Bing Crosby (32 page)

He was neither when he finished the November 1928 week in Chicago. During that visit Bing’s romance with Peggy Bernier blossomed,
though they were not especially committed to each other. A series of beaux awaited Peggy at the stage door. To Bing, the
Good News
cast was a chicken coop and he was the fox. He dated one of Peggy’s two roommates and tried to get the other on the phone.
But Dixie Carroll, who turned seventeen the day before the Rhythm Boys opened at the State-Lake Theater, had heard plenty
about Bing’s reputation and refused his call. (A year later in Hollywood, she would take the name Dixie Lee and meet Bing
face-to-face for the first time.) Still, Bing could not bear to part with Peggy, a playmate who could hold her liquor better
than he, and when Harry and Al took
the train for the next gig, in Rockford, Illinois, he promised to leave the next day and get there on time. After a serious
night of saloon-hopping, Peggy poured him onto a train. Bing passed out and slept the distance, but it did him no good; he
was in such bad shape when the train pulled in, the police hauled him to jail and kept him overnight, refusing to let him
use the phone.

Harry and Al panicked. They went onstage as a duo for two shows, kibitzing their way through comedy numbers and haphazardly
filling in Bing’s part. “We were sure something awful happened to Bing,” Al said, “maybe an accident.”
⁵²
After the second show they called the hotel, and Bing answered, groggy and chagrined as he admitted why he had not been able
to call them. They took revenge by asking an Irish actor to impersonate the theater manager. The actor marched up to Bing’s
room and accused him of betraying his partners and breaching his contract. Bing abjectly apologized, asking the manager not
to punish the other two for his transgressions, until Al and Harry could take no more and stopped the charade. He accepted
the prank, smiling in relief.

While his Rhythm Boys cavorted through the Midwest, Whiteman enjoyed a series of triumphs in the East, including a Carnegie
Hall celebration of his tenth year in New York. On the same September day that Whiteman recorded a garish medley of Christmas
carols, among them “Silent Night” (a song that would one day become a Crosby annuity), an apoplectic theater manager in Toledo
brought down the curtain on the Rhythm Boys in retaliation for what he considered a vulgar joke: “Say, Harry, do you know
how to cure a horse from frothing at the mouth?” “Why no, Bing, how do you cure a horse from frothing at the mouth?” “Well,
Harry, you teaches him to spit.”
⁵³
The boys were happier when they were in New York, and the band made better records when they were around.

One of them is Challis’s arrangement of Willard Robison’s faux-rural hymn, “’Taint So, Honey, Taint So,” the first record
ever to begin with the singer entering before the band, which comes in a millisecond later. It was a startling thing to do,
and a rumor grew that Bing was unable to pitch the correct note until the tenth take, when Challis had to prompt him with
a pitch pipe. Challis denied the whole story: “I wanted to start off with a vocal, just a prank sort of, so
I gave him the note he starts on. I think Paul beat off, or I did, well, anyway, he came right in and sang it. No problems
or anything. And no problems with changes of key. He had a wonderful ear.”
⁵⁴
“’Taint So” is also notable for a balky bassoon solo by Trumbauer and dark Venuti-influenced strings behind Bing’s vocal.

Another standout, Walter Donaldson’s “Because My Baby Don’t Mean ‘Maybe’ Now,” opens with a chorus in which Bix Beiderbecke
improvises figures that are closely shadowed by the band’s written phrases (a passage that shows why Ellington admired Challis).
But the record is best known for Bing’s jaunty vocal; he completes several phrases with spirited
bu-bu-bu-boos.
Young fans began to note Bing’s spoken interjections, like “why say there” on “Wa Da Da” or “tell it” on “My Suppressed Desire”
— which
The New Yorker
helpfully classified as not a “profound study in psychoanalysis, but [a] record full of surprises.”
⁵⁵
In truth, the record’s only revelation is Bing’s blithe eight-bar scat episode.

The Rhythm Boys were back in New York to play Christmas week at the Palace
(Variety
praised Bing’s ballad and the threesome’s “modulation of the vo-do-de-o stuff”)
⁵⁶
and Newark’s Proctor on New Year’s Eve. The day before closing at the Palace, Bing made two records with the Ipana Troubadours,
a radio orchestra led by Sam Lanin that included several of Bing’s jazz buddies (the Dorseys, Vic Berton, Manny Klein), though
you would not know it from the staid arrangements. Bing’s hiring indicated his growing stature among top musicians. He got
to sing a very good song, “I’ll Get By,” with a somewhat husky voice and tinge of Jolson, and a very bad one, “Rose of Mandalay,”
which he nonetheless enhanced with his intrepid zip.

On February 5 Whiteman inaugurated
The Old Gold Hour,
a successful series on WABC (the New York flagship of the Columbia Broadcasting System), airing Tuesdays at nine. Whiteman
liked to tell how he originally offered the show to the president of NBC, who turned him down because his network already
had a cigarette sponsor. Despite jealous sponsors, radio was about to enjoy a crushing if provisional triumph over its hated
rival, the recording industry, aided by the stock market crash later in the year. Records were expensive, and radio offered
free entertainment subsidized by advertising accounts. Even before the crash, the new medium flaunted its power. When
the Radio Corporation of America took control of the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1928, it established RCA Victor, a
division intended to manufacture nothing but radios (it produced 4 million that year alone). RCA would have been happy to
wipe out the phonograph altogether. Instead, Victor officials held the fort, and RCA became the leading record label of the
1930s. Still, as late as 1939, when records rebounded with sensational sales, the networks (as opposed to independent stations)
tried to keep them off the air.

Old Gold initially paid Whiteman $5,000 per broadcast hour for sixteen weeks. William S. Paley, who had just been elected
president of CBS, knew the bandleader’s popularity would draw stations nationwide to his network, especially when the band
went on the road, broadcasting from a different city each week. Old Gold had other concerns. Its deal required Whiteman to
present his Rhythm Boys — the trio evidently had an influential fan in the tobacco business. Perhaps the executive was fond
of “Mississippi Mud” or thought a young trio would lure young smokers or recognized a musical turnaround taking place, favoring
baritones over tenors. Maybe all three motives figured in his rationale. For a turnaround was indeed in the air. Sponsors
wanted people to keep their radios on as much as possible, as a soothing background for millions of potential consumers. Higher
voices are better for reaching theater balconies, but lower ones are more appealing in living rooms. Radio’s superior sound
captured the subtle nuances of deeper voices.

Whiteman cheerfully reinstated the Rhythm Boys at double their salaries ($300 each). He had another use for them beyond radio.
A few months earlier, in the fall of 1928, when Herbert Hoover was elected president, Paul had agreed to star — for two-fifths
of the net — in Universal’s “super-special 100 per cent talker,”
King of Jazz.
Carl Laemmle, Universal’s president, and Jimmy Gillespie signed the contracts at New York’s Harmony Club, agreeing to go
into production in March with director Wesley Ruggles. Nothing about this production would go as planned.

Get yourself set for the biggest news you’ve ever heard since the advent of the audible screen….

— advertisement,
Variety
(1929)
¹

The first screenwriter assigned to the project had little sympathy with Whiteman’s ideas.
²
When their discussions collapsed, the film was rescheduled for the fall and the band planned to head for the Coast in May.
Now there were four months to fill, but Whiteman’s plate never remained empty for long. A couple of unexpected opportunities
had come his way shortly before the New Year. Florenz Ziegfeld celebrated the first anniversary of his production of
Show Boat
by launching two new shows in December: an Eddie Cantor musical,
Whoopee,
on December 4, at the New Amsterdam Theatre, and a completely revised version of his after-hours nightclub revue,
Midnight Frolic,
three weeks later on the New Amsterdam Roof.
Whoopee
was a smash, but George Olsen, its featured bandleader and the conductor slated for
Midnight Frolic,
battled with Ziegfeld, who accused him of reserving his best arrangements for leading lady Ethel Shutta, Olsen’s wife. After
Olsen quit or was fired, Ziegfeld hired Whiteman for both shows at a salary rumored to be the highest ever offered a bandleader.
³

On December 29 Whiteman moved his operation into
Whoopee
with much fanfare and not a little calamity. When Paul gave the
downbeat for a dance sketch, the band segued into one piece while lead trumpeter Charlie Margulis started another. Certain
that everyone else was wrong, the crocked Margulis figured he could fix things by playing extra loud. Musicians recounted
Whiteman sputtering, “Get me a pistol. Somebody kill the son of a bitch. I’ll tear him apart with my hands!”
⁴
For the finale, the stage rolled over the pit, scaring the hell out of Whiteman, who had not been warned of this innovation
in stagecraft. He ran out and, realizing his mistake, could not get back in. Cantor went on a tear, parodying Paul with a
drumstick for a baton. The delighted audience assumed it was all planned.

After the curtain, the band and numerous luminaries took the elevator to the
Midnight Frolic
on the lavish roof, fashioned by Austrian theatrical designer Joseph Urban with pastel colors and lights, glass balconies,
and a “pearl” curtain that was actually made of transparent medical capsules painted silver. The roof boasted a chic kitchen
with matching prices. Ziegfeld stars, including Fanny Brice and Helen Morgan, stopped by to sing one or two numbers, but the
Frolic
was Whiteman’s show. He was more at home in a nightclub than in a pit trying to tailor his music to actors.

During this time, the Rhythm Boys were playing their week at the Palace. They finished the engagement the same night Whiteman
entered the cast of
Whoopee,
and two days later they were back on tour, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They were not scheduled for
Whoopee,
although Bing was whisked into the studio to record a fast, impeccably articulated version of the Eddie Cantor showstopper
“Makin’ Whoopee.” By mid-January Whiteman was also on the road, playing weeks in Cincinnati and Detroit, where he hired Andy
Secrest, an able if uninspired trumpet player who could handle the jazz solos when Bix was ailing. Returning to Manhattan
for the February 5 commencement of his Old Gold show, Paul resumed double duties at the New Amsterdam for nearly three months.
When in town the Rhythm Boys occasionally appeared in the roof shows and even in
Whoopee,
performing an interpolated song. More often they were sent on area tours, returning Tuesdays to take their places on the
Old Gold broadcasts.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, to mark his son’s twenty-first birthday, Carl Laemmle Sr. appointed Carl Laemmle Jr. general manager
of Universal and dropped the much publicized and hugely expensive Whiteman film in his lap. Junior immediately replaced Wesley
Ruggles with Hungarian director Paul Fejos (whose succes d’estime of 1928,
The Last Moment,
details the last days of a suicide) and assigned the script to Edward T. Lowe (whose thin vita later included Poverty Row
Charlie Chans and Bulldog Drummonds). Both men were dispatched to New York, and one can scarcely imagine what Paul made of
them. Fejos proposed a history of the orchestra with actors playing the musicians. Under no circumstance was Whiteman going
to make a movie about his band without his band; he could not believe anyone would suggest such a thing. Universal obliviously
informed the trades that an eight-week shooting schedule would begin June 1 so that Paul could return home for the August
racing season at Saratoga. But the start-up was delayed again when Fejos and Lowe limped back to Hollywood. They were accompanied
by Ferde Grofe, whom Whiteman asked to orchestrate the score; at least
he
could get started.

Concurrently, something entirely unexpected happened to popular music: it got younger. The new sound was favored almost exclusively
by women, and the object of their passion was not Bing but rather Hubert Prior Vallee, a singer, saxophonist, and bandleader
who renamed himself Rudy in honor of his idol, saxophone virtuoso Rudy Wiedoeft. As a Yale undergraduate who spent six years
earning a philosophy degree, Vallee led a sticky-sweet band called the Yale Collegians. He believed he possessed rare insight
regarding his generation’s musical tastes, which he construed as a desire for rah-rah Ivy League songs, adapted European ballads,
and mildly risque novelties about stupid or easy girls. Briefly the public validated his judgment. In 1928 he brought his
band, renamed the Connecticut Yankees, into New York’s Heigh-Ho Club, achieving widespread recognition as WABC aired his sets.
When he opened at Keith’s 81st Street in February 1929, success became spectacle as mounted police cordoned off an area to
accommodate hundreds of fans, many of them teenagers.