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Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams-the Early Years, 1903-1940
From Bing Crosby's early days in college minstrel shows and vaudeville, to his first hit recordings, from his 11 year triumph as star of America's most popular radio show, to his first success in Hollywood, Gary Giddins provides a detailed study of the rise of this American star.
768 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
November 9, 2012
Was so interested in learning more about Bing Crosby. I wish this book hadn't been my first attempt. Oddly distant and overly obsessed with the most minor level of detail, the author seems unable to synthesize information and create a narrative in which anything rises to greater significance than anything else. It becomes almost a bed-to-bed story of Crosby's every action for the first forty years of is life. Given that there was a rise to stardom, family tensions, and personal drama with his young wife's descent into alcholism, it isn't as though there's no story to work with. The book is all trees, no forest. And it fails to do the main thing a fan would want the book to do: create some historical context for understanding why this artist changed the nature of pop music forever.
December 19, 2014
First off, "Pocketful of Dreams" is a balanced biography. It would be nice if this didn't have to be noted, but especially in the case of Crosby, when his children and step-children have written scathing or adoring memoirs, it is refreshing when a biographer explores all aspects of a person, the strengths and flaws, some of which are deep. That said, what Giddins focuses on most is the music.
This award-winning book makes a strong argument for Crosby being under-appreciated as a leader of making jazz popular in the mainstream. It argues persuasively that Crosby was not merely one of a group of crooners, but a leader in music who came onto the scene at the right moment in time, and then used his considerable talents and enormous popularity to introduce elements of black jazz to mainstream, white America.
If you consider Crosby a singer of smaltz who merely sang Christmas standards, this book will make you see him in a new light, and greatly expand your appreciation of his contribution to American popular music.
One caveat: Giddins has written the definitive biography, well-documented and thorough. He had so much material, that he decided to split the biography into two parts. This first volume, checking in at over 750 pages, covers Crosby's life until 1940, and was published in 2009. Five years on, readers are still waiting volume two. I eagerly await the publication of volume 2, but it may be a while.
This award-winning book makes a strong argument for Crosby being under-appreciated as a leader of making jazz popular in the mainstream. It argues persuasively that Crosby was not merely one of a group of crooners, but a leader in music who came onto the scene at the right moment in time, and then used his considerable talents and enormous popularity to introduce elements of black jazz to mainstream, white America.
If you consider Crosby a singer of smaltz who merely sang Christmas standards, this book will make you see him in a new light, and greatly expand your appreciation of his contribution to American popular music.
One caveat: Giddins has written the definitive biography, well-documented and thorough. He had so much material, that he decided to split the biography into two parts. This first volume, checking in at over 750 pages, covers Crosby's life until 1940, and was published in 2009. Five years on, readers are still waiting volume two. I eagerly await the publication of volume 2, but it may be a while.
December 18, 2009
This review originally ran in the San Jose Mercury News:
Strange to say, Bing Crosby needs this biography. Other major white male jazz/pop singers who were eclipsed in the rock revolution of the '60s managed to re-emerge. Frank Sinatra's bad-boy behavior kept him hot. Tony Bennett hung with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and got certified as hip by the MTV generation. Even Mel Torme benefited from Harry Anderson's worship of him on ''Night Court.'' Of course, they were around to help revive their reputations, while Crosby, who created the style of singing that made them famous, died in 1977. So Crosby got dismissed as a nostalgia throwback, like the Andrews Sisters, or a bland middle-of-the-roader, like Perry Como. At worst, he was regarded as a cultural imperialist who made his fortune by ripping off black musical idiom and making it palatable for white audiences. Or he was just that old guy who played golf -- before Tiger Woods made golf cool.
Gary Giddins' task, then, is to persuade us not only that Crosby was ''the most influential and successful popular performer in the first half of the twentieth century'' but also that the work he left behind him deserves our continued respect, admiration and emulation. This exhaustive -- and occasionally exhausting -- biography takes us up to 1940; Giddins plans to tell the rest of the story in another volume. But the Crosby of the '30s is the essential Bing Crosby, the one whose achievement was summarized by bandleader/clarinetist Artie Shaw: ''He really is the first American jazz singer in the white world.''
It was a very white world 0in which Crosby grew up. He was born in Tacoma, Wash., and raised in Spokane, and on his father's side, he could trace his lineage back to passengers on the Mayflower. His mother's Irish-Catholic heritage and religion prevailed over his father's, however: Bing was raised a Catholic and attended the Jesuit-run Gonzaga High School and Gonzaga University. But he dropped out of law school at Gonzaga and headed for Los Angeles with a friend, Al Rinker, whose sister, the singer Mildred Bailey, was breaking into show business.
The vaudeville duo of Crosby and Rinker became a trio, the Rhythm Boys, with the addition of Harry Barris, and soon they were featured performers with Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. In 1930, the Rhythm Boys appeared in the movie ''King of Jazz,'' a showcase for Whiteman that flopped but launched Crosby's film career.
The association with Whiteman, the self-styled King of Jazz, does nothing to help Crosby with either those who regard him as a cultural imperialist or those who fail to think of him as a jazz innovator. Whiteman's ''jazz'' was slickly orchestrated stuff, not the ebullient, improvisatory music we think of as echt jazz. But Giddins is content to face the simple fact: ''African-American innovations metamorphose into American popular culture when white performers learn to mimic black ones.'' Crosby, under Whiteman's aegis, became ''the first in a long line of white musicians who popularized real black music . . . for a white public. This was ten years before Benny Goodman launched the Swing Era, thirty years before Elvis rocked.''
It's good to remember that Crosby was raised in an era when the minstrel show and blackface performers like Al Jolson were tolerated. Today we cringe at production numbers such as ''Abraham'' in the 1942 movie ''Holiday Inn. ''In it, a blacked-up Crosby and company sing the praises of the Great Emancipator for an all-white audience, while his African-American cook sits on the back porch and sings to her children about how Lincoln freed the ''darkies.'' But as Giddins points out, Crosby also made an effort to integrate black performers such as Louis Armstrong into his films, and was frustrated: Armstrong's performance in the 1938 film ''Doctor Rhythm'' was cut in deference to Southern audiences. Crosby repeatedly acknowledged his debt to Armstrong, calling him ''the greatest pop singer in the world that ever was and ever will be forever and ever.'' The easy camaraderie in the duets Armstrong and Crosby recorded is evidence that the tribute was genuine -- and genuinely appreciated.
Of course, sounding genuine was Crosby's forte. There has been no surer master of the media -- from recordings to radio to film and TV -- in which he appeared. ''More than any other performer,'' Giddins observes, ''Crosby would ride the tide of technology. He dominated records, radio, and movies throughout a career that would parallel the development of those media in ways ever more suitable to his talents.''
He had the good luck to be starting his career just as recording shifted from acoustical to electrical reproduction of music. Before the development of the microphone, recording artists had to bellow into great horns -- a technology unsuited for the subtlety and intimacy characteristic of a performer like Crosby. Then came radio, on which the bright, high sound of the tenor was less welcome than a mellow baritone like Crosby's: ''Higher voices are better for reaching theater balconies, but lower ones are more appealing in living rooms,'' Giddins notes.
Crosby took each medium and shaped an agreeable persona for it. As no singer before him, he made singing seem as natural as speaking. The voice that people heard on records and the radio had established his sex appeal, so when he moved into film it didn't matter that he was balding, paunchy and jug-eared. Moreover, he resisted Hollywood's efforts to make him conform to conventional ideas of good looks -- once he established himself at the box office, he rejected the practice of gluing back his ears, and chose to wear hats rather than toupees to cover his bald spots.
Giddins is one of the country's foremost jazz critics, so it's no surprise that his detailed accounts of Crosby's recordings are sensitive and illuminating. He succeeds brilliantly in his chief task of persuading us of Crosby's worth as a performer. But he's also a masterly biographer -- he has written about Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker as well -- who compiles an astonishing amount of information and turns it into a readable narrative. Admittedly, there are some boggy spots -- I learned more about the making of movies like ''Waikiki Wedding'' than I really needed to know. Giddins also tends to lose sight of the off-mike Crosby -- the husband and father -- in his focus on Crosby at work. We learn that Crosby got his drinking problem under control, but that his first wife, Dixie, didn't, and we begin to sense that there are problems at home -- but then we're off on the road with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour again.
And sometimes Giddins' attempts to summarize Crosby's importance bring him perilously close to cheerleading: ''No other pop icon has ever been so thoroughly, lovingly liked -- liked and trusted. Bing's naturalness made him credible to all, regardless of region, religion, race, or gender. He was our most authentic chameleon, mirroring successive eras -- through Prohibition, depression, war, anxiety, and affluence -- without ever being dramatic about it. He was discreet and steady. He was family.''
That was the image, at least. After Crosby's death in 1977, the iconoclasts, including his son Gary, went to work on biographies whose allegations of abuse and infidelity tarnished his reputation as husband and father. But Giddins' biography is focused on how Crosby created a persona, and only to a lesser extent on what lay behind the mask. Rehabilitating Crosby's artistic reputation is higher on Giddins' agenda than sorting through the dirty laundry, but if he takes the story beyond 1940, things will doubtless have to come out in the wash.
Strange to say, Bing Crosby needs this biography. Other major white male jazz/pop singers who were eclipsed in the rock revolution of the '60s managed to re-emerge. Frank Sinatra's bad-boy behavior kept him hot. Tony Bennett hung with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and got certified as hip by the MTV generation. Even Mel Torme benefited from Harry Anderson's worship of him on ''Night Court.'' Of course, they were around to help revive their reputations, while Crosby, who created the style of singing that made them famous, died in 1977. So Crosby got dismissed as a nostalgia throwback, like the Andrews Sisters, or a bland middle-of-the-roader, like Perry Como. At worst, he was regarded as a cultural imperialist who made his fortune by ripping off black musical idiom and making it palatable for white audiences. Or he was just that old guy who played golf -- before Tiger Woods made golf cool.
Gary Giddins' task, then, is to persuade us not only that Crosby was ''the most influential and successful popular performer in the first half of the twentieth century'' but also that the work he left behind him deserves our continued respect, admiration and emulation. This exhaustive -- and occasionally exhausting -- biography takes us up to 1940; Giddins plans to tell the rest of the story in another volume. But the Crosby of the '30s is the essential Bing Crosby, the one whose achievement was summarized by bandleader/clarinetist Artie Shaw: ''He really is the first American jazz singer in the white world.''
It was a very white world 0in which Crosby grew up. He was born in Tacoma, Wash., and raised in Spokane, and on his father's side, he could trace his lineage back to passengers on the Mayflower. His mother's Irish-Catholic heritage and religion prevailed over his father's, however: Bing was raised a Catholic and attended the Jesuit-run Gonzaga High School and Gonzaga University. But he dropped out of law school at Gonzaga and headed for Los Angeles with a friend, Al Rinker, whose sister, the singer Mildred Bailey, was breaking into show business.
The vaudeville duo of Crosby and Rinker became a trio, the Rhythm Boys, with the addition of Harry Barris, and soon they were featured performers with Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. In 1930, the Rhythm Boys appeared in the movie ''King of Jazz,'' a showcase for Whiteman that flopped but launched Crosby's film career.
The association with Whiteman, the self-styled King of Jazz, does nothing to help Crosby with either those who regard him as a cultural imperialist or those who fail to think of him as a jazz innovator. Whiteman's ''jazz'' was slickly orchestrated stuff, not the ebullient, improvisatory music we think of as echt jazz. But Giddins is content to face the simple fact: ''African-American innovations metamorphose into American popular culture when white performers learn to mimic black ones.'' Crosby, under Whiteman's aegis, became ''the first in a long line of white musicians who popularized real black music . . . for a white public. This was ten years before Benny Goodman launched the Swing Era, thirty years before Elvis rocked.''
It's good to remember that Crosby was raised in an era when the minstrel show and blackface performers like Al Jolson were tolerated. Today we cringe at production numbers such as ''Abraham'' in the 1942 movie ''Holiday Inn. ''In it, a blacked-up Crosby and company sing the praises of the Great Emancipator for an all-white audience, while his African-American cook sits on the back porch and sings to her children about how Lincoln freed the ''darkies.'' But as Giddins points out, Crosby also made an effort to integrate black performers such as Louis Armstrong into his films, and was frustrated: Armstrong's performance in the 1938 film ''Doctor Rhythm'' was cut in deference to Southern audiences. Crosby repeatedly acknowledged his debt to Armstrong, calling him ''the greatest pop singer in the world that ever was and ever will be forever and ever.'' The easy camaraderie in the duets Armstrong and Crosby recorded is evidence that the tribute was genuine -- and genuinely appreciated.
Of course, sounding genuine was Crosby's forte. There has been no surer master of the media -- from recordings to radio to film and TV -- in which he appeared. ''More than any other performer,'' Giddins observes, ''Crosby would ride the tide of technology. He dominated records, radio, and movies throughout a career that would parallel the development of those media in ways ever more suitable to his talents.''
He had the good luck to be starting his career just as recording shifted from acoustical to electrical reproduction of music. Before the development of the microphone, recording artists had to bellow into great horns -- a technology unsuited for the subtlety and intimacy characteristic of a performer like Crosby. Then came radio, on which the bright, high sound of the tenor was less welcome than a mellow baritone like Crosby's: ''Higher voices are better for reaching theater balconies, but lower ones are more appealing in living rooms,'' Giddins notes.
Crosby took each medium and shaped an agreeable persona for it. As no singer before him, he made singing seem as natural as speaking. The voice that people heard on records and the radio had established his sex appeal, so when he moved into film it didn't matter that he was balding, paunchy and jug-eared. Moreover, he resisted Hollywood's efforts to make him conform to conventional ideas of good looks -- once he established himself at the box office, he rejected the practice of gluing back his ears, and chose to wear hats rather than toupees to cover his bald spots.
Giddins is one of the country's foremost jazz critics, so it's no surprise that his detailed accounts of Crosby's recordings are sensitive and illuminating. He succeeds brilliantly in his chief task of persuading us of Crosby's worth as a performer. But he's also a masterly biographer -- he has written about Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker as well -- who compiles an astonishing amount of information and turns it into a readable narrative. Admittedly, there are some boggy spots -- I learned more about the making of movies like ''Waikiki Wedding'' than I really needed to know. Giddins also tends to lose sight of the off-mike Crosby -- the husband and father -- in his focus on Crosby at work. We learn that Crosby got his drinking problem under control, but that his first wife, Dixie, didn't, and we begin to sense that there are problems at home -- but then we're off on the road with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour again.
And sometimes Giddins' attempts to summarize Crosby's importance bring him perilously close to cheerleading: ''No other pop icon has ever been so thoroughly, lovingly liked -- liked and trusted. Bing's naturalness made him credible to all, regardless of region, religion, race, or gender. He was our most authentic chameleon, mirroring successive eras -- through Prohibition, depression, war, anxiety, and affluence -- without ever being dramatic about it. He was discreet and steady. He was family.''
That was the image, at least. After Crosby's death in 1977, the iconoclasts, including his son Gary, went to work on biographies whose allegations of abuse and infidelity tarnished his reputation as husband and father. But Giddins' biography is focused on how Crosby created a persona, and only to a lesser extent on what lay behind the mask. Rehabilitating Crosby's artistic reputation is higher on Giddins' agenda than sorting through the dirty laundry, but if he takes the story beyond 1940, things will doubtless have to come out in the wash.
July 21, 2020
A very detailed account of Bing Crosby's life from before his birth until 1940. I really enjoyed this book. Bing Crosby is one of my all time favorite performers so I was excited to read about his life. I recommend it to all Bing Fans!
November 28, 2021
An exhaustive, granular biography of the beloved song and dance man. At times, it’s almost too granular; starting the book in 1831 when Crosby wasn’t actually born until 1903 is a pretty big flex, and Giddens may devote a bit too much space to summarizing Crosby film plots. But the granularity is also a huge blessing, e.g. in thoughtful histories of minstrelsy, vaudeville, and the evolution of jazz. An intelligent writer and a great critic, Giddens justifies his editorial inclination with some smart commentary on Bing’s music. And his overarching argument for Bing as an unparalleled figure in the development of American music is persuasive.
February 24, 2019
I read this after seeing a recommendation from my friend UG. It's not something I would have sought out on my own. It's no secret that Giddins is erudite and writes well, but he brought me into a whole part of musical history and popular culture about which I knew practically nothing. I enjoyed the book, and even if you think Bing is not your thing, you might be surprised and like it too.
November 1, 2016
It's both hard to believe and understandable that this hefty volume only covers a fraction of Bing Crosby's life. I appreciate how the author resisted the all too easy path of mass media predictability to focus and score points on negative perspectives driven by a variety of motivations. Usually led by attention seekers. Instead, what we can experience here is a well-rounded, objective narrative based on multiple sources and historical context. What a wonderful beginning to the story of a life that we all can learn from and be inspired. I cannot wait for the rest of the story.
August 21, 2014
The first hip white person born in America in Artie Shaw's words.
I've owned this book for over ten years but put off reading it until Giddins' was ready to publish volume two. With no publishing date on the horizon I decided to just go ahead and read it. Giddins understands jazz and vocalizing and did a good job of explaining Crosby's talent and innovations in those fields.
I've owned this book for over ten years but put off reading it until Giddins' was ready to publish volume two. With no publishing date on the horizon I decided to just go ahead and read it. Giddins understands jazz and vocalizing and did a good job of explaining Crosby's talent and innovations in those fields.
February 2, 2017
Book was alright. Not much about his actual life (except when he was very young), but more about the businesses he was in. Notes and ranges he sang, mannerisms in acting, and a lot about the behind the scenes folks etc. Unfortunately, I found it a bit boring and long.
July 15, 2018
If it took me longer than usual, it’s just because what the author does here is more than a tour through Crosby’s life to 1940. He gives an extraordinary amount of context to show how a Bing Crosby could have happened and what he meant to popular culture once he did.
Heavily recommended.
Heavily recommended.
July 1, 2023
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I grew up listening to Bing Crosby’s Christmas music on a variety of albums my dad had in his collection. As I grew up, I began to watch the Hope/Crosby films and surprisingly, didn’t see White Christmas until I was well into my teens. By then, Bing’s star was tarnished by a book by his alcoholic oldest son, who claimed Bing beat his kids, was a drunk, and was a crappy dad. I read the book, as well as one other not-so-flattering biography, yet I didn’t feel like either representation was accurate. Now, I know that oftentimes celebrities don’t turn out to be as great in person as their Hollywood persona is, but I was looking for was a complete biography of Der Bingle that was objective.
Clocking in at 784 pages, the first thing I’d like to point out about this book is that it’s not even Crosby’s whole life; it only covers up until 1940, when his career in music was solidified and his career in movies was starting to take off. That was disappointing. You’d think a book with that breadth of pages would cover his whole life. Which is a nice way of saying the book could use some editing.
Not kidding you, everything you wanted to know about Bing Crosby, and plenty you didn’t, is in this tome. It’s like a day-to-day accounting of the crooner’s life from the time he first started performing up until the days before WWII. Listening to the book on audio was a lot easier than when I tried to physically read the book upon it’s release years ago. But there’s still a lot of superfluous stuff that could be taken out and not be missed.
I did enjoy the objective nature of the book, the first of its kind for a Crosby fan. Bing was no saint, but he was no more sinner than the rest of us. He drank too much in his early days of adulthood, but he wasn’t an alcoholic and stopped when it became clear it was hurting his career and marriage to the starlet Dixie Lee. She, however, was an alcoholic, and Crosby tried to get help for her multiple times to no avail. He had a terse relationship with his four boys, was a very strict father, and spanked them, which was the norm for the day.
I’m glad I finally made my way through this book so I could move on to Giddens’ follow-up work, but that tome only covers another fraction of Crosby’s life. I’ll read it, but wish someday a concise book of one of my favorite singers and actors would be published.
I grew up listening to Bing Crosby’s Christmas music on a variety of albums my dad had in his collection. As I grew up, I began to watch the Hope/Crosby films and surprisingly, didn’t see White Christmas until I was well into my teens. By then, Bing’s star was tarnished by a book by his alcoholic oldest son, who claimed Bing beat his kids, was a drunk, and was a crappy dad. I read the book, as well as one other not-so-flattering biography, yet I didn’t feel like either representation was accurate. Now, I know that oftentimes celebrities don’t turn out to be as great in person as their Hollywood persona is, but I was looking for was a complete biography of Der Bingle that was objective.
Clocking in at 784 pages, the first thing I’d like to point out about this book is that it’s not even Crosby’s whole life; it only covers up until 1940, when his career in music was solidified and his career in movies was starting to take off. That was disappointing. You’d think a book with that breadth of pages would cover his whole life. Which is a nice way of saying the book could use some editing.
Not kidding you, everything you wanted to know about Bing Crosby, and plenty you didn’t, is in this tome. It’s like a day-to-day accounting of the crooner’s life from the time he first started performing up until the days before WWII. Listening to the book on audio was a lot easier than when I tried to physically read the book upon it’s release years ago. But there’s still a lot of superfluous stuff that could be taken out and not be missed.
I did enjoy the objective nature of the book, the first of its kind for a Crosby fan. Bing was no saint, but he was no more sinner than the rest of us. He drank too much in his early days of adulthood, but he wasn’t an alcoholic and stopped when it became clear it was hurting his career and marriage to the starlet Dixie Lee. She, however, was an alcoholic, and Crosby tried to get help for her multiple times to no avail. He had a terse relationship with his four boys, was a very strict father, and spanked them, which was the norm for the day.
I’m glad I finally made my way through this book so I could move on to Giddens’ follow-up work, but that tome only covers another fraction of Crosby’s life. I’ll read it, but wish someday a concise book of one of my favorite singers and actors would be published.
September 26, 2022
Is this book too long? Yes. Does the book have weird information and tangents that don’t relate to the subject matter, and only contribute to these books largest problem; it’s length? Also yes. However, this gets 5 stars because while there is too much information, there is also a large amount of incredibly insightful, humorous, and unique information that it more then makes up for the bad. You will learn more about Bing Crosby, and his career in the 1930s in film and music, from this book then anywhere else. This book truly gives you an insight not just his personality and an appreciation of his talent, but also let’s you truly feel like you know him. You get insight into the day to day like no other biography does. On the downside, the book is formulaic at times, especially with respects to the movies, and there is no recap or looking back at the material covered at all. It is clear you are suppose to view this book, the sequel, and (hopefully if it ever comes out) the final book in the trilogy as one large book, rather then individually. I was deeply interested in the subject material before reading the book, so I am pretty much the target audience, and it did everything I wanted it to, so therefore I give it a five star rating.
December 31, 2020
They were the Jazz Age personified, two clean-cut white boys bringing a variation on black music to the vaudeville stage with panache and charm. They represented something borderline radical: a trace of danger, a current from a generation that threatened to bust out of old and settled traditions. At no time between the Civil War and Prohibition had the nation's young people clamored for a music of their own or rebelled against the songs of their parents. Partly because the jazziness of Two Boys and a Piano stopped a few stations north of the genuine article, the young men -- Bing was twenty-three and Al [Rinker] two months short of nineteen -- suggested youth and daring in a way that did not send the "cornfeds" running for cover. They charmed everyone yet were harbingers of a break with conventions, a fissure gradually developing in the American family. Bing, especially, signaled the change with his easy wit; cool, distant manner; and unmistakably virile baritone. When he sang a song, he created drama.
March 3, 2019
I think that for many people of a certain age, Bing Crosby was always just sorta there. A backdrop to growing up, either on the radio or a television special / late-night movie. For many years I considered him passé, old fashioned and certainly no one you’d want to imitate or sound like. However, he truly did inspire my vocal style and now is someone who’s recordings and old radio shows I really enjoy listening too. The only thing I’d read about Bing before was Gary Crosby’s horrible autobiography, which has been disputed by many. I feel Mr. Giddins does a great job of documenting Bing’s early life and rise to stardom. This is also a great history of modern music, especially recorded music. The book gets a little scattered for me towards the end, but I look forward to the second installment in the series.
July 15, 2019
Exhaustively researched and footnoted chronicle of the crooner's early years. Author Giddins is a well-known film and music critic and at times he can get pretty deep into the weeds when discussing music theory, vocal technique, etc. but for the most part the narrative flows smoothly. Giddins's version of the young Der Bingle has a few chinks in his armor (he drinks too much, he's not always smart with money) but overall this is a very positive portrait of the artist as rising star. This will probably change somewhat in the next volume, as the author foreshadows serious complications for Bing the family man as the 1940s dawn. Like Robert Zoglin's more recent biography of Bob Hope, this volume is a must for anyone interested in the history of popular culture in the 20th century. 4.5 stars.
September 25, 2020
A second reading of this excellent biography, ten years on. Written from a jazz fan’s perspective, once we are past the childhood and formative years, the author covers in great detail (much of it musical) the intricacies of Bing’s recordings. I found this fascinating, but maybe not everyone will. This is a mighty tome, 700+ pages long, so there is ample time for Giddins to go into great depth regarding Crosby’s home life and his film career. I came out of this second read feeling that I have as fully rounded a picture of this rather unknowable man, one who everyone felt that they knew, as it is possible to achieve. Terrific book.
November 15, 2020
Whew! Took three months for me to finish this. Not a bad read if you're into this era of Hollywood biographies, which I am, and this is only the half of it. I made it interactive by listening to the important songs mentioned and watching a few of his early films, and researching some of his contemporaries that I barely heard of, or haven't heard of in years.
There is a lot of info to take in, this author really did his research, but at times it seems too much and at times I couldn't really "feel" the depth of character of all involved.
Yes, Bing is human like the rest of us but with the good along with the bad, it would've been cool to have known him.
Now I gotta get around to part two.
There is a lot of info to take in, this author really did his research, but at times it seems too much and at times I couldn't really "feel" the depth of character of all involved.
Yes, Bing is human like the rest of us but with the good along with the bad, it would've been cool to have known him.
Now I gotta get around to part two.
February 26, 2019
I knew the Bingster was a hot item in his time - but I had no idea just
how
hot. Turns out the man has music industry records that stand today - not even beaten by Sinatra, Elvis, or yes, even the Beatles. That and other great tidbits are found in this, the first of a three-part biography, taking us up through 1940 and the production of his first Road movie with Bob Hope. Awaiting the next two volumes...
July 9, 2021
I admire the author for being so insanely detailed about so many facts about Bing's movies, music, etc... But Lordy lordy was this heavy and long to read. Felt like the kind of non-fiction you read to write a book report on. It wasn't bad, but you really have to be ready to get thousands of tiny details. I was expecting this to be more fun but there was still some interesting behind the scenes facts about old Hollywood .
August 15, 2021
A very in depth biography of Bing Crosby. Heavily concentrating on his music and film career. Almost a bit TOO in depth. This book is more for the fan who wants to know every detail, or for someone fascinated with Hollywood and the music scene in the early part of the 20th century. Not so much for the casual fan or someone who just wants to read about his private life. This biography starts with his parents and goes to 1940. The young Bing.
October 14, 2023
Wow — Giddins’s research for this is impressive. He doesn’t hesitate to give his opinion of the many recordings and films mentioned. Perhaps he could have been a bit more critical of Crosby as a person.
I enjoyed reading of a performance and then finding it on YouTube. I had already admired the Boswell Sisters but hadn’t known of Mildred Bailey. For me, this has been a pleasant and informative trip to the 20s and 30s.
I enjoyed reading of a performance and then finding it on YouTube. I had already admired the Boswell Sisters but hadn’t known of Mildred Bailey. For me, this has been a pleasant and informative trip to the 20s and 30s.
August 23, 2019
Less than compelling
The book has some interesting facts, noting, for example, that he was the only educated popular musician of his time. But the excruciatingly detailed descriptions of the musical techniques of his songs and plots of his films make for dry reading in my view.
The book has some interesting facts, noting, for example, that he was the only educated popular musician of his time. But the excruciatingly detailed descriptions of the musical techniques of his songs and plots of his films make for dry reading in my view.
May 2, 2023
Exhaustive! Exhausting! Important biography of the man and his _role_ history of twentieth century US popular culture.
I sure don't dig his music. I don't know. Not a big fan of the baritone come at me MOZzers.
And I caught these geezers back to Bing after the golden age was over still
I sure don't dig his music. I don't know. Not a big fan of the baritone come at me MOZzers.
And I caught these geezers back to Bing after the golden age was over still
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2024
Read the chapters spanning the beginning of his career at Paramount (when he was touring Paramount theaters and had first signed his film contract with them). Had a few shows with Lilyan Tashman and they later worked on a film- Too Much Harmony- together.
January 14, 2025
Expected this would be beautifully written and researched (credit to Libby Pace and Nancy Snyder). Was delighted but not surprised by great critical passages on, say, Bing's debt to minstrelsy. Had NO IDEA how much I'd enjoy Giddins detailing the ridiculous plots of Bing's movies.
July 25, 2025
An engrossing work that brings Crosby to life. My only complaint is how the author often passes judgement on his records without much context. (You tell me about his life, and I'll listen to the music for myself, thank you.) That aside, I can't wait to get to the next volume!
September 20, 2018
Looking forward to volume 2.
November 28, 2018
Very interesting book and topic. However it gets bogged down with minutiae.
December 25, 2019
Very technical musically. Covers into 40's, teasing next installment.
August 19, 2020
Unless you want to know EVERY SINGLE career move made by Bing Crosby do not read this 592 page book. Well researched, smoothly written but who cares??
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