Bing Crosby (89 page)

But the idea worked like a charm. Fans came to gawk at the new Crosby and stayed to enjoy his cordial demeanor and swinging
band, which downplayed his singing in favor of stellar arrangements (by Haggart, Matty Matlock, Deane Kincaide) and solos
(by Eddie Miller, Irving Fazola, Yank Lawson, Billy Butterfield, Joe Sullivan). Critic and producer Helen Oakley convinced
Rodin to start a band within the band, an octet called the Bob Cats; inevitably, the tag stuck to all of Bob’s musicians.
Their swinging variation on the New Orleans style was received as a tonic. Duke Ellington, no less, described Crosby’s Bob
Cats as “a truly gut-bucket band with a strong blues influence.”
¹⁷

The jitterbugs were elated, though Bob felt they never accepted him as his own man. “They wanted to see what Bing’s kid brother
looked like,” Haggart said, “and that was his cross to bear. His whole life he’s been crying about the girls who would come
up and ask, How tall is Bing? A lot of guys didn’t want to work for him, but I felt a debt of gratitude because he mentioned
my name, gave me all these plugs. In fact, he mentioned everybody in the band, and no other bandleader did that in those days.
He wasn’t much of a singer and he knew it, so he did a lot of talking.”
¹⁸
Haggart, who over the years worked extensively with Bing, believed Bing was as ambivalent about Bob as the men in his band.
“You know, he was never really proud of his kid brother,” he observed, tracing the problem to Bob’s inveterate gambling. Shortly
before Bing and Dixie left for Bermuda, the orchestra drew crowds at Chicago’s Blackhawk Restaurant, which harbored a bookie
joint on the top floor. Bob wagered himself heavily into debt (Haggart thought $8,000), and the hoods running it issued an
ultimatum. “The next thing I know, Larry and Everett came out from California to straighten the thing out. And that kept happening.
Bing wasn’t too fond of that.”
¹⁹

The ambivalence ran both ways. Publicly Bob often recounted the many things Bing did for him; privately he was known to grumble
they were not enough. From Bob’s perspective, Bing had progressed from his baby-sitter to a well-traveled entertainer, with
no stops between. Eleven years and thousands of miles separated them. Maybe Bob believed he could close the gap by following
in his brother’s footsteps. But in the end, he conceded like many others, “I don’t think I ever really knew Bing. I think
Bing got frightened when he made his successful appearance, after he left the Whiteman band, at the Paramount Theater. And
when he saw his name on the marquee in great big letters, he really got very frightened. And I think — I fantasize about this
— that he built a cellophane bag and sealed himself inside and didn’t let anyone inside because they knew he was shy and that
he couldn’t say no. He was an easy touch.”
²⁰

Late in life Bob described him as “a fine man, a fine brother” and recalled how much Bing had done to establish him.
²¹
When Bob hit the big time, Bing presented his orchestra on
Kraft Music Hall,
introduced it at the Palomar Ballroom, and appeared as a guest on Bob’s radio show. He also helped him out of financial problems
and made records with him. Yet more often than not, they kept their distance.

When Bob sought management and publicity advice in 1939, Larry set him up with Barney McDevitt at Rockwell-O’Keefe. But when
asked why he and Bing had never sung together, Bob could only answer, “I don’t know. He never asked me. You don’t argue with
the Bank of America.”
²²
Bob never overcame a sense of hopeless competition. He explained why he agreed to front the big band: “I got sick and tired
of everybody telling me, well, you don’t sound as well as your brother Bing does when you sing. I figured, I’m a bandleader
now and I got a better band than Bing has, because he never had one. So I topped him there.”
²³
Bob’s most impervious fan, despite his fall from grace, was his mother, who once confided to a startled Rosemary Clooney,
“You know, Bob’s the real talent in the family.”
²⁴
His disengagement from Bing and his family was made evident to Rosemary at Bing’s funeral when he walked over to her son,
Miguel, and said, “Hi, I’m your uncle Bob.” He had mistaken him for Bing’s fifth son, Harry.

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 erupted: “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.