[Dixielandjazz] New Bing Crosby Book Reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Nothin’ but Blue Skies

The soothing croon and laid-back charm of Bing Crosby were key to America’s 
sanity during World War II.

by Ted Gioia
Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2018

During the final days of World War II, a military commander wrote an urgent 
letter to singer Bing Crosby, insisting he had “something big” to say, 
“something too big not to have you know and understand.”

Crosby was more than familiar with effusive fans. At that moment, he was 
both the top box-office draw in movies and the most popular singer in 
America.. His latest picture, “Going My Way,” would sweep the Oscars and win 
one for Bing himself, while his rendition of “White Christmas” was already 
the best-selling record of all time (a distinction it still holds). Even so, 
the sober words from this officer weren’t the typical stuff of fan letters.

Crosby’s music, he insisted, possessed the “power to soften the hearts of 
the man who so shortly after goes back to shoot down his brother man” and 
somehow manages to keep “our boys from turning into the beasts they are 
asked to be.” The singer’s voice “strikes to the bottom of the hearts of 
men. I have watched it happen, often, not just in the rare case but in many 
many thousands of men -- sitting silent, retrospective, thoughts flying back 
to home and loved ones.” Somehow, in these barbarous times, Crosby had 
tapped into the “power of music, put into humble, throbbing words, as these 
fellows want it, need it, bow to it.”

Gary Giddins, Crosby’s indefatigable biographer, calls this aspect of his 
singing “a zone of emotional safety.” You could even claim that Bing Crosby 
invented emotional restraint in popular music. As leader of the first 
generation of singers to take advantage of the improved microphones of the 
late 1920s and early 1930s, Crosby grasped better than anyone the potential 
of conversational delivery. He was cool before cool was hip.

You could hardly find a more striking contrast to the Hitlerian rhetoric of 
the opposition. I’m not surprised Crosby got enlisted not to fight but to 
serve as, in Mr. Giddins’s words, “an essential voice of the home front.” 
Yet Crosby, who was never as complacent as his public image, also insisted 
on taking his act into combat. He undertook brutal tours that brought him 
into danger, often performing during bombing raids and sometimes as close as 
a thousand yards from the German lines. As a result, Crosby added another 
honor to his list after the war: In a national poll to pick the most admired 
man alive, Bing Crosby finished at the top -- beating out the pope (Pius 
XII), the president (Truman) and two legendary generals (Eisenhower and 
MacArthur). Pretty swell stuff for a crooner from Spokane.

Yet fate is cruel to pop-culture icons once their original audience has 
died. When Gary Giddins started work on his Crosby biography in 1991, his 
subject was well-known, a household name even. But I suspect that a survey 
of music fans today would find that few can identify the entertainer so 
admired by their parents and grandparents (and, in many instances, their 
great-grandparents).

For Crosby’s renown to endure, he needs to make the transition from faded 
star to timeless artist. Someone has to make the case for Crosby’s 
historical importance -- and fortunately for Bing, Gary Giddins has taken up 
the gauntlet with surprising vehemence.

Mr. Giddins is one of the leading music critics of the last half-century, 
and for many years set the tone for jazz coverage through his influential 
articles in the Village Voice. His opinions carried such weight that they 
were often mimicked by other writers within days of publication. He hasn’t 
written many articles in recent years, though -- probably because of Bing 
Crosby.

Mr. Giddins published “Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams” in 2001, but this 
long-awaited book only covered the first half of the artist’s life, from 
1903 to 1940. Readers have had to wait 17 years for a second volume --  
which, as it turns out, focuses just on the period from 1940 to 1946. You 
can do the math: Mr. Giddins has spent around two-and-a-half biographer 
years for each Bing year. Crosby lived until 1977, so either Mr. Giddins has 
to pick up the pace or this project will take until the end of the century 
to complete.

Yet Mr. Giddins makes a strong case that Crosby’s World War II years deserve 
their own book. Crosby dominated almost every facet of mainstream 
entertainment during this tumultuous period. His radio program, Kraft Music 
Hall, entertained Americans at home. His records were in constant rotation 
on jukeboxes. And when people went to the movies, they invariably preferred 
his comedies for laughs (especially Crosby’s “Road” films with Bob Hope), 
his musicals for romance and glamour (“Blue Skies” and “Holiday Inn”), and 
his play-acting as an Irish-American priest (in “Going My Way” and “The 
Bells of St. Mary’s”) for homespun inspiration.

It almost seems like a miracle, suitable for one of these religious films, 
that Crosby managed this workload while also touring constantly to raise 
money for the war effort and entertaining soldiers at home and abroad. This 
is where Mr. Giddins’s thorough research pays dividends. By digging into 
day-by-day and week-by-week itineraries, our biographer demands our 
admiration for Crosby’s unflagging efforts, often with little concern for 
personal rewards or favorable publicity. I always assumed that Bing Crosby, 
in private life, was as laid-back as his onstage image. I never knew this 
workaholic side of his character.

Yet a Crosby biography has also to deal with less-appealing character 
issues. The entertainer’s son Gary accused his father of coldness and 
abusive treatment, and two of Crosby’s other children, Dennis and Lindsay, 
committed suicide -- both with a shotgun. This has left many with an uneasy 
sense that the Crosby persona of easygoing affability was a façade for a 
darker private life.

Mr. Giddins is surprisingly non-judgmental about this subject -- especially 
when compared to his strong opinions on Crosby’s recordings. He chastises 
the performer when he “misses each and every high note” on a track or comes 
across as “stale and overemphatic” in delivering a lyric. But Crosby’s 
approach to child-rearing is never directly criticized, and often presented 
as symptomatic of its time and place. “In the lexicon of postwar psychology, 
[Crosby] might have been called a behaviorist,” Mr. Giddins explains at one 
point. Whenever possible, Mr. Giddins counterbalances the accusations of 
Gary with other views -- for example, the testimony of his brother Phillip, 
who declared: “I just don’t see there was any way you could have asked for a 
better father.”

But no one can accuse Mr. Giddins of shortchanging us on the facts. Every 
aspect of Crosby’s life is laid bare for close inspection in this 
penetrating biography, from his tough negotiations with employers to his 
most casual dealings with servants and staff. I especially enjoyed 
previously unpublished extracts from a fan’s diary that recount minute 
details of Crosby’s life from the perspective of two sisters who followed 
him wherever he went. Today they would be called stalkers, but the accounts 
they left behind offer many insights into how the leading entertainer of 
midcentury America acted when he thought he was unobserved -- almost always 
with charm, courtesy and an appealing nonchalance.

It’s hard to reconcile the different facets of this oddly private man who 
thrived in the limelight while maintaining such reserve. Yet the biggest 
obstacle to Mr. Giddins’s project may be less Crosby’s complexity than the 
sheer fickleness of public renown. Thirty years ago, a book of this sort 
would have found a huge audience. But nowadays any fans who heard Bing 
Crosby sing at the peak of his career would be in their 80s, if not older. 
He could easily be forgotten in a few years’ time.

That’s a shame. Crosby was not just a celebrity, but one of the most 
influential performers of modern times. No artist did more to celebrate the 
sublimity that can come from understatement or the grace derived from 
keeping cool under pressure. We could benefit from an unflappable champion 
of serenity guiding our current-day pop culture. I certainly welcomed this 
reminder that we had one in our midst not long ago.
__________

Mr. Gioia is the author of 10 books, most recently “How to Listen to Jazz.”
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