LISTENING IS IMPORTANT

Irene Dunne as Vinnie and William Powell as Clarence Day, Sr.

Life With Father

A scene in the Day household -

Clarence: I'll tell you one thing, I'll never be baptized as long as that hideous monstrosity (pug dog statue) is in this house.

Vinnie: Alright. Alright. Clarence (Jr.). That pug dog goes back this afternoon and he is christened first thing in the morning. You heard him didn't you, Clarence? You heard him say that he'd be baptized as soon as I got this pug dog out of the house.

A scene in the Nolan/Hall household -

He: Don't tell me you're listening to Christmas music! The Americans haven't even had their Thanksgiving yet.

Me: You heard him didn't you, kids? He said as soon as it was American Thanksgiving it was all Christmas music, all the time.

What many people (meaning husbands) don't understand is that Christmas music, like the Christmas movies and books, must be started early or the season will pass without seeing reading or listening to all your old favourites.

I have a box full of tapes and CDs, and a shelf lined with LPs that call out to me. These are a but a few of the many.

Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack to the 1965 television special combines a true sense of childhood innocence with a touch of adult nostalgia that is at the same time a part of and transcends the iconic Charles Schulz characters of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, and Snoopy. For many youngsters, it is their introduction to jazz. A happy introduction that will influence a lifetime of musical enjoyment.

Round and round the Christmas tree
Opening presents with the family
One for you and two for me
Oh, what a Christmas day!

Bing's classic Merry Christmas album with White Christmas, Silver Bells with Carol Richards, the fun tunes with the Andrews Sisters and the hymns gets a major workout this time of year, but I always start out with A Time to Be Jolly. It is a joyous album with a party feeling that I find irresistible.

Released in 1986 with Milt Hinton, Ralph Sutton, Gus Johnson, Jim Galloway going to town on traditional Christmas songs, The Sackville All Star Christmas Record became an immediate classic in our family. I was "adopted" into a family simply by virtue of reading Harpo Speaks. If you listen to the Sackville album, you automatically become one of us.

The album cover alone is comforting, but add Nat's voice and you are immediately enveloped in a sense of wonder and the best that Christmas has ever meant to you, or will ever mean.

Perry Como. Just thinking about him makes me smile. His heart seems to be in the Christmas music, both joyous and reverent. I must hear Perry recite The Night Before Christmas every year.

Another album I consider an instant classic is the eclectic Christmas album from the glorious Maureen McGovern. A contemporary take on traditional music that retains all of the old-fashioned heart.

It is one of the tragedies of my life that the Hi-Lo's never made a Christmas album. Gene Puerling, being kind of heart as well as genius of mind, made up for it when he took his The Singers Unlimited, Don Shelton, Len Dresslar and Bonnie Herman into the studio for this must-have, must-listen-to album. It is what you point to when you want to scoff at those who claim perfection cannot be achieved.

Many of the wonderful tracks on The Singers Unlimited Christmas are the Christmas songs of Alfred Burt. Jazz trumpeter and composer Burt originally collaborated with his father Bates Burt, an Episcopal minister on Christmas songs presented as gifts to family and friends. After his father's death, he continued the tradition with organist Willa Hutson.

Al Burt was a member of the Alvino Rey (married to Louise King) orchestra and through that association, his carols were popularized by the King Family, first at their personal Christmas parties and on their television specials. His wonderful carols were recorded by Columbia records (company president James Conkling was married to Donna King) shortly before Al's untimely death from cancer.

Al Burt's lovely songs include Christmas Cometh Caroling, Jesu Parvule, Ah, Bleak and Chill the Wintry Wind, Bright, Bright, the Holly Berries, The Star Carol, Caroling Caroling, We'll Dress the House and Some Children See Him.

Al Burt's carols have come to mean Christmas to me more and more as the years go by. Along with The Singers Unlimited album, they are front and center on Bing's A Time to be Jolly and Maureen McGovern's Christmas.

Composer/arranger LeRoy Anderson's thrilling medleys of familiar carols are my traditional Christmas wrapping soundtrack. The album was saved from cutout limbo at the old Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street in Toronto.

Why, oh why isn't this fabulous TV special from 1979 available on DVD?!?

Christmas on the Ponderosa. Wanna make somethin' of it?!

Old-time opera recordings are my happy place. I think I am reincarnated from the gramophone set. This compilation features songs mainly from radio broadcasts and covers years ranging from the 1920s to the 1970s. Every year I find a new favourite.

I love the Christmas compilations like this misnamed CD from Publisher's Clearing House. Not all of the tracks are from the 1940s, but I'm not going to quibble if they want to give me Mel Torme and Jack Jones from The Judy Garland Show along with Buddy Clark, Joe Williams, and Benny Goodman.

There's also the Robert Shaw Chorale and the Chieftains and Doris Day and The Mills Brothers and Peggy Lee and Harry Belafonte and Jim Reeves and Roger Williams and The Platters and ...

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends, and thanks for the often mentioned, but seldom followed guideline to when it is appropriate to listen to all Christmas music, all the time.

Oh, happy day!

Above is a party with Bing and Jane Wyman. Why a party? We are celebrating the most deserving winners of this year's CiMBA Awards.

I have had the privilege this year of voting in Canada's Federal election, Ontario's Provincial election and Toronto's municipal election (and the privilege of 3 election campaigns!). I must say that no voting experience has given me as much pleasure as the CiMBA's. Congratulations one and all!

Bing Sings the Oscar Songs

Each year at Bing's birthday (May 2nd? May 3rd? Oy!) I blog about my favourite entertainer of the 20th century. Today let's look at one of Bing Crosby's phenomenal show business records. During the course of his movie career, Bing introduced fourteen original songs that were nominated for the Best Song by the Motion Picture Academy and four of these were awarded statues.

The first of these songs was a tune we associate with another popular performer.  Jack Benny's theme Love in Bloom by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin was first sung by Bing in 1934s She Loves Me Not was one of three nominated songs in the first year of the category.  The others were The Carioca from Flying Down to Rio and the winner, The Continental from The Gay Divorcee.  In She Loves Me Not Miriam Hopkins stars as a nightclub singer on the lam from gangsters hiding out at Princeton University where she's helped by students Bing Crosby and Edward Nugent.  The movie was remade as How to Be Very, Very Popular in 1955 starring Betty Grable, Sheree North and Robert Cummings.
 

Next was a nomination for the title tune from 1936's Pennies From Heaven. Bing's character is this movie saw himself as a modern day troubadour, footloose and fancy free, until he got mixed up with a kid (the marvelous Edith Fellows), an old man (Donald Meek) and an uptight social worker (Madge Evans). Prominent in the cast was Bing's good friend Louis Armstrong. The nomination for Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke's song must have been especially gratifying because Bing was one of the producers of the movie released through Columbia Studios. Truly a case of being nominated is honour enough as the winner for Best Song was Kern and Fields The Way You Look Tonight from Swingtime.

1937's Waikiki Wedding, with its breezy good humour and sumptuous cinematography by Karl "Sunrise" Struss was a top box office draw the year it was released and featured the lovely Blue Hawaii by Ralph Robin and Leo Rainger. Blue Hawaii was overlooked by the Academy in favour of Harry Owens lullaby Sweet Leilani. Bing had heard the song by bandleader/composer Owens while on vacation in Hawaii in 1936. The song's inclusion in the film was at Bing's insistence and he set up a trust fund for the royalties to go to Harry's daughter Leilani for whom the song was written. Sweet Leilani won over competition that included the Gershwin's They Can't Take That Away from Me from Shall We Dance and Fain & Brown's That Old Feeling from Vogues of 1938.

I highly recommend 1940s Rhythm on the River to those who have yet to to see it. Basil Rathbone is an absolute hoot as a famous composer who has lost his stuff. He "collaborates" with a lyricist played by Mary Martin and a composer played by Bing. Eventually the two dupes discover the truth and set out on their own. Throw in Oscar Levant for the wisecracks and Wingy Manone for the trumpet and you have a winner.

Rhythm on the River features my all-time favourite Bing Crosby title track from a movie, but that peppy number didn't find favour with the Academy. It was Monaco and Burke's destined-to-become-a-standard Only Forever that was nominated. In another case of losing to a classic, the winner was Leigh Harline and Ned Washington's When You Wish Upon a Star from Pinocchio.

Bing Crosby, Marjorie Reynolds

Recognize the scene pictured above? Jim Hardy and "I'm Linda Mason" introduce Irving Berlin's White Christmas to the world in 1942s Holiday Inn. The song is such a part of our lives that I often forget that it also received the honour of an Oscar.

There were a few goodies among the nominees that year: Styne & Kahn's It Seems to Me I've Heard That Song Before from Youth on Parade, Warren & Gordon's I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo from Orchestra Wives, Churchill & Morey's Love is a Song from Bambi, Lane & Freed's How About You? from Babes on Broadway, Kern & Mercer's Dearly Beloved from You Were Never Lovelier and Lucuono & Gannon's title theme from Always in My Heart.

1944s Going My Way was an Oscar juggernaut winning Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Story, Screenplay and Best Song for Swinging on a Star performed by Bing as Father O'Malley with the Mitchell Boys Choir. The peppy favourite won over such perennial ballads as McHugh & Adamson's I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night introduced by Frank Sinatra in Higher and Higher, and Styne & Cahn's I'll Walk Alone from Follow the Boys.

The 1944 release Here Comes the WAVES starring Bing as a Sinatra-type balladeer and Betty Hutton as twins was nominated in the Best Song category for the Oscars of 1946. Perhaps this was due to the late December 1944 release of the movie. The song was the Arlen & Mercer rouser Accentuate the Positive. Among the competition was Aren't You Glad You're You from 1945's popular Going My Way sequel The Bells of St. Mary's. Both songs could have stayed home that night because the award went to Rodgers & Hammerstein's lovely It Might As Well Be Spring from State Fair.

In 1946 Holiday Inn co-stars and composer, Bing, Fred Astaire and Irving Berlin reunited for Blue Skies.  The Technicolor musical was a look at the career and romantic complications of two song and dance men and featured a lot of Irving Berlin favourites plus a new song, You Keep Coming Back Like a Song which was nominated for an Oscar.  The other nominees were Hoagy Carmichael's Ole Buttermilk Sky from Canyon Passage, Monaco and Gordon's I Can't Begin to Tell You from The Dolly Sisters and Kern and Hammerstein's All Through the Day from Centennial Summer.  The winner was Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer's On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe from The Harvey Girls.

The final winner in Bing's cannon of Oscar songs was written by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening rightfully became a standard and a lot of it may have to do with its staging in Here Comes the Groom. Director Frank Capra decided to forgo using playback and asked his stars to sing the song while cavorting live on set. Were Bing and Jane Wyman game? You bet they were. The number is only one of the highlights in an immensely enjoyable movie.

1952's Just for You reunited Bing and Jane in the story of a widowed Broadway producer coping, not very well, with his children and finding romance with a musical comedy star. Oscar nominated Zing a Little Zong by Harry Warren and Leo Robin tries to capture some of the joy of the previous year's In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening and comes pretty darn close. Worthy of the nomination, the song would lose to one of the most famous movie songs of all-time, Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington's theme to High Noon.

Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby

1954's Curtiz directed Christmas perennial White Christmas gave us some favourite familiar Irving Berlin songs and a nomination for a new one as Rosemary Clooney and Bing sang Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep. The Academy voters awarded Styne and Cahn's popular theme to Three Coins in a Fountain, overlooking not only Irving, but Arlen & Gershwin's The Man That Got Away from A Star is Born.

The 1957 Academy Awards saw another duet nominated for "Best Original Song" when Bing and Grace Kelly introduced Cole Porter's lovely True Love in High Society, the entertaining musical remake of The Philadelphia Story. Livingston and Evans were the winners with Que Sera Sera from The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The 1960 Blake Edwards comedy High Time saw Bing as a retired millionaire taking the time out to get a college degree and experience a life he had missed as a younger working man.  He falls for a lovely French teacher played by Nicole Maurey and sings the Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn Oscar nominated The Second Time Around.  Other tunes in the Best Song category were The Green Leaves of Summer from The Alamo, Faraway Part of Town from Pepe and the title song from The Facts of Life.  The winner was the very popular title track, Never on Sunday.

I feel pretty safe in saying that Bing's record of introducing 14 Oscar nominated and 4 winning songs will never be equaled.

White Christmas

Greetings one and all! Today is a sort of milestone in that I have been blogging for three years. I know it has been three years because this is my third annual IT'S BING CROSBY'S BIRTHDAY blog.

Today we're going to take a personal look at one of the most popular recordings of all-time. A song that consoled hearts in wartime and cheers over-heated, grumpy shoppers to this very day.

Few of us haven't enjoyed Bing's initial version of White Christmas in the 1942 release Holiday Inn. One mistake I made with that movie was showing it to my daughter Janet when she was young as her first Fred Astaire flick. It took her years to get over a certain animosity toward Mr. A for trying to steal Bing's girl! I should have started with Follow the Fleet. A song and idea that popular just had to be repeated and the 1954 film White Christmas became another holiday perennial for those of us who take a large dose of Christmastime through entertainment.

Irving Berlin called White Christmas one of his "round" songs. A tune which seemed to compose itself, it came to him so effortlessly. His enthusiasm for the song never wavered. It seems that way as well with the public who has placed it at the number one of the Billboard charts 3 times since it was first heard. I understand there may be people out there whose favourite singer is not Bing Crosby (???), but even those souls probably consider Bing the master of White Christmas.

Here's a fellow I know tolerably well. This is my son Gavin who has an amazing talent for mimicry which is not uncommon among those diagnosed as autistic. His independent language skills are not top-notch, but he knows every line from every classic Disney feature and short and can imitate everyone from Jerry Colonna to Kathryn Beaumont.

The Christmas before last I was baking and listening to the radio in the kitchen. AM740 was obliging me with Christmas songs and they gave out with Frank Sinatra singing White Christmas. Suddenly Gavin was beside me. He shut off the radio and turned and stared at me with wide eyes. The wide eyes generally mean Gavin is ready to say something important like the time he couldn't figure out Easter and wished everybody a Happy Thanksgiving. This time he didn't "say", he "sang". He sang White Christmas. He sang White Christmas in a perfect imitation of Bing Crosby and the record he's heard since birth. When he finished Gavin returned to his endless video loop of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. My husband looked at me and said, "Frank's been told!"

My Gavin moments are special, and this one came to me courtesy of the spirit of Bing Crosby which lives in music and movies. I raise a toast to that spirit.

Bing Crosby

1903 - 1977

Well, folks, May 3rd is here. The day all fans celebrate the birth of Bing Crosby. Let the merriment be unconfined. Let there be cake, and listening to records and watching of movies, and searching of YouTube. How is this different from every other day of the year? Oh, yes, the cake!

Favourite Christmas Special: The one where he sang "White Christmas". The one where Kathryn and Mary Frances wore green. The one when Harry played the guitar. The one where Nathaniel stopped wearing short pants.

Favourite ballad from a Technicolor feature: It's a tie! "The Kiss in Your Eyes" from "The Emperor Waltz" (1948) and "True Love" from "High Society" (1956).

Favourite ballad from a Black and White feature: It's a tie! "Moonlight Becomes You" from "Road to Morocco" and "Let's Take the Long Way Home" from "Here Come the Waves" (1944).

Favourite movie traditionally aired at Christmastime not starring Alastair Sim: It's a tie! "Holiday Inn" (1941) and "Going My Way" (1944).

Favourite cheeky narration of a classic cheeky cartoon: "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1949).

Favourite Oscar winning performance that stands the test of time with its low-key genuineness: Father O'Malley in "Going My Way" (1944).

Favourite performance that shoulda won the Oscar, though Brando was fine too: Frank Elgin in "The Country Girl" (1954).

Favourite movie co-starring Jane Wyman: It's a tie! "Here Comes the Groom" (1951) and "Just for You" (1952).

Favourite gag appearance in a Hope flick: "My Favourite Brunette" (1947).

Favourite Frank Capra remake of a Frank Capra movie: "Riding High" (1950).

Favourite record: "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (1945) with Les Paul.

Favourite performance of a title tune: the title song from "Rhythm on the River" (1940).

Favourite books: It's a tie! Gary Giddens - "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, The Early Years 1903 - 1940" and Kathryn Crosby - "My Life With Bing" (the autographed copy).

Favourite sites: "The Official Home of Bing Crosby" (bingcrosby.com) and "The Bing Crosby Internet Museum".

I'm a fan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-7Pc3p4FcQ