Details
Synopsis
In this comprehensive biography of Bing Crosby, Gary Giddins traces the star's life back to his wild childhood in Spokane, Washington, where Crosby--although an intelligent, popular boy--indulged in alcohol, women, and fist-fights. Eventually he realized his talent and secured a position in Paul Whiteman's orchestra, where he developed a style and an audience of his own. By the mid-1930s, Giddins points out that Crosby--between public appearances--was starring in three movies and recording around 40 albums per year. In addition to chronicling the legendary singer's rise to fame, Giddins offers keen insights into social and historical contexts. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.
| Size | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 37.6 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "Late in the spring of 1831, Bing Crosby's maternal great-grandfather, Dennis Harrigan, a fifty-one-year-old farmer and carpenter who lived in Schull parish, in the southwestern region of County Cork, Ireland, ushered his family aboard a timber ship bound for New Brunswick, Canada."
Industry Reviews
"Giddin's book is punctuated with lists that are often fascinating. Musicians with whom Bing hung out at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago after joining the Whiteman band: Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Tommy Dorsey, Frankie Trumbauer. People who showed up on the 1926 opening night of Paul Whiteman's band: Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Tommy Dorsey, Frankie Trumbauer. People who showed up on the 1926 opening night of Paul Whiteman's short lived Club Manhattan on Broadway and West 48th Street: Al Smith, Jimmy Walker, Jimmy Durante, Texas Guinan, Charlie Chaplin, Jeanne Eagels, Gloria Swanson, and Henry Warren. ("Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson dropped by a few days later.") Participants in Bing's 1932 roast at the Friars Club: Jack Benny, George Burns, Irving Berlin, Rudy Vallee, William Paley, George Jessel, Damon Runyon, and George M. Cohan, who presented Crosby with a lifetime membership card made of gold. Bing's guests (among many others) on the KRAFT MUSIC HALL in 1936: Spencer Tracy, Lotte Lehmann, Edward Everett Horton, Louis Armstrong, Fyodor Chaliapin, Alice Faye, Andres Segovia, Iona's Hawaiians, and Art Tatum. "
New York Review of Books - Geoffrey O'Brien (03/08/2001)
"Gary Giddins has performed a great service in tracking Crosby's life and career so scrupulously. He's not only superb on the music, but he has lovingly considered the films of the 30's--he's particularly perceptive about the vaudevillian 'Road' pictures (Crosby and Hope 'are anarchists with sweet souls'). Sometimes his prose gets a touch fancy or peculiar--a song treatment is 'supernally relaxed,' his work 'failed to sate Bing's energy,' Bing 'had haplessly incarnated the excesses of Prohibition'--and one can argue with certain judgments: Is Crosby really a 'far more important artist' than John McCormack? But these are hardly blemishes on a masterly performance. Some readers may feel that this book tells them too much. But those of us who have been waiting all these years to learn everything there is to know about Crosby can only be grateful for Giddins's depth of detail and soundness of judgment. Now, where is Volume 2?"
New York Times - Robert Gottlieb (02/11/2001)
"In his data-packed, tirelessly adulatory biography of Bing Crosby, Gary Giddins often tells his readers more than they need to know. ....[F]or all the prodigious research that makes this an obvious labor of love and only half of a projected two- volume opus, there is something essential missing. In some fundamental way, it's Crosby himself; he is embedded in the book everywhere but never freed to be its vibrant subject. To the extent that a man most often described as easygoing was not knowable, perhaps that opacity was inevitable, but not necessarily. This biography is best read to the accompaniment of a Crosby soundtrack. And the suppleness of the music shames the turgidness of the book."
New York Times - Janet Maslin (02/01/2001)
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