Bling Bing

I grew up disliking Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong. In the 50's, 60's and 70's they were caricatures of their former greatness-being over exposed on the likes of Ed Sullivan type shows. Louis appeared to be a "Tom" and Crosby a lousy father and a right winger. But this is from Allen Barra's review of Gary Giddins' excellent bio of Crosby, "A Pocketful of Dreams"
"Here are some points on which you could get a solid consensus among historians: He was the most popular recording artist of all time, selling more records and earning more radio listeners than anyone else, and for longer than anyone else, nearly a quarter of a century. No one else was even close, and in terms of a share of the recording market, no one is close today. And the records represented only a part of Crosby's popularity. For nearly two decades he was a leading box office attraction, placing No. 1 for five straight years. He was the most popular radio singer of all time and probably created the idea of the "popular" singer as we know it. Giddins is on firmer ground when evaluating Crosby's musical influence. He was "the first white vocalist to appreciate and assimilate the genius of Louis Armstrong: his rhythm, his emotions, his comedy, his spontaneity ... Bing was the first (pop singer) to render the lyrics of a modern ballad with purpose, the first to suggest an erotic undercurrent." And: "With the microphone elaborating the subtleties of his delivery, Bing was reinventing popular music as a personal and consequently erotic medium." The more so because it is precisely the musical Bing Crosby who gets lost as the book goes on. The truth of the matter is that while Bing Crosby the artist and Bing Crosby the phenomenon are interesting subjects, Bing Crosby the man really isn't. Giddins has some interesting revelations to throw out -- that Louis Armstrong introduced Bing to marijuana, which he later recommended to his oldest son as preferable to alcohol, that the ultraconservative Hollywood veteran opposed the Vietnam War, that Crosby's fabled friendship with Bob Hope didn't really begin till they had been working together for more than 20 years"
Check out this foursome of greats (update-the sinatra folks had all traces of him removed from youtube-how uncool-but here's Bing withe Supremes