Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams

December 11, 2000
Jazz critic Giddins's latest subject will probably surprise those who think of Bing Crosby (1903-1977) as "a square old man who made orange-juice commercials" and sang "White Christmas" every year on TV. Giddins reminds us that, in the 1920s and '30s, Crosby was a very jazzy singer indeed: "the first white performer to appreciate and assimilate the genius of Louis Armstrong." This sober, comprehensive biography lacks the thematic breadth and action-packed sentences that made Giddins's Visions of Jazz so memorable, but it's a perceptive portrait of Crosby as a man, a singer, a radio personality and a budding movie star in the loose, creative years before he hardened into a monument. Giddins's account of Crosby's middle-class, Irish-American youth in Washington State astutely stresses this singer's years of Jesuit schooling, which made him unusually well educated for a performer and grounded him in values that contributed to the modesty, reserve and self-confidence American audiences found so appealing. Tracing Crosby's rise through vaudeville, Paul Whiteman's band, short films and radio shows, Giddins also offers a mini-history of technology's impact on popular music, most notably Crosby's famous ability to use a microphone to create a more intimate singing style. There's a bit too much background on minor characters and on forgettable films before readers arrive at The Road to Singapore, which launched Crosby's epochal partnership with Bob Hope. But Giddins amply makes his case that Crosby "came along when American entertainment was at a crossroads showed it which road to take." Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.) Forecast: Giddins has long been popular among serious jazz fans, and his name recognition jumped after Visions of Jazz won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998. The first volume of a multipart biography, this book will be further boosted by advertising and an eight-city author tour, including an appearance on Ken Burns's PBS documentary, Jazz, airing in January.

December 20, 2000
Here, Giddins, the author of biographies on Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong and winner of the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for Visions of Jazz, has created a detailed, finely documented, and fascinating account of the early career of one of America's leading entertainers of the 20th century. Written with access to rare, unpublished materials, this lengthy work chronicles Crosby's life as well as his singing, recording, radio, and film careers up to 1940, the year of the first of his popular "Road" movies with Bob Hope. Giddins not only corrects a number of popular biographical misconceptions about Crosby but also presents a well-reasoned argument for viewing the singer as a figure of prime importance in the early development of vocal jazz--a contribution later obscured by Crosby's work as a ballad singer and film star. Musicians, fans of popular American song, and film buffs will greatly value this thoughtful critical analysis of Crosby's work in virtually all fields of America's entertainment industry of the 1920s and 1930s. Highly recommended for all libraries. [This is being published to coincide with the author's appearance in Ken Burns's PBS documentary, Jazz.--Ed.]--James E. Perone, Mount Union Coll. Alliance, OH

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 9, 2018
The legendary crooner segues from edgy jazz singer to national paterfamilias in the second volume of Giddins’s scintillating biography. Jazz journalist and scholar Giddins (Satchmo) revisits the WWII era, when Bing Crosby was at the height of his popularity with a radio show, chart-topping records like “White Christmas” (still the world’s all-time bestselling single), a string of hit movies from the cutup comedy Road to Morocco to his classic turn as Father O’Malley in Going My Way. He also performed at innumerable USO gigs for the troops, including a show on the frontline during which his audience was called away to repel a German attack. He became, Giddins argues, a new paradigm of American masculinity: manly, down-to-earth, easygoing, unflappable, and a comfortably reassuring pillar of faith and family in chaotic times. (Crosby hid the dysfunctions in his own family, including his wife’s alcoholism and depression and his own harsh parenting style, which featured occasional beatings of his sons with a metal-studded leather belt.) Giddins packs exhaustive research and detail into his sprawling narrative while keeping the prose relaxed and vivid, and sprinkles in shrewd critical assessments of Crosby’s music and films. Crosby emerges as an aloof, cool cat, and Giddins’s engrossing show-biz bio richly recreates the popular culture he helped define.

Starred review from December 1, 2000
Those who remember Bing Crosby only for "White Christmas" may be surprised to find jazz-critic Giddins, the author of books on Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker, singing Der Bingle's praises as "one of the handful of artists who remade American music in the 1920s." Through a combination of careful research and precise, remarkably insightful analysis of vocal technique, Giddins shows how Crosby, the first white singer to recognize the genius of Louis Armstrong, remade our notion of pop singer (the term didn't even exist before Crosby), developing a vocal style that was based on intimacy and naturalness--the very opposite of the artificial, effeminate tenors who were fronting orchestras before Bing. Following Crosby's development from childhood in Spokane, Washington, through a revolutionary period with Paul Whiteman's band (where Bing quickly associated himself with other top jazzmen including Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer, and Joe Venuti), and on to his phenomenal solo career, on record, on radio, and in the movies, Giddins reveals how Crosby transformed mass entertainment, whether it was teaching a generation of American singers how to use a microphone or redefining what it means for an actor to "play himself." Above all, though, there was the Crosby persona: "Bing was quintessentially American, cool and upbeat, never pompous, belligerent, or saccharine, never smug or superior. He looked down on no one and up to no one." Or, as Artie Shaw put it: "Bing Crosby was the first hip white person born in the United States." In the course of reestablishing Bing as a hipster, Giddins has contributed a landmark study of popular singing in the first half of the twentieth century. But, like Bing, he does it without pomposity, and he swings. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)