STORIES ABOUT BING: PEGGY LEE

 

Bing and Peggy Lee had a great working relationship. She appeared on Bing's show in the late 1940s, and when they were both at Decca in the 1950s they made som great records together. In Peggy's autobiography she remembered some great moments with Bing:

"For dinner he took me to one of San Francisco's great restaurants, during which I told him about my emotional experience with his movies, especially "Mississippi" when he sang "Down By The River". We then cruised all over that wonderful city until we found a pianist who could play the song in Bing's key, and he actually sang it to me at our table. Once again, all those years later, the tears rolled. A whole river of them....

Bing was also so protective of me. Once he found me standing rigid outside the studio at NBC and asked what he could do to help me. He was so sensitive to my early days of nerves and self-consciousness. This was just before air time on one of Bing's many Kraft programs. I managed to say something like: "When you introduce me, would you please not leave me out there on the stage alone? Would you stand where I can see your feet?" He agreed and always sort of casually leaned on a speaker or piano to give me the support and time I needed to learn about being at ease onstage.

You have to love a man like that. He offered everything-money, cars, his own blood, and even volunteered to personally babysit with our little daughter, Nicki, while David was so sick in the hospital.

The last time I saw Bing, we were both doing a benefit performance. It was beautiful, if brief. He called to me, "Hello, baby! So good to see you."

BING AND PEGGY LEE

Bing had a definite admiration for songbird Peggy Lee, and the feeling was mutual. I wish they would have worked together more, but Bing is mentioned quite extensively in Peggy's Autobiography,"Miss Peggy Lee~An Autobiography", published in 1991.


On page 125 she writes~"By now my work with Bing and Durante was going full force, and my love for them both brightened my life. Years earlier I had literally saved pennies to go see Bing's movies. Tears rolled down my cheeks if the leading lady didn't treat him right. In the film "Mississippi" I was emotionally spent when the brokenhearted Bing sang "Down By The River"

Through the several years I sang on Bing's program,I met the most fantastic stars, like Al Jolson, whom I also sang with, and Bing was always finding ways to help give me confidence. In fact, everyone connected with him was funny and nice and talented.

Bing and I were always the first to arrive for rehearsals~that was something that always impressed me, his promptness. And I always felt you could count on his honesty. Bing maintained a certain modesty, even diffidence, about himself, although he didn't wear it on his sleeve. I remember his saying, "I wish I could really make something of my life...". That amazed me, that he could feel so humble. I tried, in a stumbling sort of way, to tell him what the world thought of him, but I don't think I ever convinced him.

...one evening in San Francisco, Bing asked me to go to dinner with him..

For dinner he took me to one of San Francisco's great restaurants, during which I told him about my emotional experience with his movies, especially "Mississippi" when he sang "Down By The River". We then cruised all over that wonderful city until we found a pianist who could play the song in Bing's key, and he actually sang it to me at our table. Once again, all those years later, the tears rolled. A whole river of them....

Bing was also so protective of me. Once he found me standing rigid outside the studio at NBC and asked what he could do to help me. He was so sensitive to my early days of nerves and self-consciousness. This was just before air time on one of Bing's many Kraft programs. I managed to say something like: "When you introduce me, would you please not leave me out there on the stage alone? Would you stand where I can see your feet?" He agreed and always sort of casually leaned on a speaker or piano to give me the support and time I needed to learn about being at ease onstage.

You have to love a man like that. He offered everything-money, cars, his own blood, and even volunteered to personally babysit with our little daughter, Nicki, while David was so sick in the hospital.

The last time I saw Bing, we were both doing a benefit performance. It was beautiful, if brief. He called to me, "Hello, baby! So good to see you."

I was grateful I got to see him one more time.

Yes, once we walked along, Bing--down by the river...."  

  SOURCE

BING CROSBY AND OTHER SINGERS

Bing Crosby was definitely a singer's singer. Many of his peers and people that came after Bing idolized and looked up to him. Here are some quotes from other singers and what they thought about Bing...

EDDY ARNOLD:
"Bing was fantastic. I have many, many of his records today. He recorded so many of the country songs like "You Are My Sunshine," "It Makes No Difference Now," "Walkin' the Floor Over You." He recorded the first hit I ever had [Just a Little Lovin']. On and on and on. And he did them straight. He never made fun of them. He always did 'em in a melodic way. And, of course, the songs became well known because of his popularity. The songs took on the popularity of the whole country. Do you know who was Winston Churchill's favorite singer and song during World War II? It was Bing Crosby's record of "You Are My Sunshine." (Eddy Arnold: An Inside Look, interviewed by Ralph Emery, TNN, 1991.)

TONY BENNETT:
"Just imagine something five times stronger than the popularity of Elvis Presley and the Beatles put together. Bing Crosby dominated all of the airwaves. He was the only guy who had hour shows on radio stations, where other artists would just have one record played." (PBS interview, 1999)

ROSEMARY CLOONEY:
"Over the years Bing and I have done movies together, recordings, radio, television -- the whole entertainment circle.... The best way to get along with Bing was to forget first of all that he was Bing Crosby. It was not always easy. I know that every now and then something would strike me when we were working together -- the tilt of his pipe or the set of his hat -- the Crosby image -- and I'd say to myself, "What the hell am I doing singing here with Bing Crosby?" (Clooney, This for Remembrance, p232)

SAMMY DAVIS JR:
"I'm working with three of the biggest guys in the business -- so I can't wait for the first day when we all get around the piano to rehearse a song called 'Mr Booze.' In this there are so many Crosbyisms, all the things that we and millions of people have loved him for. And I'm standing there, and I missed my cue five times because I'm watching him. Frank [Sinatra] said, "What the hell is wrong with you?" I said "To hell with you, Frank, I'm listening to Bing Crosby!" Everybody just broke up."

PEGGY LEE:
"He took me out to dinner once and I got up nerve enough to tell him about how I felt at one movie when he didn't get the girl. I was so in sympathy with him that when he sang this song 'Down by the River' I cried and cried. So he pretended that we were sort of sightseeing in San Francisco and we went around to different little bistros until finally he found a pianist who knew the song and Bing sang it especially for me."

MEL TORME:
"In 1975 he invited me and my family to lunch at his home just outside of San Francisco. Mary Frances and Harry, Bing's kids, were on hand as well as Kathryn, and it was a funny, jolly, loving luncheon, full of stories and remembrances. After lunch, Bing, sans hairpiece, asked Harry to go get his guitar. We adjourned to the music room, and, just like that, Bing sat down and began to sing. He did about eight tunes, invited me to join him, which I did, and that's the way the afternoon went .... That night he brought the whole family to the Fairmont, sat at a front table (still sans toupee), and stayed through my whole performance. I never quite got over that." (Torme, My Singing Teachers, p19)

MR. MUSIC: A 1950 REVIEW

Here is a review of the forgotten Bing Crosby gem MR. MUSIC (1950). The review appeared in the NY Times on December 21, 1950. The newspaper is tough in its reviews, but they give a pretty glowing review on the movie and especially Bing...

To brighten the Christmas season, our old friend, Bing Crosby, is in town in a role (and an entertainment) that fits him—and he it—like a glove. In Paramount's "Mr. Music," which came to the Paramount yesterday, Der Bingle (which rhymes with Kris Kringle, we trust you will incidentally note) plays an easy-going song-writer who is coaxed into composing a musical score by a provokingly persistent young lady hired particularly for this job. And with newcomer Nancy Olson spreading much charm in the latter role; with Tom Ewell, Ida Moore, Charles Coburn and even Groucho Marx and Dorothy Kirsten lending assists and with one of the nicest sets of new songs that Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke have ever turned out, this "Mr. Music" is certainly one of the cheeriest and brightest of current films.

There's no point in being coy about it: Bing has not been too fortunate in the general characteristics of his roles in his past three or four films. But in this light, romantic entertainment, based on Samson Raphaelson's play, "Accent on Youth," he acts the sort of droll, informal fellow that he himself happens to be. And since Bing's genial songsmith in this story takes more joyously to golfing than to work, it's the sort of job that our hero can well wrap his golf clubs around.

Fortunately, Arthur Sheekman has turned Mr. Raphaelson's play into a lively exercise with words and music that ambles gaily across the screen. True, there are times when the action, confined largely to a penthouse drawing-room (where Mr. Crosby toys with his golf clubs just as happily as he does on the course) tends to lag slightly and grow feeblee. Even with Miss Olson as vis-a-vis, the sparring of boss and slave-driver drags just a bit now and then.

But regularly Mr. Sheekman catches up the lag with a nice bit of comic invention that Director Richard Haydn grabs upon and uses to keep the whole show going in a generally sophisticated style. It is notable that little condescension to the so-called juvenile taste is evident here. And the songs are adroitly integrated into the natural flow of the script so that Bing and the cast can get into them without pointing when they do the most good.

Best of the lot, for our taste, is a lightly philosophic rhapsody, "Life Is So Peculiar," which is done in several different ways. Bing and Peggy Lee sing it one time at a pent-house jamboree, at which the elastic young Champions, Marge and Gower, dance it spinningly. The Merry Macs also sing it in the ultimate musical show, put on as the songwriter's triumph, and Bing does it in a skit with Groucho Marx. This latter, incidentally, is a winning but strangely skimpy highlight of the film.

Next best is a smoothly melodious song of wistful love, "Accidents Will Happen," which Bing, after tinkering throughout, sings in a pleasing duet with Dorothy Kirsten. And "High on the List" is that, too. Otherwise "Wouldn't It Be Funny," "You'll Be Home" and "Wasn't I There" are in the category of wholly agreeable tunes.

Miss Olson, who will be remembered as the young lady in "Sunset Boulevard," here demonstrates a thorough ability to handle a fragile romantic lead, and Charles Coburn is familiarly amusing as a harassed producer of musical shows. Ida Moore is chirpily comic as a starry-eyed chaperone, while Mr. Haydn, the commendable young director, is very funny in an asthmatic bit.

"Mr. Music" may not stack up with the best of the Crosby films, but it is certainly a contemporary achievement that the master may lean happily upon.

On the stage at the Paramount are Louis Prima and his orchestra, Jan Murray and Shirley Van.

SOURCE

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: BING AND FEMALE SONGBIRDS

During Bing's 50 year career, he sang with great jazz artists, talented musicians, and accomplished fellow singers. Unlike Sinatra, Bing excelled in duets and could sing with nearly anyone. I collected a few photos that I thought would be interesting, showing Bing appearing with some of the truly great female songbirds...

This is my favorite picture of Bing with The Boswell Sisters. It is great he recorded with Connee Boswell often throughout his career, but it is a shame he did not record with the Boswell Sisters more:

Bing and Dinah Shore never recorded together, but they did do some USO tours together during World War II:

Bing and Judy Garland made a handful of recordings together while they both were at Decca, and Bing helped out Judy often when she was down by getting her to appear on his radio show. This picture shows both of them at the top of their game:

Another great duet pair was Bing and Peggy Lee. They had a long history of working together on radio, on records, and they even appeared together in the movie MR. MUSIC, which this picture is taken from:

This final picture is Bing and the great Dame Vera Lynn. It is from 1975 when he appeared on Vera's variety show. They sang the popular song of the time "Sing", and I wish they had recorded together:

BING CROSBY AND PEGGY LEE

This clip is way too short, but it highlights the chemistry that Bing and the great Peggy Lee had together...

MR. MUSIC (1950)

Bing's movie, MR. MUSIC, is one of the most underrated Bing films. The songs may not be Irving Berlin or Cole Porter classics, but Bing was in great voice... clips courtesy of Martin Knight