Bing Crosby (1903-77) always enjoyed singing with his fellow vocalists. The most popular singer in the world during the 1930s and ’40s and a household name for the past 95, Bing Crosby recorded a very wide variety of material throughout his life. While he began as a jazz singer as part of the Rhythm Boys with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra and he always had a love for swinging New Orleans jazz and Louis Armstrong, his remarkable fame was due to his warm rendering of ballads, his genial personality (which helped make him a movie star), and his ability to adapt comfortably to practically any musical situation.
The two-CD set Gone Fishin’ (which is billed as being by “Bing Crosby & Buddies”) from the Retrospective series features Crosby on 53 selections from 1930-60. Other than the opening selection, “Goin’ Fishin’” with Louis Armstrong in 1951, the performances are programmed in chronological order. Crosby is teamed with the Rhythm Boys (“Happy Feet”), the Mills Brothers, Frances Langford & Louis Armstrong (“Pennies From Heaven”), his first wife Dixie Lee Crosby (“The Way You Look Tonight”), Lani Mcintyre & his Hawaiians, Connee Boswell, Johnny Mercer, Frances Langford again, the foursome, Mary Martin & Jack Teagarden (“The Waiter And The Porter and the Upstairs Maid” and “Wait Till The Sun Shines, Nellie,”), Fred Astaire, Trudy Erwin, the Andrews Sisters, the Williams Brothers Quartet (“Swinging On A Star”), Louis Jordan, Judy Garland, Bob Hope, Les Paul (“It’s Been A Long, Long Time”), Carmen Cavallaro, Lee Wiley, Fred Waring, Cedric Hardwicke & William Bendix, his son Gary Crosby, Patty Andrews, Jane Wyman (“In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening”), Peggy Lee, Donald O’Connor, Frank Sinatra (“Well, Did You Evah”), Gene Kelly, Rosemary Clooney and, on four additional selections, Louis Armstrong.
The music varies in styles from jazz to pop, sometimes dated middle-of-the-road ballads and even Hawaiian music with Crosby somehow sounding very much at home in each setting. From the jazz standpoint, the three numbers with the Mills Brothers (dating from 1931-33) are classics with Bing scatting up a storm on “Dinah,” the Mills Brothers sounding very much like a hot jazz ensemble with their voices, and “My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms” having three soon-to-be famous bandleaders (Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Bunny Berigan) jamming together during a period when they were virtually unknown to the general public.
There are more jazz-oriented collections than this one, but Gone Fishin’ gives one a good idea as to Bing Crosby’s very adaptable singing.
Gone Fishin’
Retrospective RTS 4184
www.retrospective-records.co.uk
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Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings. Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
