This was the period when Bing was twice nominated for best-actor Oscars (he won in 1944 for "Going My Way"), when he recorded the most successful record of all time, "White Christmas," and when he was named in a poll of servicemen as the man who had done most for Army morale. She was an actress, known for Redheads on Parade (1935), Love in Bloom (1935) and Night Life in Reno (1931). “They’re real — and they’re mine.”. google_ad_type = "text_image"; He was pronounced dead on arrival at the Red Cross Hospital in the Spanish capital. But Crosby was king of the mountain — the national voice, America's troubadour. The sound of his voice is unlike that of any of his contemporaries: a vibrant, virile baritone, completely at odds with the effete tenors and semifalsetto warblers who dominated male popular singing in that era. His father, he said, simply cried out, “I’m going home!”. He was 73. Bing’s first movie appearance was in Whiteman’s “King of Jazz” in 1930. “He wanted only the children and myself, but I think there are those who worshiped him for 40 years who have a right to be there,” she said. Crosby saw no contradiction in his love for the great Irish tenor John McCormack, the Broadway minstrel Al Jolson and the jazz and blues groups that excited his contemporaries. He cast some 400 films and TV shows and helped launch many stars. (He re-created the part twice in “Bells of St. Mary’s” and “Say One for Me.”). “I can’t think of any better way for a golfer who sings for a living to finish the round,” Mrs. Crosby said. Crosby had a more elaborate story which he embellished with Irish brogue, about his grandmother’s death: “Katie, my grandmother, married an Irishman name Dennis Harrigan. Having absorbed every valuable tradition in the 19th-century vernacular, sacred or secular, he offered a new vision that liberated American music vocally and instrumentally. Within a year or so, he noticed he was making more money with the band than at the law form where he was a clerk. He eventually dropped out of law school to play drums and sing with a local band, before leaving Spokane with his partner, Al Rinker (Bailey's brother), to try for the big time. Hill artificial Christmas trees, at the end of the day With his combination of intelligence and rhythmic acuity, Crosby could transfigure trite songs tritely arranged ("I Found a Million Dollar Baby"), but also underscore the banality of June/moon bromides, hymns to a mother's tears and "dark town" caricatures. I prefer the original, of course. After his final putt Bing bowed to acknowledge the applause of some fans and remarked ""That was a great game of golf, fellas." Dennis Crosby had drinking problems early in life but had later embraced Alcoholics Anonymous, friends said. For 30 years, between 1927 and 1956, Crosby was a looming presence in America's cultural landscape. Bing Crosby was born on May 2, 1903 and died on October 14, 1977. He was born Harry Lillis Crosby, May 2, 1903, in Tacoma, the fourth of the seven children of Harry Lowe Crosby, a brewery bookkeeper, and Kate Harrigan Crosby. Bing Crosby Birthday and Date of Death. Birthday: May 2, 1903 Date of Death: October 14, 1977 Age at Death: 74 He once told an interviewer, “My favorite kind of picture would be one that opened with a shot of me sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch. `I'M AND OLD COWHAND' (ASV AJA 5160). He said it was because he liked a comic strip character named “Bingo.” The name stuck when he began classes at Webster Elementary School and continued when he graduated to high school. By the end of 1943, Sinatra beat him in the Down Beat poll of popular singers. After hearing him, Duke Ellington vowed not to hire a male vocalist until he found one who sounded like Crosby. Dennis Crosby killed himself in 1991, and Phillip died of a heart attack in 1994. Young Bing Crosbyat age 14 took summer jobs at the Spokane Auditorium as a property boy. He played pivotal roles in the development of the recording, radio and film industries, while virtually defining the microphone as a singer's instrument. Bing credited Everett with “edging” him into his first featured movie role, in Paramount’s “The Big Broadcast” in 1932. ARMSTRONG, born in New Orleans in 1901, was the most extreme force American music had ever known. Site of the Week Award. By then he had begun to retreat from the stage. Smith and Waters dazzled the young white jazz acolytes of the 1920's, and Crosby was exposed to their records early on by another highly influential singer, Mildred Bailey, the benefactress of his apprentice years. He could still croon with swinging élan, as demonstrated on his 1957 album, "Bing With a Beat," and he continued to enjoy other triumphs. Crosby and Pinero had been matched against Barrios and De Zulueta. Since then, the duet has been parodied a few times, most notably in a strange manner by John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell who copied it including the introductory banter, word for word. Former L.A. City Council President Pat Russell, first woman elected to post, dies at 97. what matters is that we enjoy our time together with our loved ones. His theme song, “When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day,” was known everywhere. Yet, contrary to the Sinatra myth, at no time in the 1940's did Sinatra seriously crimp Crosby's popularity. She was married to Bing Crosby. The new Mrs. Crosby already had a fine arts degree from the University of Texas. Here are 10 splendid avenues into the immense labyrinth of Crosby's recorded legacy. The modern style of American popular singing, as distinct from the theatrical emoting of the minstrel and vaudeville eras, was originated by four performers, each to some degree rooted in jazz and blues. Harry Lillis became “Bing” about the time of the move to Spokane. In Matty Malneck's arrangement, "Muddy Water" opens with a trombone and a bold unison ensemble chorus, promising a jazz performance; yet only the vocal, backed by viola and rhythm, makes good on that promise. Christmas Poems by Frances and William Havergal, The Christmastide Poems of Christina Bing's famous response: "Yeah, and he has to come along in my lifetime." Crosby had hoped to hold a charity concert in the Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral in the near future, Harrington said. Bing Crosby, who began life as a penny-grubbing grammar school truant and sang and acted his way to riches and into the hearts of millions all over the world, died of a heart attack Friday at a golf course just outside Madrid. His most famous movie role, that of Father O’Malley in “Going My Way,” won him the Academy Award in 1944. His main public image, however, remained that of a singer, and his radio and recording career was at least as successful and remunerative as his film appearances. The cycle of "Road" pictures with Bob Hope established Crosby as a great comic actor. google_ad_client = "pub-4809866421027743"; Crosby had begun his career just as the condenser microphone was perfected, replacing the silly looking megaphones he had used in his school band. But his favorite movie, he once said, was “High Society,” which he made in 1956 with Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong. “We thought he had just slipped. In London Friday night, for example, Illtyd Harrington, a leading member of the Greater London Council, disclosed that Crosby gave all the money he earned in Britain last year to youth charities there. She immediately returned to her home in Hillsborough by automobile. Bing made no attempt to break his fall and landed head-first on the red-brick pavement, producing a large bruise on the left side of his forehead. There is no way of estimating just how many millions of dollars Crosby earned during his long career, but he was without doubt one of show business’ wealthiest figures. He developed nodes on his vocal cords and had to lay off for two weeks to cure his hoarseness. A whole generation had grown up knowing the name “Bing Crosby” — but having no strong idea of just who or what it meant. But, poking through the ashes, Crosby retrieved a charred sports shoe from the remains of his dressing room — and grinned as he fished out, unharmed, the $2,000 in cash race winnings he had hidden in the toe. `HAVIN' FUN' (Jazz Unlimited JUCD 2034). Armstrong transformed everyone who heard him; musicians who came under his spell felt freer, more optimistic and ambitious, willing to take risks. His self-deprecation was also proverbial; he professed to hate the hairpieces with which studios disguised his growing baldness, and after his earliest roles refused to let the makeup department paste his somewhat protrusive ears. He and a Spanish champion had defeated two other Spanish champions by one stroke. His four sons by that marriage, Gary Evan, twins Philip Lang and Dennis Michael, and Lindsay Harry were grown and for nearly five years Crosby lived the drifting life of a famous and wealthy bachelor. Soon the afterlife of his career imploded. He died in 1977. Pinero, Crosby’s partner, said he and the singer were laughing and joking, “happy that we had won,” when “all of a sudden Bing dropped and remained on the ground. The two never missed a chance to trade insults. In these 20-minute releases, Crosby was first heard by a wide audience singing “I Surrender, Dear,” “Just One More Chance,” and “The Blue of the Night,” which became his perennial theme song. Whether we spend it by a At the peak of his career, in the 1930's and 1940's, he was thought by many to be the most famous American alive. //-->, ChristmasFinest.com On her deathbed Dennis sat nearby watching for some sign of recognition. “He told me that Bing had a very good round.” said Mrs. Crosby, smiling with tears in her eyes. Mrs. Crosby said the body would probably arrive in Los Angeles Monday and that Crosby would be buried in the family plot with his mother, father and first wife. It was their easygoing Protestant father, however, who brought home the appliance that changed Bing's life: an Edison phonograph, purchased to commemorate the family's move to Spokane, in 1906. google_ad_channel =""; It was Crosby who best captured the tenor of the times in recordings like "It's Been a Long, Long Time," a definitive home-from-war anthem, which never mentions the war. She succeeded in curbing Bing's alcohol consumption, but her own alcoholism worsened. But Crosby endured his share of bad fortune, too. His television appearances had been infrequent, but he controlled a production company, formed under his own name, which continues to rank among the most successful in the field. 1 at the box office; his radio programs (1931 to 1962) attracted at their wartime peak as many as 50 million listeners; he recorded nearly 400 hit singles, an achievement no one — not Sinatra, Elvis or the Beatles — has come close to matching. Notable, too, in the public mind was the series of “Road” pictures (“Road to Singapore,” “Road to Zanzibar,” “Road to Morocco,” “Road to Bali,” and others) he did with his friend, Bob Hope. At age three, the family moved to Spokane. Crosby wasn't just a golfer; he also enjoyed a little bit of action at … Crosby was always generous with his money, though, giving freely to charities and to individuals who needed help. A year after Armstrong recorded "Heebie Jeebies," the explosive scat-driven number that put his vocal style on the map, and three months after Crosby had begun touring with Whiteman, he was allotted a chorus on "Muddy Water." Irving Berlin once said he wrote music for the "mob" and that as far as he was concerned, the mob was always right. Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas turned out to be the last special Crosby would ever do. A French import and the best single-disc introduction to Crosby in print. Charles Boyer signed on as a portrait sketch artist in 1960 and was made a Disney Legend in 2005, with a window on Main Street in his name. google_ad_width = 468; Highlights from Crosby's radio broadcasts with Louis Armstrong. She said fans in England could send memorial contributions there and that American fans could contribute to the Bing Crosby Fund at Pebble Beach, which aids hospitals and provides student loans. “I’d like that to be said.”, She said her husband apparently suffered a massive heart attack and “was in only a moment’s distress, if any.”. He was 53; she was 23. Could a man who spoke so deeply to so many for so long have nothing to say to us now? "It didn't, but it should've." Also bittersweet about the song’s legacy is that Crosby died only a month later of a heart attack. She did not say a word as she walked past reporters into the house.