American Legends: The Life of Bing Crosby

De: Charles River Editors

Narrado por: Steve Marvel

"I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse." - Bing Crosby

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

In 1948, American polls rated Bing Crosby "the most admired man alive", and it's no surprise given how popular he was across every major form of entertainment during the decade. With a string of major hits, Crosby was the most popular singer in the country during that era, with classic songs like "White Christmas" helping pave the way for other singers as varied as Bob Hope, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra. In fact, young Sinatra modeled his clothing and style after Crosby, who was his idol growing up. And as good as he was at singing, Crosby's work with radio technology helped pave the way for multitracking songs and making it possible to broadcast the same radio programs across the country without cutting another live version. All told, Crosby sold an estimated 500 million records in the 20th century.

©2012- Charles River Editors (P)2015 Charles River Editors

Bing didn’t just sing

The life of singer, actor, comic,personality, golfer, father and more is nicely captured in this short version of his life story. Cosby may be largely forgotten in the 21st century but in his day he was not only a top Hollywood star of movies , tv, radio, nightclubs, concerts, and one of the best known show biz figures of the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s business has also an innovator in broadcast technology, a successful producer, a profound influencer in musical history, and the father of lots of kids. His image has been smeared by a supposedly tell all book written by his oldest son in the 80s but much of that has been denounced by all of his other children. This author suggests some of those nasty stories may have been an effect from Crosbys heavy drinking in those early days. He later got mostly sober and his younger kids have only praise. Want to know who developed or help bring about the modern era of song crooning, the tv laugh track, the first broadcast video take and more. Bing!!!! You can hear it all here.

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