Bing Crosby (112 page)
Authors: Gary Giddins
8. Vaudeville
1
. Billing reproduced in numerous ads in the trades and on stage bills, 1926.
2
. Nevertheless, the word
phonograph
obtained prominence in the United States, while
gramophone
became standard in the United Kingdom.
3
. Gelatt,
The Fabulous Phonograph,
p. 146
.
4
. In a 1980s radio interview with Bill Osborne in Seattle, Bob Crosby recalled the Meyers campaign. “It was done tongue in
cheek. They were going to have a lot of fun. They dressed Vic up and put a white sheet on him like Mahatma Gandhi had and
gave him a goat to lead around town. They had a lot of fun. Their only campaign issue was that Vic was going to put hostesses
on all the streetcars and serve coffee and tea at the end of the line, and cookies. That was his campaign promise. What happened
was, it just astounded everybody, including brother Larry, that Vic Meyers got elected lieutenant governor. He studied parliamentary
law, and they tell me, at least my uncle did, Judge Harrigan, who’s in the House over in Olympia, he said he became one of
the finest Speakers of the House, knew parlimentary law. So Vic stayed lieutenant governor for over twenty years, I believe.”
5
. At least that’s what Bing recalled; Al thought they sang with Meyers himself. In most instances where disputed accounts
between Crosby and Rinker can be verified, the former’s recollections, written thirty years closer to the events, have proved
to be the more reliable. In instances that could not be verified, Bing’s account isoften more colorful than Al’s. It should
be noted that when the Crosby memoir was a 1953 bestseller, Whiteman, Rinker, Barris, Malneck, and other principals were alive,
and none found reason to correct the record as he created it — not even in private interviews from that era.
6
. Rinker.
7
. Ibid.
9
. Rinker.
10
. Ibid.
11
. Ibid.
12
. Jones was seen briefly twelve years later as a member of a trio singing
“The Ragtime Violin,” in the 1938 20th Century-Fox musical
Alexander’s Ragtime Band.
Bing gave her a prominent spot in
East Side of Heaven
that same year. See
Chapter 24
.
13
. AI, RedNorvo.
14
. “Mildred Bailey Plans to Sing…,” op. cit.
15
. Crosby liner notes,
Mildred Bailey: Her Greatest Performances 1929-1946,
Columbia Records, 1962.
16
. Rinker.
17
. Ibid.
18
. AI, Milt Bernhart, Red Norvo.
19
. Rinker.
20
. Crosby liner notes, op. cit.
21
. Mildred later auditioned for talent scout and record producer John Hammond with Smith blues.
22
. Rinker.
23
. AI, Barry Ulanov.
24
. Pete Martin may have jumbled some facts in the Lyman passage in
Lucky,
or Bing, who liked to mention the names of people he admired or thought were neglected, may simply have added him to the
historical record. Lyman is not mentioned in Ulanov or other early accounts. Yet the older Bing got, the more insistent he
became about the Lyman gig, sometimes extending it to a few weeks. He would also extend his yearlong pre-Whiteman vaudeville
experience to eighteen months or two years.
25
. Owens,
Sweet Leilani,
p. 21
.
26
. Ibid.,
p. 22
. Owens misremembered the songs they auditioned and named “Mississippi Mud,” which lay two years in the future.
28
. Rinker.
29
. Collins interview, op. cit.
30
.
Variety,
Oct. 20, 1926.
31
. Cited in Slide,
The Vaudevillians,
p. 159
.
32
.
Spokane Daily Chronicle,
Jan. 1, 1926.
33
. Doreen Taylor, who danced as Doreen Wilde, was interviewed at length in 1981-82, shortly before her death, by her granddaughter,
Alison McMahan, who later transcribed and collated the tapes.
34
. Ibid.
35
. Ibid.
36
. Bing Crosby,
Live at the London Palladium
(K-Tel, United Artists), 1976.
37
. Wilde interview, op. cit.
39
. This four-page handwritten letter, written to Dirk Crabbe on January 24, 1926, was sent by the recipient’s widow, Lillian
Crabbe Hanson, to the Minneapolis radio personality Arne Fogel and first published in
Bingang
in July 1988. Some of the addenda appeared as “Don Eagle Provides Further Insight into Early Bing Letter,”
Bingang,
July 1990.
40
. Wilde interview, op. cit.
41
. Ibid.
42
. Norman,
The Film Greats,
p. 197
.
44
. That same week
Variety
ran an ad taken out by a young vaudevillian named Harry Barris, who toured the Midwest with his Blu Blowing Baby Grand; in
little more than a year, he would change all their lives. Also that week, on May 4, Bing’s brother Larry, an editor at the
Wallace-Press Times
in Wallace, Idaho, married Elaine Couper of Spokane.
46
. Rinker.
47
. Ibid.
48
. AI, Phil Harris.
49
. The humor of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, largely forgotten today, was brought to a fevered pitch in the 1938 stage hit
Hellzapoppin’,
which ran three years and has been called “the greatest vaudeville revue of all time.” Slide,
The Vaudevillians,
p. 111
.
50
. Harris later said, “The first ballad I really remember him singing was ‘I Kiss Your Hand, Madame,’at the Montmartre, in
1929.” AI.
51
. Cited as “a San Diego newspaper” in Shephard and Slatzer,
Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man,
p. 58
.
53
. One grace note during their run was the marriage of Bing’s sister Catherine to Edward Mullin at San Francisco’s St. Ignatius
Catholic Church, in a ceremony read by Gonzaga’s dean of faculty, Father Carroll.
54
. Rinker.
55
. Ibid.
57
.
Variety,
Oct. 6, 1926; the review (signed Land.) appeared under “New Acts.” The version used here is the one that ran in
Variety’s
second edition; the first had a few different words and altered punctuaton.
58
. AI, RedNorvo.
61
. Rinker.
9. Whiteman
1
.
Variety,
Feb. 16, 1927, signed by Gus Kahn, Jean Goldkette, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Joe Rea, Eddie Edwards, Paul Ash, Phil Napoleon, Art
Kahn, and five others. Cited in DeLong,
Paps,
p. 58
.
2
. Hugh C. Ernst, original program notes. He characterized the piece as follows: “The shrieking clarinet, thumping piano and
the clattering traps describe vividly a husky hostler dragging his wife by the hair around their squalid hut behind the stable.
The ‘G-r-r-r!’ of the cornet and the moan of the trombone are Fido and Towser barking, yapping and howling outside the door,
eager to get into the fray.”
7
. Ibid.
8
. Rinker.
9
.
Ibid.
10
. Ibid.
12
. Rinker.
13
. For Columbia’s U.K. release, even Clark’s name vanished, though not entirely. His band was billed as the Charleston Serenaders
and Betty Patrick became Tillie Clarke.
14
.
Variety,
Oct. 20, 1926.
15
.
Spokane Chronicle,
Nov. 17, 1926.
16
. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ed Mello, Feb. 2, 1951.
17
.
Spokane Chronicle,
Nov. 17, 1926.
18
. Interviews with M. L. Higgins and Madeleine Carroll, Copeland memo, op. cit.
19
.
Spokane Chronicle,
Nov. 24, 1926.
20
. Rinker.
21
.
Spokane Chronicle,
Nov. 17, 1926.
22
.
Spokane Chronicle,
Nov. 25, 1926.
23
.
Spokesman-Review,
Nov. 1926, cited in Dyar,
News for an Empire.
24
. “Crosby, Rinker Win Home Town and Boys Go Big at Liberty,”
Spokane Chronicle,
Nov. 1926, undated clip. BCCGU.
25
. Ibid. The reporter went on to write that the “remarkable reception they received last night before a ‘hardboiled’ home
town audience left little doubt that they would succeed in the east.”
27
. Rinker.
28
. Ibid.
29
. Ibid.
31
. Jack Fulton was still angry about the incident sixty-five years later, conceding Crosby’s talent yet protesting that Bing’s
way had to be the only way. AI, Fulton.
32
.
Lucky,
p. 92
. He goes on to say, “As there had been nothing like it, it was very popular.”
33
. Mezzrow and Wolfe,
Really the Blues,
p. 120
.
34
. Ken Murray, “Louis, Bix Had Most Influence on Der Bingle,”
Down Beat,
July 14, 1950. He also said, “You know, Ken, I got a lot out of Bix Beiderbecke when we were both beating around the country
with the Whiteman band. And just as Bix himself found inspiration in Louis Armstrong out on the South Side in the late ‘20s,
so did I.”
35
. Whiteman’s marquee billing.
36
.
Variety,
Feb. 16, 1927.
37
. Ibid.
39
. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
41
. McDonough interview, op. cit.
42
. Rinker.
43
. Ibid.
47
. The top five vocal records of 1927. Whitburn,
Pop Memories.
48
. Slide,
The Vaudevillians,
p. 51
.
10. Rhythm Boys
1
. Interview memo for
Time,
on Francis Cork O’Keefe, M. Gleason, August 1946. TIA.
2
. AI, Marti Barris and Joe Porter.
3
.
Variety,
May 5, 1926.
4
. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
5
. Rinker.
6
. Ibid.
7
.
Variety,
June 8, 1927.
8
.
Variety,
June 22, 1927.
10
. AI, Donald Mills.
11
.
Spokane Daily Chronicle,
Aug. 23, 1927.
12
. AI, BillChallis.
13
. Ibid.
14
. Ibid.
15
. Carmichael,
The Stardust Road,
p. 121
.
16
. AI, BillChallis.
17
. Mezzrow and Wolfe,
Really the Blues,
p. 148
.
18
. AI, BillChallis.
19
. Ibid.
20
. Fred Romary liner notes, Bing Crosby,
Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams
(RCA Vintage), 1972.
21
. Alistair Cooke,
Letter from America,
BBC, October 1977, reprinted in
Bing,
Summer 1999.
22
. Promotional interview disc for Decca Records, 1955.
23
.
Confessions,
bk. 4,
chap. 6
. The song lyric is “I’m tired of living and scared of dying.”
24
. Kart,
Chicago Tribune
Oct. 15, 1977.
25
. Crosby interview; Evans and Kiner,
Tram,
p. 92
.
26
. AI, BillChallis.
27
. Sudhalter and Evans,
Bix: Man and Legend,
p. 240
.
29
. Rinker.
30
. AI, Dolores Hope.
31
.
Time
memo on O’Keefe, op. cit.
32
. Ibid.
33
. Western Union telegram from Bing Crosby to Ginger Meehan, New York, January 4, 1928, 12:49
A.M.
Georgia State University, Special Collections.
34
. Ibid., Chicago, July 4, 1928, 5:07
P.M.
35
. Ibid., Chicago, July 10, 1928, 8:07
P.M.