Bing Crosby

He was born Harry Lillis Crosby Jr. in Tacoma, Washington, on 3 May 1903, the fourth of seven children of a bookkeeper, and in 1906 the family moved to Spokane, where he grew up. A friend nicknamed him “Bingo” around 1910, after a parody newspaper called the Bingville Bugle, and the name shortened to Bing. He went to Gonzaga High School and then Gonzaga University. In 1923 he joined Al Rinker in a Spokane band of high-school students, the Musicaladers, on drums; when it broke up, he and Rinker carried on as a vocal duo.

In 1926 Paul Whiteman hired the pair, who first appeared with his orchestra in Chicago that December; their first record, “I’ve Got the Girl” with Don Clark’s Orchestra, was made that October. With the pianist Harry Barris they became the Rhythm Boys, touring with Whiteman and scoring their first hit with “Mississippi Mud,” and Crosby made his film debut in Whiteman’s revue King of Jazz (1930). The trio then sang with Gus Arnheim’s orchestra at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, where Crosby stood out, and early in 1931 he recorded “I Surrender, Dear,” his first solo hit. That year he signed with Brunswick, reached No. 1 with “Out of Nowhere” and “Just One More Chance,” and began a weekly solo program on CBS radio; “Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)” became his theme song.

When Jack Kapp set up the American branch of Decca Records in 1934, Crosby followed him, and under Kapp’s guidance he widened his repertoire well beyond the crooning of his early records, into many styles and genres. He signed with Paramount in 1933, took over NBC’s Kraft Music Hall in January 1936, and had No. 1 records with “Pennies from Heaven,” “Sweet Leilani” and “I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams.” In 1940 Road to Singapore began his series of “Road” pictures with Bob Hope.

He first sang “White Christmas” on Kraft Music Hall in December 1941 and recorded it for Decca on 29 May 1942, in eighteen minutes. Introduced in the film Holiday Inn, with Fred Astaire, it reached No. 1 in October 1942 and stayed there for eleven weeks; by the end of the year it was the biggest seller in Decca’s history, past a million copies, and it won the Academy Award for Best Song. Christmas records became a lasting part of his catalog. On 27 September 1943 he recorded “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” with the Andrews Sisters and Vic Schoen’s orchestra, issued by Decca that November with “Jingle Bells,” and on 11 October he made the first recording of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” with John Scott Trotter’s orchestra. Decca reported an advance sale of more than 500,000 for his Merry Christmas album in 1947, and on 8 September 1950 he and Carol Richards made the first recording of “Silver Bells,” released that October.

In Going My Way (1944) he played the priest Father O’Malley and sang “Swinging on a Star,” which went to No. 1 and won the Oscar for Best Song; he won Best Actor in March 1945 and played O’Malley again in The Bells of St. Mary’s, opposite Ingrid Bergman. Film exhibitors named him the top box-office star for five consecutive years from 1944. His wartime No. 1 records included “Don’t Fence Me In” with the Andrews Sisters and “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” with Les Paul, and he toured to entertain American troops overseas in 1944. In 1946 he moved his radio show to ABC for Philco, insisting on pre-recording it, and in 1948 his company and ABC invested in Ampex tape machines, and he became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings on magnetic tape.

His later films included White Christmas (1954), in which he sang the song again, The Country Girl (1954), which brought a third Best Actor nomination, High Society (1956) with Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly, and Stagecoach (1966), his last starring role. He hosted television specials and a CBS sitcom, received the Golden Globe’s Cecil B. DeMille award in 1960 and a Peabody Award in 1969, and in 1976 brought a stage show, Bing Crosby on Broadway, to New York. In September 1977 he taped his last Christmas special, with David Bowie among the guests, and recorded his final album, Seasons. He died in Spain, after a round of golf outside Madrid, on 14 October 1977.