Bing Crosby (40 page)

One of the most significant things Bing learned from Louis was that the contagious pulse later called swing did not have to
be exclusive
to jazz. It was a universally expressive technique that could deepen the interpretation of any song in any setting. However
subtle or modest, that pulse created a steady grid while focusing the song’s momentum. Bing’s uncanny ability to hear “the
one” — the downbeat of each measure — was unheard of among white singers in the 1920s. It never left him. Jake Hanna, the
drummer in Bushkin’s quartet, insisted, “Bing had the best, the absolute best time. And I played with Count Basie and that’s
great time. You just followed him and he carried you right along, and so unassuming.”
³⁵
Most of the singers who imitated Bing in the twenties and thirties — Russ Columbo, Perry Como, Dick Todd — took the superficial
aspects of his style without the jazz foundation, which is why so much of their work is antiquated. Bing, on the other hand,
did not imitate Armstrong; he understood that Louis’s message was to be yourself. That meant not simulating a black aesthetic
but applying it to who he was and what he knew as a Northwestern third-generation Anglo-Irish Catholic, reared on John McCormack
and Al Jolson, Dixieland and dance music, elocution and minstrelsy, comedy and vaudeville.

In addition to exemplary time and articulation, Bing was blessed with sterling pitch. “He was always on target,” said Milt
Hinton, who played bass with the Bushkin quartet. “He was very theoretical about his singing, about diction and dynamics and
things like that. I said, ‘How in the hell do you do that?’ He said, ‘Well, I get in my car and go to the golf course and
I’m singing in my car, and when I’m playing I’m singing.’ His selection of words and what the meaning of a particular word
was — he would really think about it, you know. You usually just hear a guy sing, but Bing knew the meaning of words and how
he wanted the band to accent those certain things.”
³⁶

To the mix as developed by Smith, Waters, and Armstrong, Bing added three elements that proved crucial to the fulfillment
of popular singing: his expansive repertoire, expressive intimacy, and spotless timbre. Those facets grounded him as the first
great ballad singer in jazz. Ethel Waters recorded a few ballads before Bing, but in a bold, plangent style more appropriate
to vaudeville than romance. Bing prompted singers — and instrumentalists — to go beyond the familiar repertoire, even as he
inspired songsmiths to handcraft ballads suitable to his singular talent. His sound had little precedent: rich, strong, masculine,
and clean. Listeners who were put off by vernacular
growls and moans could understand his relatively immaculate approach. Having absorbed his early influences, he rarely borrowed
the expressive colorations of the blues. His one accommodation to the pervasive use of melisma was the Irish mordent. His
phrasing was his own, aggressive yet gentle, heartfelt yet humorous.

Few patrons at the Cocoanut Grove could have foreseen how far Bing’s renown would advance. But thousands of fans, even at
that early stage, knew they were hearing something new and personal — a performer who sang to you, not at you, who told a
story, who made you cry and laugh. The movie colony adopted and championed him. Veteran actor Walter Huston remembered him
in those days as “one of the most likable, friendly fellows that I have ever met.”
³⁷
Most of those cheering were of the younger generation. Lupe Velez introduced Bing to Gary Cooper, who became a good pal;
they sailed together, often with Richard Arlen. When Bing finally won the attention of the studios, he turned down generous
offers from Fox and Warners to follow Cooper to Paramount; a year later he named his first son after him.

Songwriters and publishers often dropped by the Grove, as did directors and producers. So did childhood friends, including
Bing’s Gonzaga rival, Mike Pecarovich, who now coached at Loyola and occasionally brought his students to hear Bing. Bud Brubaker,
a Pecarovich ballplayer who later became operations manager at Del Mar racetrack, recalled, “It was always jam-packed. They
had a small dance floor and everybody was dancing. The Rhythm Boys would come out and sing six or eight songs during the evening’s
program and Bing was already the leader. His style was completely different than anybody else. We’d dress semiformal and everybody
had a date. It was Prohibition so they couldn’t serve booze. You brought your own. What you’d do is order fruit punch or something
like that and they would bring you a setup and then you’d pour your own under the table. No one bothered you.”
³⁸

One of Bing’s most eminent fans was Duke Ellington, visiting Hollywood to make his feature debut in the Amos ‘n’ Andy vehicle
Check and Double Check.
Duke’s spot required him to introduce the Kalmar and Ruby song “Three Little Words,” but at rehearsal it was evident that
the three members of his brass section assigned the vocal could not handle it. When another trio fared no better, Ellington
told the
producer to hire the Rhythm Boys. Given the decree against exhibiting white singers with a black band (never mind that the
stars of the movie were white actors in blackface), the boys were set up behind the backdrop with a separate microphone. The
number was filmed and recorded live. As they sang, the three Ellington musicians lip-synched — it was the kind of charade
parodied in
Singin’ in the Rain.
Ellington asked the Rhythm Boys to sing on the record, too, and by December “Three Little Words” topped every sales chart
in the country. During the next decade Ellington refused to hire a male vocalist until he could find one (Herb Jeffries) who
sang a la Bing.

Another movie deal was sealed at the Grove, but this time the request was for Bing alone. Edmund Goulding, who was writing
and directing a Douglas Fairbanks musical,
Reaching for the Moon,
was so entranced by Bing that he asked executive Joe Schenck to hire Crosby to sing “When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low
Down,” the jazziest number in the Irving Berlin score. Bing’s screen time is little more than a minute: he bursts into an
ocean-liner lounge with a greeting, “Hi, gang!” and sings one rocking chorus, arms waving in rhythm, then listens as the song
is reprised by leading lady Bebe Daniels and June MacCloy, a Paramount starlet on loan. When the footage was edited, United
Artists cut out all but one of the songs and released the film as a romantic comedy — enraging Berlin, who never allowed UA
to use his work after that.

Bing’s was the only number that survived. He shot it late at night (again, without prerecording), after finishing a set at
the Grove. “We went in cold as cucumbers,” recalled June MacCloy. “We heard the song and they just told us where to come in.
It seems to me Bing may have had a chance to sing the whole song and that it was cut down. I think he liked having the job,
because we were well paid, but he was disgusted because we were supposed to do another song that was never shot. Edward Everett
Horton was also in the film and he talked with Bing quite a bit. They laughed and talked a lot. Everyone liked Bing, he was
very likable. He didn’t change keys on things. Everybody was pleased about that. Once in a while, when they were getting ready
to take another shot, he’d be by the piano, but they never had to change the key for him.”
³⁹

Fairbanks insisted that the crew break every day at four for tea, and though Bing did no filming during the afternoons, he
liked to drop by and the cast liked having him. Songwriters and musicians who visited
to carouse with Fairbanks also wanted to meet Bing. As far as MacCloy could see, all Bing drank was tea. “We started laughing,
like ‘What kind of sissy stuff is this?’ But we liked it. We were quite tickled that Fairbanks insisted that the grips have
some too. There was caviar and everything on the table, and I’m talking about the real good stuff. They must have spent a
bloody fortune on that. Bing used to come to those and everybody wanted him to sing, because we had been down to the Ambassador,
always dressed to the nines, to hear him with Al Rinker and Harry Barris, who were flying. After that he still sang at the
Ambassador, and every time I had a date and went down there, Bing gave me recognition from the stand. I was very pleased about
that and my date would say, ‘Oh, you know him, you know Bing?’”
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Bing’s friendship with Louis Armstrong, presaged by Mildred Bailey, begun in Chicago, and advanced in Harlem, now deepened
in Los Angeles. Louis reminisced:

In 1930 I went out to California to join the band which was playing at Frank Sebastian’s Cotton Club. Bing and his Trio were
really romping with Gus Arnheim’s Orchestra at the Cocoanut Grove Hotel in Hollywood. The Cotton Club was out in Culver City.
Every night between their outfit and our outfit, we used to
Burn up
the air,
every
night…. Yea — Bing & Gus Arnheim & Co would broadcast first every night and leave the ether wave sizzling hot. Just right
for us when we would burst on in there from the Cotton Club. Oh, it was lots of fun. The same listeners would catch both programs
before going to bed. After Bing — the band — Mr. Arnheim and boys would finish work at the Grove they would haul ashes over
to the Cotton Club where we were playing and swing with us, until Home Sweet Home was played. Sometimes he would come over
wearing his sharp uniform, the one I admired so much. It was a
hard
hitting blue with white buttons, which made him look (to me) like a young Captain on some high powered yacht. That’s when
he and Dixie Lee were CANOEING.
⁴¹

On September 29, with Bing reaping what by Hollywood standards was at least a nascent success and apparently controlling his
drinking, he and Dixie quit canoeing, discarded the advice of those who thought she was sacrificing a hot career to a ne’er-do-well,
and tied the knot. Dixie applied for the license under her birth name, thereby
keeping the wedding — at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Hollywood — a secret until the morning of the day it took
place; the license made out to Wilma Wyatt and Harry Crosby raised no flags. Not even her mother knew until the day of the
ceremony, when she and a dozen others received phone invitations from the couple. Dixie’s bridesmaid was a friend from high
school, Betty Zimmerman. Everett served as best man and provided his home for the reception.

The question of religious differences was kept quiet. Most people in and out of Hollywood assumed Dixie had taken her vows,
but she remained outside the Catholic Church until a conversion on her deathbed. If Bing asked her to convert early on, he
willingly accepted her refusal to do so. Kate Crosby, on the other hand, harbored a resentment that came roaring to the surface
when the marriage almost collapsed in the 1940s. Dixie agreed to raise the children Catholic, though she did not attend church
— a father-and-sons ritual — and was not pleased when the eldest boy, Gary, suggested he might like to become a priest. “Mom
never bad-mouthed the church,” Gary remembered. “On the contrary. Even though she wasn’t a Catholic, she was the one who stayed
on our case about showing up for mass on Sunday and meeting our other religious obligations. ‘If you’re going to be in a religion,’
she would lecture us, ‘if you’re doing something you believe in, then you do it all the way.’ Whenever Grandpa Wyatt started
in on one of his tirades against the pope and big-time religion, she shushed him on the spot.”
⁴²
Even in 1930 Bing never missed mass, no matter how late or wild the previous evening.

One Spokane paper loyally reported,
BING CROSBY WEDS ACTRESS
,
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but another accurately reflected the typical coverage:
SPOKANE BOY WEDS FILM STAR.
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Bing was thought to be coming up in the world. How far he had to go was implied by the account in the
New York Times,
headlined,
DIXIE LEE IS MARRIED:
“Dixie Lee, film actress, was married today to Murray Crosey, 26 years old, orchestra leader, at a simple church ceremony.”
⁴⁵
Most of Dixie’s fans got Bing’s name right but were not particularly wowed by her choice of husband. Basil Grillo, who was
“very enamored of Dixie Lee in those days,” remembered, “I was in college and absolutely heartbroken. I couldn’t figure out
why she would marry a lousy crooner. “ Grillo would eventually direct Bing Crosby Enterprises, earn the crooner his fortune,
and learn
that “Dixie was a very bright, smart woman, with the sharpest tongue anybody could ever imagine. She cut him down to size
fast. Man!”
⁴⁶

The
Los Angeles Times
concluded its report, “There isn’t to be any honeymoon trip as both young people are too busy in their professions at this
time to be able to spare time to go away.”
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Dixie later acknowledged that they did not honeymoon because they were strapped for money. They had yet to find a home and
for two weeks lived in Sue Carol’s house while Sue visited New York. Carol had become one of Dixie’s closest and most protective
friends, along with Pauline Weislow and Alice Ross, who later worked as Dixie’s secretary.

Dixie was a magnet for mother hens. Flo Haley recalled, “She was damned sweet. She never hurt anybody. But she was sensitive,
way down, and she didn’t have a sister. She needed people around her, like someone to console you, to say, ‘Come on, we’ll
go after this and do that.’ “
⁴⁸
Sue assuaged Dixie’s fears and sheltered her on and off the Fox lot. Eight years older than Dixie, she had social status
and knew the ropes. The two women became inseparable; when Sue’s marriage to actor Nick Stuart came apart, she stayed with
the Crosbys. They had both been relieved to marry and leave the business, though Sue demonstrated more than a touch of sentiment
when she named her daughter Carol Lee, fusing the names Hollywood bestowed upon her (Sue was born Evelyn Lederer) and upon
Dixie.