Bing Crosby - Official Home

Bing's Biography

To most Americans, he was the eternal Crooner: a much celebrated and beloved performer of unparalleled popularity. Yet Bing Crosby was far more than that: He was an architect of 20th century entertainment, a force in the development of three industries that didn't exist when he came into the world: recordings, motion pictures, and broadcasting. As the most successful recording artist of all time; an abiding star of movies, radio, and television; and a firm believer in the wonders of technology, he helped to transform and define the cultural life not only of the United States, but of the world.

When Harry Lillis Crosby was born, on May 3, 1903, to a working-class Catholic Irish-Anglo family with deep roots in the American Northwest, there was little reason to think he would amount to much. Though an obviously intelligent and conscientious student, his primary interests were sports (he won many swimming medals), school plays, and music--he played drums (not very well), sang, and whistled. At Gonzaga University, he decided to study law because he could think of nothing better at the time and it pleased his parents. He left law school two months before graduating.

Music lured him away. It had always been part of the Crosby household. His father, who played mandolin, led the family in song and bought one of the first phonographs in Spokane, Washington. Harry was the fourth of seven siblings. Nicknamed Bing for his love of a newspaper parody, "The Bingville Bugle," he listened to everything; he attended the vaudeville shows that came through town, regaling his friends afterward with detailed accountings of each act. He landed a backstage job when the legendary Al Jolson performed in Spokane, and studied his every gesture from the wings.

A younger boy named Al Rinker sealed Bing's fate, asking him to play drums in his five-piece dance band. When the other fellows in the group, the Musicaladers, heard him sing, they didn't much care how he played the drums. Even at that age, Bing had a mellifluous, solid baritone with good range, a steady sense of time, and a casual charm. With his uncanny memory, Bing could learn songs after hearing them once, though he never learned to read music.

After the band broke up, Bing worked locally with Rinker, who accompanied him on piano. In 1925, Al suggested that they pool their funds and drive a broken-down flivver to Los Angeles, where his sister--the not-yet-celebrated jazz singer Mildred Bailey--might get them a job. She got them an audition, which was all they needed. Bing and Al toured in one vaudeville show after another, up and down the West Coast, until a couple of musicians from Paul Whiteman's band chanced to hear them. Within a year after leaving Spokane, Crosby and Rinker were under contract to the most famous orchestra in the country. They were on their way to New York.

Despite a few setbacks and a too-eager embrace of big city temptations, Bing refined his style. He was inspired by his idol and lifelong friend, Louis Armstrong. Whiteman teamed Bing and Al with a pianist and songwriter, Harry Barris, calling them the Rhythm Boys: They became the first successful jazz vocal group. Yet it was Crosby's way with a song that most impressed Whiteman's arrangers and musicians, who lobbied for more Bing solos.

The word was out: Bing brought something new to American song: rhythmic excitement, virile authority, emotional candor. The best jazz musicians of the day accepted him as one of them. He recorded with Bix Beiderbecke and Duke Ellington. Soon, every major American songwriter, among them Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer, Jimmy Van Heusen, and Johnny Burke, were writing songs for him.

Within a few years, the Rhythm Boys left Whiteman. Then Bing left the Rhythm Boys. Working in nightclubs and headlining in theaters, Bing was the first vocalist to use the microphone as an instrument, enabling him to communicate subtle emotions and musical nuance. When he appeared at the Coconut Grove, the movie community flocked to hear him. Producer Mack Sennett hired him to make a series of comedy shorts. William Paley, of the fledgling CBS network, gave him a daily radio show. Paramount Pictures brought him to Hollywood to star in The Big Broadcast; the studio quickly signed him to a three-picture deal that grew into a 20-year association.

Meanwhile, record executive Jack Kapp, using Bing's loyalty to him as a come-on, found backing to start his own company, Decca, which saved the then moribund industry by lowering the price of records. Kapp convinced Bing that he was more than a jazz or ballad singer, encouraging him to sing every kind of song and positioning him as the voice of America--home grown, unaffected, unassuming, and irresistible.

Bing's popularity really took off a year later, when NBC asked him to take over its faltering program, Kraft Music Hall. Bing turned it into the archetypal broadcast variety show, a template still in use today. The public and critics loved him. At a time when radio was dominated by schooled, oratorical voices, Bing sounded like the guy next door. People trusted him: Instead of pandering to the presumed tastes of the masses, Bing combined pop, jazz, opera, and classical music. He was as much admired for his unique brand of slang, offbeat sense of humor, and unruffled disposition as for his singing. In the dark days of the Depression, Bing incarnated a beacon of optimism.

He became still more of a national force during World War II, touring at home and abroad, making a record number of V-Discs, selling a record number of war bonds, personally answering thousands of letters from servicemen and their families. Bing's radio show regularly attracted an audience of 50 million--an unheard of number. He initiated the Road movies, with Bob Hope, one of the most durable, profitable, and imitated comedy series in film history. In 1944, Bing won an Academy Award for his performance as Father O'Malley in Leo McCarey's Going My Way. At the end of the war, an army poll declared him the individual who had done the most to boost wartime morale.

The postwar years represented the peak of Bing's success. Between 1946 and 1948, he revolutionized the entertainment industry. Having recorded shows on transcription discs for soldiers, he now insisted on prerecording his radio show. In those days, all radio programs were recorded live and NBC took him to court. Bing won and moved to ABC, an also-ran network that, thanks to Bing, now became a major competitor. After he produced the first prerecorded radio series, other entertainers quickly followed suit. Billboard called Bing's gamble the most important show business story since the invention of talking pictures.

But Bing realized that transcribed sound (recorded on large lacquered discs) was not as good as live recording. When he heard about a former army engineer, John Mullin, who was experimenting with tape-based recording, Bing offered to sponsor him. Using the early tape machines, he converted his studio to tape, allowing him to record and edit his program. As he and his engineer experimented with the new medium, they introduced such broadcasting devices as canned laughter and applause. The entire business followed his lead in turning to tape, which remained the industry standard until the advent of digitalization nearly 35 years later.

Bing continued to make hit records and movies into the 1960s, at which time he began to slow down, reserving most of his work for television, including a series of variety specials, frequent appearances as host of The Hollywood Palace, television movies, and an annual Christmas show that became a national tradition. He spent more time on the golf course and the track, two sports he helped pioneer by creating the first celebrity pro-am golf tournament and taking the lead in building the Del Mar racetrack.

Bing's first wife, Dixie Lee, the mother of his first four sons, died in 1952. During the next few years, he was regularly gossiped about in newspaper columns as he romanced several of Hollywood's most beautiful women. In 1957, he married Kathryn Grant, a young actress and singer he had met on the Paramount lot. Together they had two sons and a daughter. The Crosby family became the focus of his Christmas program, and of his historic return to the stage, in 1976, touring Los Angeles, New York, London, Oslo, and elsewhere. When he died on a golf course in Madrid, on October 14, 1977, he was mourned the world over. On that day, Major League Baseball honored him by pausing for a moment of silence at the start of the World Series game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees. No other entertainer has ever won the hearts of so many and held them for so long.

Bing's Stats

• He was the first vocalist ever signed to an orchestra.
• He made more studio recordings than any other singer in history (about 400 more than Sinatra).
• He made the most popular recording ever, "White Christmas," the only single to make the American pop charts 20 times, every year but one between 1942 and 1962. In 1998, after a long absence, it returned to the charts in Great Britain.
• Between 1927 and 1962, he scored 368 charted records under his own name, plus 28 as vocalist with various bandleaders, for a total of 396. No one else comes close; compare. Paul Whiteman (220), Sinatra (209), Elvis (149), Glenn Miller (129), Nat King Cole (118), Louis Armstrong (85), the Beatles (68).
• He scored the most number one hits in the 20th century: 38, compared to 24 by the Beatles and 18 by Presley.
• He received 23 gold and two platinum records, including the first double-sided gold record ("Play a Simple Melody" / "Sam's Song").
• In 1960, he received a platinum record as First Citizen of the Record Industry, having sold 200 million discs, a number that doubled by 1980.
• Between 1915 and 1980, he was the only motion picture actor to rank as the number one box-office attraction five times (1944-48). Between 1934 and 1954 he scored in the top ten 15 times. With an estimated one billion, seventy-seven million tickets sold, he is ranked as the third most popular film actor, behind Clark Gable and John Wayne.
• Of the 55 feature films in which he starred, between 1932 (The Big Broadcast) and 1971 (Dr. Cook's Garden), 29 placed among the top-10 grossing pictures of the year.
• During the Second World War, he raised an unequaled $14,500,000 in war bonds.
• In 1946, three of the five top-grossing pictures of the year (The Bells of St. Mary's, Blue Skies, Road to Utopia) were Crosby vehicles.
• Going My Way was the highest grossing film in the history of Paramount Pictures until 1947. The Bells of St. Mary's was the highest grossing film in the history of RKO Pictures until 1947.
• He was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor three times and won for Going My Way. He introduced more Academy Award nominated songs (14) and more winners (4) than any other film star.
• He was a major radio star longer than any other performer, from 1931 until 1954 on network, from 1954 until 1962 in syndication. He appeared on approximately 4000 radio broadcasts, nearly 3400 of them his own programs.
• He created the first and longest running celebrity pro-am golf championship, playing host for 35 years, raising millions in charity; and was the central figure in the development of the Del Mar racetrack in southern California.
• He helped ensure the survival of four of the most influential companies in the development of American entertainment: CBS, Paramount Pictures, Decca Records, and ABC.