Bing Crosby (125 page)

“Pennies from Heaven” by John Burke and Arthur Johnston. © 1936 (renewed) Chappell & Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.

Excerpts from “Mr. Gallagher & Mr. Sheen” by Ed Gallagher and Al Sheen. © 1922 (renewed) EMI Mills Music, Inc. All rights
reserved. Used by permission. Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.

Excerpts from “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (And Dream Your Troubles Away),” lyric by Ted Koehler and Billy Moll, music by
Harry Barris. Copyright © 1931 Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc., New York. Copyright renewed. All rights for the extended term
administered by Fred Ahlert Music Corporation on behalf of Ted Koehler. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.

Excerpts from “What Do I Care, It’s Home,” lyrics by Roy Turk and music by Harry Smolin. Copyright © 1932 by Bourne Co. and
Cromwell Music Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission. International copyright secured.

“THE THING YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT BING CROSBY IS THAT HE WAS THE FIRST HIP WHITE PERSON BORN IN THE UNITED STATES.”

—ARTIE SHAW

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

SELECTED BY THE
LOS ANGELES TIMES
AND THE
WASHINGTON POST
AS ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS

A
NEW YORK TIMES
NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

Bing Crosby dominated American popular culture as no one ever has. From the dizzy era of Prohibition through the dark days
of the Second World War, he was the world’s most beloved entertainer. But he was also more than that: Bing Crosby was a musical
innovator who practically invented modern pop singing.

In this universally acclaimed biography, the eminent cultural critic Gary Giddins draws on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented
access to numerous archives as he brings Bing Crosby, his work, and his world to vivid life—and firmly reclaims Crosby’s central
role in American cultural history.

“Gary Giddins may be the best thing to happen to Bing Crosby since Bob Hope…. Crosby couldn’t have hoped for a finer biographer:
elegant writer, informed historian, thorough scholar, and one of America’s most eminent jazz critics.”

—John McDonough,
Wall Street Journal

“This is, quite simply, the best-researched, best-written, most entertaining music biography I’ve read.”

—Merrill Noden,
Mojo

“Phenomenal smarts and critical acumen…. A formidable biographer and exegetical wonder, Gary Giddins is so persuasive that
even the most skeptical post-Boomer should close the book with the eerie sensation that it’s Bing’s world after all—we just
live in it.”

—James Marcus,
Atlantic Monthly

Gary Giddins received the National Book Critics Circle Award for visions of
Jazz
in 1998. In 2001 he received the prestigious Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award for Bing Crosby:A
Pocketful of Dreams.
His other books include biographies of louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Giddins, who was featured in the ken Burns PBS
documentary Jazz,is a longtime columnist for the village voice and lives in New York City.

^*
“Watered any showcases” refers to the ritual of peeing in the flowers after a night out drinking; the
Chronicle
clipping is the January 1, 1926, article previously cited;
envious
was used synonymously for
enviable
in those days; the Ambassador Hotel housed the Cocoanut Grove; “classy looking twists” refers to women; the Foreign Club
was the largest gambling house in Tia Juana (now Tijuana); Jay is Jay Eslick, a San Diego-based drummer and booking agent
from Spokane and longtime drinking buddy of Bing’s; Ray Johnson led a band. (pn,130,
chap 8
)

^*
François Villon is today remembered as a very real fifteenth-century French poet. But early in the last century he was transfigured
into a popular fictional character in such works as Robert Louis Stevenson’s story “Lodging for the Night,” Justin H. McCarthy’s
novel
If I Were King,
and Rudolf Friml’s operetta
The Vagabond King.
(pn,313 ch16)