Bing Crosby Biography

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor whose career lasted from 1926 until his death in 1977.

Arguably the first true multi-media star, Bing Crosby's influence on popular culture and popular music is enormous -- from 1934 to 1954 he held a nearly unrivaled command of record sales, radio ratings and motion picture grosses. He was usually considered to be a member of popular music's "holy trinity" of ultra-icons, alongside Elvis Presley and The Beatles¹, and is currently the most recorded human voice in history (Schwartz, 1995) [1]

Crosby is also credited as being the major inspiration for most of the male singers that followed him, including the likes of Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Dean Martin. Tony Bennett summed up Crosby's impact, stating, "Bing created a culture. He contributed more to popular music than any other person - he moulded popular music. Every singer in the business has taken something from Crosby. Every male singer has a Bing Crosby idiosyncrasy." ¹

Yank magazine recognized Crosby as the person who had done the most for American GI morale during World War II [2] and, during his peak years, around 1948, polls declared him the "most admired man alive" ahead of Jackie Robinson and The Pope. (Philadelphia Courier, 22 November 1947) Also during 1948, the Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music. [3]

Crosby also exerted a massive influence on the development of the postwar recording industry. In 1947 he invested US$50,000 in the Ampex company, which developed the world's first commercial reel-to-reel tape recorder, and Crosby became the first performer in the world to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings on magnetic tape. He gave one of the first Ampex Model 200 recorders to his friend, musician Les Paul, which led directly to Paul's invention of multitrack recording. He was, along with Frank Sinatra, one of the principal backers behind the famous United Western Recorders studio complex in Los Angeles.

In 1962, Crosby was the first person to receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Harry Lillis Crosby was born in Tacoma, Washington on May 3, 1903 in a house that his father built (1112 North J Street, Tacoma, Washington). His family later moved to Spokane, Washington in 1906 to find work. He was the fourth of seven children - five boys Larry (1895-1975), Everett (born 1896), Ted (born 1900) and Bob (1913-1993) and two girls Catherine (born 1905) and Mary Rose (born 1907) - born to English-American Harry Lowe Crosby (1871-1950), a bookkeeper and Irish-American Catherine Harrigan (1873-1964), (affectionately known as Kate), the daughter of a builder from County Mayo in Ireland. His paternal ancestors Thomas Prence and Patience Brewster were born in England and immigrated to the U.S. in the 17th century; Brewster's family came over on the Mayflower.

It should be noted that Bing Crosby had no birth certificate and that his birth date was shrouded in mystery until his childhood Roman Catholic church in Tacoma, Washington, released the baptismal records that revealed his date of birth.

In 1910 Crosby was forever renamed. The six-year-old Harry Lillis discoved a full page feature in the Sunday edition of Spokesman-Review, "The Bingville Bugle." The "Bugle," written by humorist Newton Newkirk, was a parody of a hillbilly newsletter complete with gossipy tidbits, minstrel quips, creative spelling and mock ads. A neighbor, 15-year-old Valentine Hobart, shared Crosby's enthusiasm for "The Bugle," and noting Crosby's laugh, took a likeing to him and called him Bingo from Bingville. The last vowel was dropped and the name shortened to Bing, which stuck.

In 1917 Crosby took a summer job as property boy at Spokane's "Auditorium" where he witnessed some of the finest acts of the day, including a blackface performer named Al Jolson who spellbound Crosby with his ad-libbing and spoofs of Hawaiian songs that brought down the house. Crosby would later say that, "To me, he was the greatest entertainer who ever lived."

Bing enrolled in the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College in Spokane, Washington in the fall of 1920 with the intent to become a lawyer. He maintained a B+ average. While in Gonzaga he sent away for a set of mail order drums. After much practice he soon became good enough and was invited to join a local band which was made up of mostly local high school kids called the "Musicaladers," managed by one Al Rinker. He made so much money doing this he decided to drop out of school during his final year, to pursue a career in show business.

Bing Crosby's desire to pre-record his radio shows, combined with a dissatisfaction with the available aluminum recording disks, was a significant factor in the development of magnetic tape recording and the radio industry's adoption of it. He used his power to innovate new methods of reproducing himself. In 1946 he wanted to shift from live performance to recorded transcriptions for his weekly radio show on NBC sponsored by Kraft. But NBC and competitor CBS refused to allow recorded radio programs (except for advertisements).

The live production of radio shows was a deeply-established tradition reinforced by the musicians' union and ASCAP. The Mutual network, on the other hand, had pre-recorded some of its programs as early as the Summer 1938 run of The Shadow with Orson Welles. The new ABC network, formed out of the sale of the old NBC Blue network in 1943 to Edward Noble, the "Lifesaver King," was willing to join Mutual in breaking the tradition. It would pay Crosby $30,000 per week to produce a recorded show every Wednesday sponsored by Philco. He would also get $40,000 from 400 independent stations for the rights to broadcast the 60-minute show that was sent to them every Monday on three 16-inch aluminum discs that played 10 minutes per side at 33? rpm. Crosby wanted to change to recorded production for several reasons. The legend that has been most often told is that it would give him more time for his golf game. And he did record his first Philco program in August 1947 so he could enter the Jasper National Park Invitational Gold Tournament in September when the new radio season was to start. But golf was not the most important reason.

Crosby was always an early riser and hard worker. He sought better quality through recording, not more spare time. He could eliminate mistakes and control the timing of performances. Because his own Bing Crosby Enterprises produced the show, he could purchase the latest and best sound equipment and arrange the microphones his way (mic placement had long been a hotly-debated issue in every recording studio since the beginning of the electrical era). No longer would he have to wear the hated toupee on his head previously required by CBS and NBC for his live audience shows (Bing preferred a hat). He could also record short promotions for his latest investment, the world's first frozen orange juice to be sold under the brand name Minute Maid.

Bing Crosby was a fan of Thoroughbred horse racing and bought his first racehorse in 1935. In 1937 he became a founding partner and member of the Board of Directors of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, a race track at Del Mar, California. [5]. One of Crosby's closet friends was Lindsay Howard, for whom he named his son Lindsay and from whom he would purchase his 40-room Hillsborough estate in 1965. Lindsay Howard was the son of millionaire businessman Charles S. Howard who owned a successful racing stable that included Seabiscuit. Charles S. Howard would join Crosby as a founding partner and director of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.

Crosby and Lindsay Howard formed Binglin Stable to race and breed thoroughbred horses at a ranch in Moorpark in Ventura County, California. They also established the Binglin stock farm in Argentina where they raced horses at Hipódromo de Palermo in Palermo, Buenos Aires. Binglin stable purchased a number of Argentine-bred horses and shipped them back to race in the United States. On August 12, 1938, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club hosted a $25,000 winner-take-all match race won by Charles S. Howard's Seabiscuit over Binglin Stable's Ligaroti. Binglin's horse Don Bingo won the 1943 Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York.

The Binglin Stable partnership came to an end in 1953 as a result of a liquidation of assets by Crosby in order to raise the funds necessary to pay the federal and state inheritance taxes on his deceased wife's estate. [6]

The Bing Crosby Breeders' Cup Handicap at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club is named in his honor.

These Are Crosby's Gramophone records or LPs.