Bing Crosby (12 page)

Ted was taller than Bing, his coloring similar — blue eyes, a darker shade of brown hair. A keen reader, he kept to himself,
inventing a fantasy life and exploring it in a profusion of short stories, poems, and essays. Bing ended up living much of
what Ted imagined. Ted would
raise a family in Spokane, where for most of his life he worked at the Washington Water Power Company. In his one book,
The Story of Bing Crosby,
published in 1946, he depicts himself in childhood as a would-be inventor, disowning entirely the years he put into his writing.
Yet unlike that frivolous and highly fictionalized account, some of his early stories suggest a darker view of his rivalry
with Bing.

Ted’s “When Black Is White,” for example, published in
Gonzaga
a couple of months before Bing graduated from high school, establishes as its villain Dr. Howard Croye, “a gifted speaker,”
very popular, and “deeply interested in church work.” “Aristocratic in habits and faultless in attire,” he charms a millionaire
mining magnate into financing his construction of a sanatorium. Howard absconds with the money, eventually returning to the
sanatorium to die an agonizing death. In contrast, the dependable center of the story is a journalist, Jim (Ted’s middle name
was John), who uncovers the deception and brings salvation to the children of Howard and the philanthropist he destroyed.
⁵⁴

The month Bing graduated,
Gonzaga
published his sole offering, a poem in celebration of wealth, renown, exotic climes, and dreamy languor. It stood out in
stark contrast to Ted’s odes to fallen heroes, God, Gonzaga, duty, Crosby seafarers, Lincoln, the Northwest and to those of
every other Gonzaga poet, who invariably evoked patriotism, mother, and God.

While lying on my couch one night

I dreamed a dream of wondrous light.

I thought I was an ancient king

Of the Mystic East — I heard them sing

My praises high in accents grand,

While cymbals echoed loud — and

As I sat in robes of white

With vassals kneeling left and right,

Strong, dusky slaves from Hindustan

Alighting from the caravan

Upon their heads and in their arms

Bore spice and all the Orient’s charms,

While flowed the music soft and sweet

They piled them high about my feet.

But I was snatched from this away In rudeness by the dawn of day.

— Harry L. Crosby, H.S. ’20
⁵⁵

Some believe that only those who admit to themselves that they crave wealth and prestige can obtain them. Only in “A King,”
a thin, dashed-off indulgence consigned to a volume of juvenilia, did Bing ever come close to acknowledging his ambitions,
at least in public. All his life — on radio, in films, press releases, magazines, and interviews — Bing portrayed himself
and was portrayed by others as an unambitious man to whom splendid things happened, deservedly, without his ever really chasing
fortune. Bing’s ambivalence about worldly success was made manifest in the early stages of his career, when he did everything
possible to sabotage himself. It was as if success were acceptable only as a gift, unexpected and unsought. Despite his hard
work and desperate longing, he never publicly allowed that he merited his special fate.

Fifty-two students received diplomas from Gonzaga on June 9, 1920, the largest graduating class that the high school had ever
produced. Students had a choice of pursuing a diploma in a general or classical course, and Bing received his in the latter.
Nearly a month before, the class and faculty had celebrated with a picnic and sporting events at Liberty Lake, eighteen miles
east, where the graduates rented canoes and swam in the recently opened pool. On June 7 the
Spokane Daily Chronicle
announced the list of those who would speak at graduation, among them two representatives of the student body, Frank Corkery
and Bing. In an accompanying photograph, Bing sports a necktie (as do the others) but looks drowsy and exhibits not a trace
of the slight smiles the others share.

Graduation exercises took place on a Wednesday afternoon in the gym, and after the Gonzaga orchestra played the overture,
“Columbia,” Harry L. Crosby was introduced as the first speaker. His speech was “The Purpose of Education,” a text that has
not survived. Corkery delivered the valedictory. Bing was not awarded class honors, so his prominent role in the ceremony
must be construed as an acknowledgment of his elocutionary and speech-making skills. Among other speakers was the Reverend
Charles E. Carroll, S.J., prefect of studies,
who became dean of the faculty in 1922 and overseer of the Bing Crosby Library in 1957.

Bing had slimmed down in the past year — the chubby, grinning boy of his freshman pictures was now lanky and serious, his
face longer and leaner, his voice deeper and more controlled. But he was a year younger than his classmates and looked it.
A downtown dance hall refused him admission one evening, sending him away in humiliation. For all his singing, Bing had not
yet fixed his star on music, though a friend later recalled his listening to a Jolson record and marveling aloud that by singing
a couple of songs Al earned enough money to buy a car.

His taste in music began to lean toward jazz, an almost unavoidable partiality given the raging popularity in 1917 of the
Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a second-rate ensemble that had the distinction of making the earliest jazz records. A white
band from New Orleans, the ODJB created a sensation in New York with novel, noisy, and irreverent music, including instrumental
barnyard imitations on “Livery Stable Blues.” Its fans included black songwriter Shelton Brooks, whose “Darktown Strutters’
Ball” was the ODJB’s first record. (Columbia Records, offended by the loud, poorly engineered performance, shelved it until
Victor picked up the ball and produced a series of ODJB hits.)

By 1923 many superior black bands were recording and performing for mixed northern audiences, diminishing the ODJB’s status
to that of a jazz popularizer. But in the interim, countless bands throughout the country followed the ODJB’s lead, blending
the rudiments of ragtime, jazz, blues, marches, vaudeville, dance music, and popular songs, and young people devoured their
recordings.

Among the performers Bing and his friends recalled listening to —in addition to Jolson, John McCormack, and other singers
— were Six Brown Brothers, a saxophone choir (soprano on the high end, bass on the bottom) popular on the vaudeville circuit
and through such buoyant recordings as “That Moaning Saxophone Rag” and its own version of “Darktown Strutters’ Ball,” as
well as adaptations of arias, and Art Hickman, the pioneering San Francisco-based bandleader who composed the standard “Rose
Room” and codified big band or dance band instrumentation — in effect, setting the stage for Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. They
listened to Hawaiian bands with
steel guitars and comedy records, like Joe Hayman’s million-selling “Cohen on the Telephone,” and everything else that came
through town. Every new record was a mystery until it was played.

In the summer of 1920, with the rigors of Gonzaga University approaching, Bing felt a need to escape Spokane. He was bored
with excursions to Newman and Liberty Lakes, where small bands played at dances; he had had enough caddying and swimming for
a while. He wanted to see something of the world and break loose even for a short time from the house on East Sharp. After
the war Larry returned home, teaching high school while working nights and summers at the newspaper. Everett rushed through
Spokane like a storm, traveling on to Portland, where he claimed to be clerking in a hotel.

Bing and his friend Paul Teters resolved to leave town for a couple of months. A want ad in the paper alerted them to a job
for two men to work on an alfalfa farm in Cheney, Washington, half an hour away by train, for two bucks a day and board. After
securing permission from their parents, they left in the morning and presented themselves for work. The alfalfa farmer was
underwhelmed — they were young and inexperienced — and he offered them a dollar each. They grudgingly accepted.

Two decades later Bing bought an 8,700-acre cattle ranch in Elko, Nevada, and insisted that his sons do haying and other exhausting
tasks along with the paid cowhands. Gary, the eldest, bridled at the drudgery and years later smiled knowingly upon learning
that his father had been no more enamored of farming than Gary had been of ranching. After two weeks of milking cows and putting
up alfalfa for forage, Bing and Paul decided to quit. Returning home was out of the question. Luckily, though, Everett Crosby
was in Portland, 400 miles west, and he would certainly put them up and maybe find them work. The boys hiked to a water tower
where the evening freight train stopped to replenish, and under cover of darkness stole a ride.

They were dusty and rank by the time they pulled into Portland and rushed to the hotel where Everett clerked, only to find
out that he did not work there. They were asked to remove their scruffy selves from the lobby. Confused but emboldened, the
boys turned their sights on Los Angeles, hopping a southbound Shasta Limited. They got as far as Roseburg, where a railroad
bull collared them and put
them in a cattle car heading back to Portland. This time they ran into Everett on the street, toting two wicker suitcases
full of bootleg hooch. He told them to meet him later at the Shaw Hotel and gave them a dollar for a movie. After the picture
show, the hungry boys looked down the street and saw a sign advertising a second-story Chinese restaurant. They split a dish
of chop suey and, after Bing diverted the owner by shoving menus off the front counter, raced down the stairs without paying.
An alert policeman tracked them to Everett’s room and arrested them. Everett paid the lunch bill, and they were released with
the magistrate’s warning to leave town.

Bing wrote to Kate and told her not to worry, knowing she would worry less about yet another of his minor scrapes than the
possibility that he might not want to return to school in September. Kate’s brother George met the boys in Portland and took
them to the West-dale mills, where they boarded a logging train to a camp Bing’s cousin Lloyd operated for Weyerhaeuser Lumber.
Jobs were offered: Paul chose to return home while Bing signed on as a topographer scouting trails. Somehow he gashed his
knee with an axe — in one retelling, he said he gashed both knees in consecutive accidents. He clearly wanted out of that
forest, even in memory. Gonzaga University now promised relief, like mass after a morning at the Everyman’s Club.

No doubt the appeal of minstrelsy came from these draughts upon a common reminiscence, stirring some essential wish or remembrance.

— Constance Rourke,
American Humor
(1931)
¹

Although Bing quickly decided against becoming a priest, he did reach a compromise that appeased Kate. Lawyering was reasonably
honorable and solid and would make use of his gifts for elocution and debate. Kate could also console herself with the fact
that law school would keep him at home for another couple of years. Frank Corkery, who served mass with Bing, did not think
that his friend gave much thought to the priesthood — not this independent young man who dreamed of sultanic riches while
nosing around in skid-row muck, who had lately managed to turn what promised to be a brief stint on a nearby farm into a flight
to the coast, an aborted trip south, and a narrow escape from what he liked to quaintly refer to as durance vile.

Gonzaga University was not, however, a mere continuance of high school. Though the student body numbered no more than 300,
many of them neighborhood boys, the university harbored its own prejudices, directed against day students like Bing, who were
not permitted to partake of dormitory activities. Bing and the other townies were required to leave campus by half past four,
except for the one
evening per week when the debating society met. The “boarders,” students from outside Spokane, considered Bing’s crowd mere
provincials and demanded they prove themselves. But Bing never had any trouble making friends. He was “a cheerful and appealing
guy,” in Ray Flaherty’s recollection, “a knowledgeable, very entertaining person to be around.”
²
Still, the boarders did not make it easy for him. Though he ultimately disarmed them with his voice, at first he was reluctant
to sing formally and switched his musical inclinations to the drums. “I didn’t have to learn a feeling for music and for rhythm,”
Bing observed. “I was born with that.”

Had the Crosbys not lived in the vicinity, they could not have afforded Bing’s schooling. Boarders paid $265.50 a semester.
Day students paid only $80.50 (thirty dollars more than high school), payable on registration day.
³
When he took up drums in the spring of his freshman year, Bing was obliged to pay an additional $7.50 for use of the instrument.
When in his junior year he enrolled in the combined college and law course, which conferred bachelor’s and law degrees in
six years, his tuition per semester increased another seventy-five dollars. Sensitive to his parents’ investment in his education,
Bing applied himself for the first two years, fulfilling requirements in English, Latin, modern languages (Spanish and French),
public speaking, mathematics, and religion. “A man of fair capacity who has conscientiously followed this curriculum,” pledged
the
Gonzaga Register
of 1920, “will thus be in touch and sympathy with progress in every field of intellectual activity.”
⁴