BING ON 78

Here is a great story written by Bing Crosby guru, Steve Fay. Well written and well said...

The pages of the new Wiggins-Reilly Crosby discography have me looking through my Crosby 78s again, handling them, peering at the labels, worrying about their fragility...and more and more dying to play them again. I recall that when I grew up the first records I ever remember seeing in our house were about 21 78s my brother was given by our maternal grandmother. These were perhaps half of the records my mother and her younger siblings had grown up with on a tiny farm about 20 miles from Quincy, Illinois, where they played what records they had on a wind-up Edison player.

At the time, we had a single-speed (78-only) electric record player. We didn't have a three-speed record player until around 1958 or 59 when my father made one for my brother's birthday present. My father did construction and steel fabrication, but as a hobby tinkered with electronics. Sometimes people gave him radios and other equipment that was broken. My brother's "new" record-player-am-radio combination was made out of parts from two units that my dad repaired an mounted together in a painted wooden case he designed for it. It had a flip-over cartridge, and as mentioned before three speeds, so now we not only could play those 78s, but my brother (who was about 12 or 13) could start to buy and play rock-and-roll 45s and Mom could get that Guy Lombardo LP she saw on the small record rack at the grocery store.

I was a bit too young and butter-fingered to handle the records at that time, but I remember that around the time I was about 11 years old, I had become very interested in those 78s again. The old single-speed record player had migrated to a little table in the basement of a different house, in a different town, and I recall spending hours sometimes playing through that stack of old 78s from the farm. At least one platter was a Crosby: "God Bless America"/"The Star-Spangled Banner." There were other pop tunes, as well as novelty tunes and some country-western. I would play through the stack in order, over and over, but sometimes I would play certain sides again and again before moving on. Then I found a dusty table top Victrola at a thrift shop. It was about 10 or 12 dollars. The spring was broken. It could only play part of a record before running down.

When I got it home and tried to wipe the dust off of it, I found that it wasn't only dust. The outside finish was so worn that it was gray. But when you opened the lid, the inside was nearly pristine. Opening the lid was as dramatic as the scene where Dorothy steps out of black-and-white photography into the technicolor of Munchkinland inThe Wizard of Oz. But, in this case, it was like opening the door on musical history. It took weeks, but I repaired the spring, which had become unrivited on one end inside of its drum, and I restored the outside finish, and I found where I could still buy steel needles for it. Now, I could hear what those old 78s sounded like down on the farm in the 1930s and 40s. When they are not terribly worn out, the richness of 78s played on totally acoustic equipment is surprisingly rich and impressive. And if you want more power, just open those two little doors on the front of the Victrola farther!

Around the time I got the Victrola and was a freshman in high school, I started actaully collecting records. Let me be clear, I had a very few rock-and-roll 45's and Lps, but I couldn't afford to collect them. My pocket change was what I saved out of my school lunch money. It would take weeks of savings to buy an LP. But I could often get a 78 for a nickel, sometimes less, at a thrift store or garage sale. The 78s collection grew. By the time I was out of college and married, people were giving me 78s rather than throw them away. How many total were amassed? 600? 1200? Do I even know? 

Was it a Bing Crosby collection? No, not at first, but there were nearly always Crosby records among the records available, wherever it was I was finding more 78s. And I did form the habit of looking for more records by artists I already had on 78 and liked. Because of Bing's popularity in the 78 era, merely that practice made the Crosby collection segment explode, compared to any other artist or group in this very, very eclectic collection. So, now, maybe there are 70-80 or even somewhat more Crosby disks, with of course some duplication and a few not really playable anymore. Not at all impressive, if I had been focusing only on collecting Bing, true, but it means a lot to me. And while, a number of his hits are included, it is remarkable how many of the sides are songs that never appear on the usual CD compilations. But, I think, listening to them is a little like what you would hear if you could randomly go back into mid-American households during any of the years between the mid-1930s and very early 1950s and hear what they had been buying and listening to. If Bing sang a song, it didn't always have to be a big hit for people to want to hear it again, and more often than they could hear it on the radio.

So, I've caught the 78 bug again, not the measles or the flu. I just ordered a new needle the right size for 78s for the cartridge I now want to keep on my turntable, which does have the 78 rpm speed. The needle will be here in a few days. I can hardly wait. Will the 78s be a little noisier than the LPs? Sometimes, yes. It is helpful to imagine that's just the sound of someone frying bacon while you're listening, or to hear what's in the background as a sound created by ordinarly people, not always replacing worn phonograph needles on their old Victrola or Philco, loving that song to death, playing it over and over. Not to worry, though--Bing's voice never fails to penetrate any background sizzle. It's not like Rudy Vallee's...

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THE BING CROSBY FREE SPEECH FAN FORUM

There is a forum, hidden among other sites on the internet called The Bing Crosby Free Speech Fan Forum. It is a site available to spotlight the greatest entertainer of all time. What are your favorite movies or records? Did you ever meet Bing Crosby?

Please feel free to share your experiences with other people that enjoy Bing Crosby as well as his contemporaries. Bing Crosby guru and fan Steve Fay started the forum back in 2010. Serious Bing Crosby fans needed a place to freely discuss the delights and complexities related to one of the greatest film and recording artists of our time. Personal attacks will not be tolerated, but facts, weblinks, individual personal opinion labeled as opinion, and civil argument are welcomed. Stop in and participate in the conversation!

THIS FORUM HAS UNFORTUNATELY CLOSED.

Join this forum for all your Bing Crosby needs: CROSBY FAN WORLD

BING LEFT ME WANTING MORE

Here is an excellent editorial/appreciation written by Bing Crosby guru Steve Fay. He is the best friend a Bing fan can have...

The longer I am a Bing Crosby fan, the more this seems to be true. As I learn more about Bing's career--his recordings, movies, and contributions to broadcasting and culture--I not only want to keep listening, watching, and learning, I also and especially wish he could have been with us longer.

Bing died the same year Elvis did, Elvis who was one of those rock icons who shook up popular music threatening and displacing artists singing in styles popular in the 20s to mid-50s, but Elvis did not leave me wanting more. By the time I was in high school (late 60s) his career seemed mostly over and to put it kindly, with few exceptions, his movies were poor. But I felt a profound loss at the news that Bing died. At that time, really all I knew about Bing was his most popular movies, playing occasionally on TV, his occasional TV specials and other appearances I'd watched growing up, and a couple dozen of his 78s, part of a collection I expanded after restoring an old wind-up Victrola about my second year of high school.

Now, when I have most of his LPs and several LP and CD compilations of his work, as well as several of his movies on VHS and DVD, and when I have read much more about him, I can't help wishing he could have given us more songs, more movies (musicals and dramas and even thrillers), more broadcast appearances of many kinds, and even more Christmas specials and song recordings. I will hear some song from the decades since he died and think, "Bing could have done a great version of that one!" I will hear Tony Bennett doing more duet recordings and recall what a master of the duet Bing was, not only from films but from so many duets with guests appearing on his decades of radio shows! Had Bing been around another decade or more, how many fascinating and memorable duet collaborations might he have given us?

And then, when I think of "The Country Girl," "Stagecoach," and "Dr. Cook's Garden" (a still from which is now my computer wallpaper), I sometimes wonder if we only began to know Bing's potential range as an actor. It boggles my mind to imagine the sorts of non-singing dramatic roles, humorous character-actor roles, and even horror or sci-fi roles those three films begin to suggest might have been possible in a longer Crosby film career. Then, too, now when name film actors have started to disappear from the screen in droves to do cartoon character voice-over roles for Pixar and other studios, Bing might have excelled far beyond what he gave us in that area as well...had he stayed with us a dozen or so more years.

Then, also, I can't forget what was happening in Bing's recording collaborations with Ken Barnes at the time Bing died. To my ears, they were getting better and better. Where might that musical road have led with more time?

There is a maxim about how a great performer knows to leave the stage while the audience still wants more (rather than after they've had quite enough I suppose), but I rather think that Bing could have given us several more marvelous years, and I personally would have still wanted more, because who knows how much more potential and range those years might have begun to reveal. On the other hand, I don't want to sound ungrateful. I am very thankful for all the enjoyment Bing has given the world, me included. I am also grateful to the longer-term and more dedicated Crosby fans who have done so much to keep his legacy alive, who also have also done so much for so long to teach and foster newer and evolving fans like me...

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REWATCHING WHITE CHRISTMAS

Here is yet another great reflection on Bing's career. No one like Steve Fay can weave his words around in such an interesting and thought provoking manor...

Not having cable or satellite TV, I have gotten more and more used to movies becoming a rarity on American broadcast TV, and consequently I expect to see fewer older movies on the stations I get. With the holiday season, a few Christmas-related movies have been showing so far, but they are either ones from the last 10-15 years or they are cartoon features. It's not like the old days when two or three stations would repeat each of the major Christmas movies from the 1940s & 50s. To watch those, we have resort to our tapes and DVDs. So this past Saturday night became "White Christmas" night at our house.

There are probably not many films I have watched as many times as "White Christmas," so obviously all of the scenes and songs are intensely familiar, yet I still get choked up at the end when the stage backdrop rises to show the snow falling, and in those moments when Rosie's and Bing's characters fall back in love. The drama of the old general and his former troops' devotion to him still affects me, too. Then there are the seasonal songs, and not just the title song, but also "Snow" which still deserves more radio play than I ever think it got.

But there are also occasionally new or surprisingly-deepening impressions that come along in these later viewings. One particularly strong one is how great Danny Kaye's singing and dancing are in the song: "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing." The effortlessly-looking high spins around those posts are quite amazing. Another thing that stood out for me Saturday was just how good Rosemary Clooney was, not just her great singing, but how convincing she was with all of the attitudes and emotional states her character travels through. And then how she is entirely lovely in the scene that included the "Count Your Blessings." What a shame that she and Bing didn't do another movie together.

Another impression came through to me more than in the past, too, and that was about Bing's own dancing ability. While he certainly could have been upstaged by co-stars like Astaire, O'Connor, or Kaye, Bing always seemed to hold his own in dance scenes with their lot. He might not look like he could be as light on his feet as they were, but he matched them step for step, unless he didn't for comic effect. While it rarely seems to get mentioned, Bing Crosby is quite a competent hoofer! I wonder what kind of effort went into keeping him on his toes so well.

A cultural issue also came to mind in my watching this time, about how different the impression of the US military was in post-WWII films like "White Christmas." Then the US had a 'civilian' army. The great majority signing up or drafted for that War, assuming they survived, were only there on temporary assignment from their lives at home. Some of their sloppiness or unruliness, joked about in this movie, comes from their not being career soldiers like General Waverly, who managed a great deal of tolerance toward them in leading them. But now, after decades of a 'professional' all-volunteer army, in which troops serve many enlistments, even several tours of duty in wars longer than WWII, I wonder whether today's soldiers are as able to identify with that image of WWII soldiers, even as much as Vietnam era soldiers were able to do?

In any case, "White Christmas" seems to offer more to appreciate and to ponder...

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LITTLE BOY LOST: A PERSONAL RESPONSE

Steve Fay is a huge authority on Bing Crosby. He runs an excellent Bing Crosby forum which you can visit here.

Here is Steve's excellent look at the Bing drama Little Boy Lost (1953)...

I am still a bit stunned, the film having concluded moments ago. I had read a bit about it a few times before, but did not realize how powerful of an effect it would have. In its dramatic weight it reminds me somewhat of "The Country Girl," this partly also because Bing's character is not altogether sympathetic at times.

I was born in the year before this movie was released, more or less during the present time of the second half of the action. It was a time when Europe's continuing recovery from WWII was not exactly center stage in the minds of average Americans, not enough that a youngster here would have noticed adults around him or her being very mindful of it. The war itself, in the decade following this movie's release, was mostly the subject of war-time adventure movies starring John Wayne, Van Johnson, Audie Murphy, and others, and the aftermath of the war in movies, with few exceptions, was more like "White Christmas." My uncles and my father, all in the service during the war, didn't talk much about it. A friend's father who served in the Marines in the Pacific pointedly refused to answer any of his son's questions about his time in the war, beyond that he found some lifelong friends who then lived in Austrailia. And we had no bombed out ruins in Illinois as reminders. What a surprise when I watched Winston Churchill's funeral on TV when I was in grade school to learn that some buildings in London had yet to be rebuilt as late as then.

When I was growing up, there must have been children around me who lost fathers in the war, but I don't recall this ever being spoken about. I recall families stricken by accidents and disease, divorce or even job loss, but not by the aftermath of WWII. Many unpleasant things were not spoken about, at least in front of children in those days -- "Little pitchers have big ears," my father would say and the subject of the adult conversation would change. Being rather confused, I thought he was talking about baseball. Of course, were I a child growing up in Europe or Britain at that very time, even if adults chose not to talk very much about the war, I still very likely might have seen some unignorable evidence of the war's violence to my town and the surrounding landscape. I might have known of war orphans in my town.

All of this makes me wonder what this kind reception this film might have had in American theaters, at a time when we here spoke little of that war anymore and called our involvement in Korea a "police action." Would movie-goers want to see our jaunty Bing Crosby living half in the past and half-tortured with the question of whether a somewhat odd and uncoordinated French orphan might actually be his son rather than someone elses? And, in the subsequent years, would such a movie be high on the list of those TV stations would replay in their program schedules (I don't remember seing it on TV)? While it is intensely the story of a war-broken family, representative of countless others, it might not have been regarded in 1950s and 60s America as "family entertainment." Perhaps others know much more than I about how well the film was greeted in the US and elsewhere.

Regarding the structure of the film, it is a story that spans several years, both for the characters involved and for international history. How to condense time and connect scenes scattered over a long period is a challenge for filmmakers. I wonder if there is any other film of Bing Crosby's in which he speaks anywhere near so many lines of narration. Could not action have been used to dramatize more, doing without so much exposition, one might certainly wonder as the film progresses. Yet, the pattern of Bing's character narrating makes it possible for him to speak his misgivings directly to the audience after his first meeting of the boy and the crusty Mother Superior who ran the orphanage in the film's second half. I'm not sure how we could have learned that so well otherwise.

Then, too, much of his misgivings are dramatized, as with his physical distance from the boy much of the time at the start of their first walk together, partly because he was counseled not to be too emotional by the old nun, but likely also the result of his doubts. The character of the old nun is quite fascinating, partly because she ultimately reveals two characters: the stern one administering the orphanage somewhat dispassionately, and then, toward the very end, a deeply caring protector of the children -- a war veteran certainly herself -- and a powerfully committed advocate for their having a future. What an interesting contrast this movie seems to make when compared with "Bells of St. Mary's," not only because the latter is more obviously a heart-warming movie throughout, but also because there is no Father O'Malley in this religious establishment ... unless there is a small touch of his street-wise insight and optimism in the old nun running the orphanage.

It was so, so long after the brief scene in which Bing sang at a party with Lisa, his wife-to-be whom he had just met, in the beginning of the film, before he sang again in this movie that I stopped expecting him to sing more. Then eventually I began to think, when a few more songs finally occurred rather naturally in later scenes, that these songs had to be there. What an intensely sad and troubling movie it might have been if not for those few songs slipping in during the second half.

That several people proceed (in inevitably conflicting ways) to try to help the boy and Bing unite as a family, and in doing so succeed more in complicating Bing's character's decision about whether he is his son and whether or not to take him in any case, certainly frustrates a viewer's expectations for how things might work out for the good. That near the end of the film, Bing and his old French friend from before the war reach what may be a breaking point in their friendship, because the friend insists Bing accept Lisa's violent death during the war, place's Bing's character in an even more troubled and psycologically ALONE position as he prepares to leave the town where the orphanage is located to return to Paris. He is saying this is to take time to come to a decision about the boy, but his secret agreement to travel with a blonde flusey promising to help him forget for a few days, creates another situation in which we not only must begin to agree with his old friend that he is self-delusional, but we also don't like him very much.

We don't like him (or is it his human frailty and self-doubt) until his own concience, triggered by a trainwhistle and a memory, makes him return to the orphanage, to discover that the boy (Jean /John) has recognized something from the past that no one could have prompted him about. I admit, I couldn't help misting up.

In one neighborhood where a I grew up a friend's mom, I learned, was a "war bride" from Italy. Maria was a very sweet lady, who my mother liked very much. If she had a sad tale to tell about her town during or after the war, I never heard of it. She was just Mickey's mom. In school, I read of the Marshall Plan, our helping Europe rebuild, but I don't think those paragraphs mentioned orphans or that the rebuilding was still going on. But in high school I had a teacher who had been about my age when his city of Stettin, Poland, was traded among armies during and just after WWII. His first library, in the basement of a bombed-out building, consisted of books he had collected from the rubble of his city at age fifteen. A college teacher I had years later, had grown up in utter poverty with her mother in a European town very slow to recover from that war.

Perhaps it is that "Little Boy Lost" is wholly set in France, and briefly Britain, without hardly any mention of life in the USA, that causes me to continually revisit what I knew (and when I knew it) about that setting, particularly Europe after the war. There is actually far less mention of life in America in this film than there is in "Casablanca." Mentionings of happy neighborhoods back in the old USA pepper nearly every war movie I can remember, but not this one. In this film, while we suspect Bing's character will return to his home country eventually, with his son if he determines he has found him, America is not held out as some dream place where they will live happily ever after, as is the case in more than a few American war movies. The film keeps us far too deeply worried about whether he will identify who he and his son are and what his true dream and future are, and whether that will include the boy. A peaceful and happy America isn't employed as shorthand for the solution in this film. As the old nun clarifies the question of whether Bing's character and the boy need each other in order to both find their futures is the key issue. And to her, the boy is one of many whose welfare and futures keep her awake at night. While the film lets this one family mend, we acknowlege gratefully, I don't think it means to let us forget that this orphan and his father are but representatives of many. That is a much more serious dose of reality than many people might expect from a Bing Crosby movie, or an American musical movie of its time.

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