Bing's boyhood home in Spokane, Washington, was adjacent to the campus of Gonzaga College, a Jesuit institution. In the fall of 1920 Bing entered Gonzaga with the intent of becoming a lawyer. While in Gonzaga he bought a set of mail-order bass drums. Soon Bing was good enough on the drums that he was invited to join a local band composed mostly of high school kids called The Musicaladers, managed by Alton Rinker (1907-82) (shown in the photo with Bing). Bing beat the drums and sang with the band in the Spokane area for more than a year. He made so much money with the band that he decided to drop out of college his senior year and concentrate on a career in music. The Musicaladers fell apart in the summer of 1925, when several of its members went away to college. Bing and Al developed a duet act and continued to perform in the Spokane area. On October 15, 1925, Bing and Al piled into Rinker's Model T and left Spokane for Los Angeles where they would seek the help of Rinker's sister, the jazz singer Mildred Bailey, to get into show business. A month after their arrival in L.A. they joined the vaudeville circuit, singing in movie theatres throughout California as part of a revue called "The Syncopation Idea" for $75 a person per week.
"The Syncopation Idea" ended after 13 weeks. Bing and Al then joined Will Morrissey's Music Hall Revue and were billed as "Two Boys and a Piano" for $150 per person per week. When Morrissey's Revue ended in the summer of 1926, Bing and Al signed with Paramount Publix at $150 per person per week. Paramount Publix was the precursor to Paramount Pictures and owned a string of large theaters on the West Coast. In less than a year after arriving in L.A. the boys had reached the Big Time in vaudeville.
How did Bing and Al get their big break?
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Written by Steven Lewis
