Bing Crosby

In the ten-month period of 1951-1952 covered by this, the third volume in Sepia Records' series of chronological commercial recordings by Bing Crosby (which follows 51 volumes of Jonzo Records' The Chronological Bing Crosby series), Crosby, after 20 years of dominating popular music, finally was falling behind his successors on the pop charts, superseded by a group of sometimes similar-sounding male singers who were a decade (Frankie Laine, Perry Como, Tony Martin) or two (Guy Mitchell, Tony Bennett) his junior. (Meanwhile, he continued to rank in the Top Ten of box office stars and to maintain his weekly radio show.) This fall-off was only beginning to be apparent as he went into the recording studio in June 1951 to cut songs from his latest movie, Here Comes the Groom, including Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer's "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening," which would just miss the Top Ten and win the Oscar for Best Song. The delightfully nonsensical lyric was set to a Dixieland arrangement, allowing the singer (joined by co-star Jane Wyman and vocal group Three Hits and a Miss) to show off his jazz chops. That was the best of the movie songs, but Crosby typically went on in his later sessions during the year and into 1952 to cut Christmas and Irish material (in one case, "Christmas in Killarney," at the same time); re-tooled French tunes (among them "Domino," which reached the Top 20); new Broadway music; reworked versions of oldies; more movie music for his next picture, Just for You; and even a little country & western (including the Top 20 "Till the End of the World"). Of this typically varied repertoire, his best performances tended to come when a song had a lyric reflecting his own maturity, such as "When the World Was Young" and (from the Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe musical Paint Your Wagon) "I Still See Elisa." He also clearly enjoyed collaborating with a Dixieland group including Red Nichols and Matty Matlock on a quartet of old songs from the 1910s and '20s, "Sailing Down the Chesapeake Bay," "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider," "Nobody's Sweetheart," and "It Had to Be You." (The songs were recorded for the radio show, but they were so good that Decca mastered them for commercial release.) Not that he didn't seem to be having fun putting on a brogue in "Two Shillelagh O'Sullivan" or trading faux-South American phrasing with the Andrews Sisters on "I'll Si-Si Ya in Bahia." But as he approached his 49th birthday, Crosby was becoming more of a retrospective singer, which didn't help him on the hit parade. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide