| NAME | MESSAGE |
| Lee |
posted 04/12/05 12:07 PM Central Time (US)  contact the author directly
Steven's audio Bing thing this week is the FDR tribute, including Bing. My question, I had read that Bing sang FDR's favorite song "Home On The Range" for an FDR tribute, and he found he had to sing it at the last moment and was worried he wouldn't remember the words. But on the FDR show that's heard this week Bing sings Brahms Lullabye and Faith of Our Fathers. Was it a different FDR tribute that Bing sang "Home On The Range"? Or was the info. I read mistaken? |
| Jon O. |
posted 04/12/05 12:43 PM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
According to Malcolm MacFarlane's "Diary of a Lifetime", Bing sang "Home On the Range" on the 1-30-43 March of Dimes radio show, "America Salutes the President's Birthday". Nice that he sang it in a tribute show that FDR was still alive to hear, rather than the post mortem one. |
| Bob Handy |
posted 04/12/05 09:58 PM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
The mention of "Home on the Range" reminded me of one of Bing's renditions of the song back in the early Forties. When I was a kid growing up in Washington, D.C., I regularly listened to radio broadcasts of Washington Senators baseball games played in the old Griffith Stadium (long since torn down, of course). At one night game, Bing was a guest in the broadcast booth, and the announcer asked him to entertain the crowd by singing "Home on the Range" over the public address system. Bing obliged, and I could hear his voice echoing beautifully throughout the stadium. At one point, though, he forgot the lyrics. However, without missing a beat or departing from the melody, and without any sign of embarrassment, he adroitly filled the void by singing "I forgot the words." That would have been about sixty years ago. Funny how there are some things you never forget. |
| Arne |
posted 04/12/05 11:33 PM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
Lee, your addition of the element of drunkeness assures us that the story you are remembering is the one that concerns Will Rogers. Bing was partying somewhere and quite "in his cups" when news came accross the wire that Will Rogers and pilot Wiley Post were killed in a plane crash in 1935. Bing was asked to contribute "Home On The Range" to a broadcast tribute that was being set up as the story was breaking. Bing related later in interviews, as well as in "Call Me Lucky", that he was quite loaded and afraid he wouldn't be able to come up with the words. I believe he said that it was the only time he ever experienced "flop sweat", the sensation a performer feels when he is, for whatever reason, scared sh**less immediately before performing. He got through the broadcast, he said, as each line of the song individually came to him just in the nick of time. I think elsewhere it's been stated that Franklin Roosevelt's favorite song was, indeed, "Home On The Range", hence the confusion. Whether or not this info re: FDR is connected with a separate Bing story, I don't know right now; I can't think of any. |
| Lee |
posted 04/13/05 08:29 AM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
Actually, Arne, I didn't say Bing was drunk, in fact, I didn't even think of it. I just said he was worried he wouldn't remember the words to the song. You don't have to be tipsy to forget a verse. But I'm sure your story is the accurate one, I had gotten my "Home On The Range" tales mixed up together. |
| Arne |
posted 04/13/05 03:03 PM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
Actually, Lee, the one who was appaarently drunk was ME! ....Just goes to show how much we can subjectively read in to something. I knew that story involved drunkeness, and when I read your post about his concern over forgetting the words, my brain just "planted" the rest of the story in to your text. I just re-read it, and of course you didn't mention the drunk part. I gotta stop posting so late at night, my freak - era hallucinations are starting to come back..... |
| Lee |
posted 04/13/05 04:46 PM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
Least you remembered where the story came from, Bing's autobiography. I read the autobiog. but wasn't sure where I read that Home on Range story, there or from Giddins' book. |
| Bob Handy |
posted 07/08/05 10:50 AM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
Just for the record, I'd like to say that I was obviously wrong when I said in my original post under this topic that I remembered Bing singing "Home on the Range" at a night game at Griffith Stadium in the early 40s. In a recent post under the "Great Photo" topic, Malcolm Macfarlane informed us that at a game at Griffith Stadium on May 24, 1943, Bing sang "Dinah," "As Time Goes By," and "White Christmas." I'm sure it was the same game I had in mind and that he is right and I am wrong. I think I should have said "White Christmas" instead of "Home on the Range." I concluded my original post by saying, "Funny how there are some things you never forget." I guess I should have said, "Funny how there are some things you vividly remember incorrectly." |
| Mike O |
posted 07/08/05 12:11 PM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
Bob Handy - your posting reminded me of the time I went through microfilm of the local newspaper looking for a photo I remembered of me boarding the train bound for the 1964 New York World's Fair. It took me forever to find that photo because it looked NOTHING like what I remembered it to be. Memory can certainly embellish the facts! |
| Bob Handy |
posted 07/08/05 12:33 PM Central Time (US) contact the author directly
Thanks for your response, Mike. Your experience and mine are just further illustrations of why oral history is often totally unreliable. |