Bing Crosby

In the fall of 1947, 44-year-old Bing Crosby remained, as he had been for years, a popular movie actor (the most popular, in fact, according to a poll in Box Office magazine, for the fourth year in a row), radio-show host, and recording artist. His status in the last category slipped a bit during 1947, when such younger figures as Eddy Howard, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, and Vaughn Monroe outpaced him, but he was still among the nation's Top Ten record sellers. He looked to improve that position with a flurry of recording sessions in the last quarter of the year, but he didn't change his approach. In fact, if anything, as demonstrated in the 21 different songs (plus two alternate takes) recorded at the seven sessions covered by this compilation, he was more conservative than usual. Four songs were contributed by his personal songwriters, Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen, and featured in his upcoming movie, Road to Rio ("But Beautiful," "Experience," "Apalanchicoloa, Fla.," and "You Don't Have to Know the Language"); three were recent compositions better known in renditions by others that Crosby was simply covering ("Pass That Peace Pipe," "Ballerina," and "Golden Earrings"); and there were examples of his taste for Pacific island music ("Now Is the Hour," from New Zealand) and Irish music ("My Girl's an Irish Girl" and "Galway Bay"). But the bulk of the selections, the remaining 11, consisted of old Tin Pan Alley standards that he'd just never gotten around to recording before, with "Silver Threads Among the Gold" dating all the way back to 1872 and "Love Walked In," the most recent, from 1938. George and Ira Gershwin had written that song, and they were also favored with recordings of "Embraceable You" and "They Can't Take That Away from Me," while the 1910s and '20s songwriting team of bandleader Isham Jones and lyricist Gus Kahn provided "Ida I Do," "I'll See You in My Dreams," "Swinging Down the Lane," and "Memories." Clearly, Crosby was not combing the wares of 1947 publishers for material, not when he could record "Pretty Baby," a song written when he was 12 years old.

Such choices were, of course, those of an established star who was coasting, and he performed the songs with seemingly effortless ease, taking the most pleasure in what appeared to be personal favorites that also turned out to be the most popular songs he cut during this period, "Now Is the Hour," which spent three weeks at number one in 1948, and "Galway Bay," a Top Five hit. Both were reckoned to be million sellers by the unreliable accounting of the time. ("Ballerina," recorded in the wake of Monroe's chart-topping rendition, reached the Top Ten.) There may have been another reason for the reliance on old standards in these sessions, the same reason why there were so many sessions in less than four weeks (and would be even more in the next few). Crosby, like other recording artists, was stockpiling tracks in anticipation of a strike by the musicians' union that would lead to a recording ban on January 1, 1948. The result, heard here, is an unusually large amount of very familiar music sung in his familiar style. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide