posted 03/15/01 12:20 PM Central Time (US)     no email address given

The world doesn't care so much about being cool anymore. But even if you steer clear of South Street with "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams" under your arm, people from all walks seem temporarily united in their incredulity: "You're reading what?"..Imagine their further reaction upon learning that the 728-page tome is subtitled "The Early Years 1903-1940" and only takes Crosby to the brink of superstardom. Crosby now inhabits the deepest, darkest realms of pop culture's Elysian Fields, perhaps because the public's last memories of him prior to his death in 1977 are lifeless renditions of "Hey Jude," mirth-by-numbers TV specials and a "daddy-dearest" book by his son Gary that depicted him as a disciplinarian monster.

If you hear Crosby on the radio, it's at Christmastime. The bulk of his huge, long movie career is forgotten; you're lucky to find "The Road to Rio" at local video stores (and if you do, you'll discover a far more accomplished comedian than you remember)...Thus, the book appears to be a heroic act of rehabilitation, especially so considering that the author isn't a movie or pop-song buff, but respected jazz critic Gary Giddins. That's curious. Jazz people have more right than most to be skeptical of Crosby, even though he did sing with the Paul Whiteman Band and roomed with Bix Beiderbecke. In the grand scheme of the Crosby career, jazz was only the beginning, and even then, he was a transitional figure...Whether Giddins' jazz predilections are the cause or only a symptom of the book's problems, you come away convinced that Crosby deserves some sort of a biographical monument, but not this one.

In theory, the book ought to be just fine, since it seems to contain all possible extant information about a singer who was ubiquitous on radio, recordings and movies between 1934 and 1954. From a reporting standpoint, the book is a staggering achievement, but one that might leave you skipping paragraphs containing far more minutiae than you want. The writing is skilled, and full of flash-forwards that keep the early years from seeming mundane...The problems arise with justifying its mass. Giddins starts with statistics: Crosby recorded more hit singles than anybody else (400) and was the top box-office movie star for five years (1944-48).

He did much good for many people, giving the Andrews Sisters a wartime lift, bringing Judy Garland out of her post-MGM doldrums and generating a musical sense of well-being when the country needed it most. Once he achieved croonerhood, his hallmark was music-making that was accomplished, mellifluous and generous, but (unlike any number of torch singers) demanded nothing emotional in return...Still, popularity doesn't equal significance. Darden Asbury Pryon attempted to equate commercial success and cultural importance in "Liberace: An American Boy" (University of Chicago, $27.50) and failed. Beyond statistics, Giddins' claims for Crosby's importance work against him, since they are often based on insupportable and strangely skewed suppositions...For example: "Crosby was the first white performer to appreciate and assimilate the genius of Louis Armstrong." Does anybody really know that? Just because Artie Shaw called him America's first hip white person doesn't mean it's true. If the underlying idea is that Crosby was a conduit between black jazz and white America, didn't Beiderbecke do it more forcefully with longer-range implications?.

Most odd is Giddins' preoccupation with the masculinity factor that he claims Crosby brought to pop music, a change he characterizes as dramatic as Elvis Presley's later transformation of pop music. Obsessively and repetitively, Giddins describes pre-Crosby pop singing style as "effeminate," a too-shrill attempt to enlist our sympathies by suggesting that Crosby saved pop music from -- ohmygod! -- castration...But the testosterone factor is beside the point. Vocalists, as Giddins rightly states at one point, functioned as stylistically neutral entities to fuel sheet-music sales. With a greater range of expression possible with the microphone, more intimate nuance was possible and welcomed. The progression, therefore, was from impersonal to personal rather than from feminine to masculine...

Recordings from 1930 show Crosby could be as neutral as anybody, only with a deeper baritone register. And what about Crosby's jazz singing? After reading so much of Giddins' admiring prose on the subject, I sought out recorded samples of it and heard scat singing that now sounds forced and rudimentary. In ballads, young Crosby could be highly artificial, using vocal portamenti straight out of operetta. Crosby's ultimate hallmark was directness: His effortlessness and sincerity grew out of singing that was pared down to stylistic essentials...On nonmusical fronts, Giddins delivers some startling surprises: Contrary to his later conservative image, Crosby had a debauched past that never seems to have been as far behind him as one might think. He comes off as one of the heaviest drinkers to come out of Prohibition alive, failing to show up for performances and radio shows. His first wife apparently exacted some sort of alcohol-curbing pledge from him, which Giddins characterized as a turning point for Crosby and his until-then unambitious work ethic...But then there are a number of accounts, many deliciously inside-y, of his continued relationship with Mother Bottle. On the fun side, he and Marion Davies clung to each other to keep from stumbling over fake flowers when shooting a movie scene after a particularly liquid lunch. Not so fun is a transcribed tape of a drunken Crosby being stubborn and cantankerous in a recording session. Was he an alcoholic with periods of white-knuckle abstinence? That could explain a lot, but Giddins doesn't go there...

One through-line Giddins pursues to maintain interest in the endless stream of career milestones is Crosby's "unknowability." The relaxed, friendly on-camera Crosby often had a Zen-like aloofness. Giddins finds significance in this with another unprovable statement: After several early-adulthood friends left his life, he never again confided in anybody. How does anybody know that? Did adult men in mid-20th-century America do much confiding anyway? Might it be a normal, healthy defense mechanism for the most famous American of the mid-20th century? Is it possible, too, that Crosby's waters just didn't run that deep?..