style of universal appeal. But the price was exorbitant. To achieve universality, he had to dilute individuality.

  Drawing from the payload Bing had helped strike a few years back with “Swanee River,” Kapp returned to the nineteenth century for two classics, the abolitionist threnody “Darling Nelly Gray,” and the Negro spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” They served Jack’s strategy to establish Bing as the American bard and suited his purposes in other ways: those tunes were known to millions, spoke to a nostalgic longing for the past, and were in the public domain. The songs of Stephen Foster probably never enjoyed greater popularity than in the 1930
s, when they were not widely perceived as underscoring racial stereotypes. Deeply ingrained in the American memory, like fairy tales handed down through generations, they, too, were sweet, sentimental, and unprotected by copyright. Kapp revived many of them for his roster, as did producers at other companies, and the songs were recycled in numerous movie scores. His initial selections for Bing were politically astute even by the standards of half a century later.

  “Darling Nelly Gray,” written by Benjamin Hanby, a twenty-two-year-old white minister, four years after Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published, similarly dramatizes southern barbarism in the form of a slave’s lament for his lover who had been sold off and sent to the Georgia cotton fields. Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers recorded it for Decca a year before Bing, creating a richly emotional performance, tender and defiant. In Trotter’s arrangement, the combination of soloist and choir is replicated by Bing and Paul Taylor’s Choristers, but the result is studied and detached. The Choristers restore the darkest passage of the lyric (“the white man bound her with his chain”), omitted from the Armstrong version, and Bing sings with much elegance, especially on the verse. But the throaty warmth associated with his nodes has been replaced by a thin echo in his upper midrange, and although he counters it with frequent low-note swoops, he is too remote from the material to engage it meaningfully. In the last section of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” his voice softens to as low and hushed a level as he ever achieved on records, but the effect is nonetheless dated.

  Still, those songs were preferable to newer creations like the nondescript “Let Me Whisper I Love You,” with a Trotter arrangement that combines classical borrowings and a habanera beat, or the stupefying “When Mother Nature Sings Her Lullaby,” for which Bing was backed by pipe organ — a throwback to his days at the Paramount Theater and Jesse Crawford, and no more enchanting. Yet the same session that produced “Let Me Whisper I Love You” generated a memorable version of the Edgar Sampson swing anthem “Don’t Be That Way,” three months after Benny Goodman opened his fabled Carnegie Hall concert with it. In place of Benny’s thumping four-four, Trotter’s arrangement bounces not unpleasantly over a two-beat rhythm. Bing, slow and sinuous, glides through the melody, smoothly mining the lyric for nuance: the low way, the drawn-out sky, the mordent on me, the jazzily enhanced “don’t break my heart.” Trotter provides a bona fide swing interlude, with Spike Jones’s splashing cymbals setting up Secrest’s solo, until Bing ends the party with a decisive “Stop it!”