Although some might have argued that he was never a proper jazzman, Bing Crosby maintained a close, at times almost reverential, attitude to jazz. Innately good with phrasing, improvised instinctively throughout the Swing Era, his enthusiasm no doubt whetted by fond memories of his departed youthful soul-mates Messrs. Beiderbecke and Lang. In his Kraft Music Hall radio shows – which spanned the years 1935-1946 and at their peak usually pulled in about 50 million listeners – Bing Crosby would ad-lib with his hero and role-model Louis (he was acknowledged as the leading white emulator of the Armstrong style) as well as with various other key jazz figures, and much of Bing’s commercial output graphs in his affinity with the genre in more autobiographical terms.

Bing Crosby's accompaniments here range from prominent figures of the late-1930s Dixieland revival to select members of top flight of big bands: the link being Swing – in the broadest sense of that term. Our programme commences with two of four contributions from New York-born composer and bassist Bob Haggart (Robert Sherwood Haggart, 1914-98). At first a guitarist, Haggart was resident bass-cum-arranger with Bob Crosby (from 1935 to 1942) and in later life was a prolific arranger for American radio and TV. He co-led a recording outfit with trumpeter Yank Lawson (1951-60), with whom he formed the ‘World’s Greatest Jazz Band’, in 1968. Haggart was closely associated with Bing over many years, superbly tailoring several of the crooner’s originals as well as various covers. In 1938 these included the US No. 3 rehash of Larry
Clinton’s ‘My Rêverie’ and Bing Crosby's No.1 ‘You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby’, which won a Down Beat poll ‘best jazz singer’ of the year award.

In Be Honest With Me (a US No.19 hit cover of a Gene Autry original) and That’s A Plenty (the Lew Pollack jazz standard, here adapted to a duet, with Connie Boswell – born New Orleans, 1907 – d.1976), Bing Crosby joins forces with an octet from the band of pianist, organist and arranger John Scott Trotter (born Charlotte, North Carolina, 1908 – d. 1975). A lifelong personal friend of Bing’s and his preferred arranger and MD (films and recordings) from 1937 to 1954, the bluff, ever-smiling heavyweight Trotter, a music graduate of North Carolina University, was a noted arranger for society bandleader Hal Kemp from 1925. Bing Crosby first hired him to arrange specific items for his Kraft Music Hall show, in July 1937. Comic repartee between the crooner and his corpulent conductor, and their reciprocal bonhomie, can readily be appreciated in Trotter’s cameo appearance in Bing’s 1940 vehicle Rhythm On The River (a romp that also featured Bing Crosby in high jinx with a ‘trad’ group led by Wingy Manone). Credited with having given early breaks to comedians Jerry Colonna and Spike Jones, Trotter worked in TV from 1954 and was during 1964-5 MD of Bing’s ABC sitcom The Bing Crosby Show.

Bing Crosby is joined in two items from 1942 (a cover of the Alvin Pleasant Carter C&W standard I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes and his own Feb 1942 US No.2 hit Deep In The Heart Of Texas) –by Woody Herman & His Woodchoppers (a septet comprising Cappy Lewis – trumpet/ Neil Reid – trombone/ Woody Herman – clarinet/ Tommy Linehan – piano/ Hy White – guitar/ Walter Yoder – string-bass/ Frank Carlson – drums). In December 1941, with his full ensemble, Woody Herman (born Woodrow Charles Herman, Milwaukee, 1913 – d.1987) had topped the US charts with ‘Blues In the Night’. After an early 1930s Chicago apprenticeship, Herman toured with Gus Arnheim (who backed some of Bing Crosby's earliest records) prior to working with Isham Jones (1934-6). From a nucleus of the last named evolved his own band, which until 1947 was generically labelled Herman’s ‘First Herd.’ From 1947 to 1949 Woody’s organising skills came to the fore with his bop-influenced, saxophone-predominant ‘Second’ and ‘Third’ herds, which promoted the talents of, among others, Stan Getz and Zoot Sims. His later groups included the ‘Anglo-American Herd’ (1959), the ‘Swinging Herd’ (1962). In later years Herman held a succession of residencies in New Orleans, Los Angeles and New York.

A regular colleague of those two most admired of all white jazzmen, Bing Crosby was familiar with the ‘battling’ Dorsey brothers from Shenandoah, Pennsylvania - saxophonist Jimmy (James Dorsey, Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, 1904 – d.1957) and trombonist and trumpeter Tommy (1905-56) from their shared apprentice days, with Paul Whiteman, from early 1927 onwards. By 1929 the Brothers’ own groups, which united the cream of contemporary New York white jazz talent, were in constant demand as recording freelancers. Bing Crosby worked variously with both players, together and separately, from 1928, in sessions organised through Frank Trumbauer, Ipana Troubadours, Victor Young, Lennie Hayton and others. In 1935 the co-led Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra was made resident band of Bing’s Kraft Music Hall programme. In 1936, with Jimmy’s own band, Bing Crosby recorded hit-versions of songs from his film Rhythm On The Range, most notably Johnny Mercer’s ‘I’m An Old Cowhand.’

Bing Crosby parries and thrusts with Louis Jordan (born Brinkley, Arkansas, 1908 – d.1975) & His Tympany Five, in their July 1945 US No.14 hit My Baby Said ‘Yes’. Saxophonist, bandleader, vocalist, composer, author and all-round showman Jordan played with Charlie Gains in Philadelphia (1932) and subsequently with Kaiser Marshall before joining Chick Webb’s Harlem Savoy Ballroom band. In 1938 he formed his own jump-band Tympany Five. Bristling with primordial R&B verve and made even more colourful by Jordan’s Fats Waller-style interjections, by the
time this collaboration with Bing Crosby was enjoying its first circulation, the group had already notched the first of its million-sellers, ‘G.I. Jive’ and (at No.2) Jordan’s enduring theme ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby?’.
Eddie Condon’s legendary octet ‘Dixieland All-Stars’ backs Bing Crosby in revivals of two 1920s jazz standards: Turner Layton’s After You’ve Gone and Lou Handman’s Blue. The figurehead of the Chicago school, banjoist-guitarist Eddie Condon (Albert Edwin Condon, born Goodland, Indiana – d.1973) was destined to play a major role in the desegregation of jazz. A stylish and perceptive Dixieland analyst, he published three volumes of autobiography (1947, 1956 and 1973), ‘scrapbooks’ replete with his witty slants on jazz and the eccentricities of its characters. Already a professional by 1922, by the mid-1920s Condon had forged long-term working relationships with jazz luminaries: tenor-sax Bud Freeman, cornet Jimmy McPartland and clarinet Frank Teschemacher. In 1928 in New York he made his first recordings (a quartet, comprising Condon, Teschemacher, pianist Joe Sullivan and drummer Gene Krupa) and in 1930 recorded with vocalist Red McKenzie’s Mound City Blue Blowers (a pioneering interracial jazz group which placed Benny Goodman alongside Coleman Hawkins and Fats Waller). Condon’s landmark 1938 Windy City Seven recordings, for the Commodore label, featured Freeman, cornet Bobby Hackett, trombonist George Brunies and clarinettist Pee Wee Russell.

In 1942, a concert in a series promoted by Condon at New York Town Hall, featuring Fats Waller, was screened by CBS, effectively bringing jazz to a TV audience for the first time. In 1945 Condon opened a club on West 3rd Street, to which Johnny Mercer and Bing himself became frequent visitors. In April 1946, Bing’s recording with Condon (featuring Davison) of Johnny Mercer’s ‘Personality’ (from Bing Crosby's movie The Road To Utopia) notched the US charts at No.9. (Personnel on [10] & [11]: Wild Bill Davison –trumpet/ Joe Dixon – clarinet/ Brad Gowans – trombone/ Bud Freeman – tenor-sax/ Eddie Condon – guitar/ Gene Schroeder – piano/ Bob Haggart – bass/ George Wettling – drums.

Peter Dempsey (2009)