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Overview
Bing Crosby dominated American popular culture in a way that few artists ever have. From the dizzy era of Prohibition through the dark days of the Second World War, he was a desperate nation's most beloved entertainer. But he was more than just a charismatic crooner: Bing Crosby redefined the very foundations of modern music, from the way it was recorded to the way it was orchestrated and performed.
In this much-anticipated follow-up to the universally acclaimed first volume, NBCC Winner and preeminent cultural critic Gary Giddins now focuses on Crosby's most memorable period, the war years and the origin story of White Christmas. Set against the backdrop of a Europe on the brink of collapse, this groundbreaking work traces Crosby's skyrocketing career as he fully inhabits a new era of American entertainment and culture. While he would go on to reshape both popular music and cinema more comprehensively than any other artist, Crosby's legacy would be forever intertwined with his impact on the home front, a unifying voice for a nation at war. Over a decade in the making and drawing on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to numerous archives, Giddins brings Bing Crosby, his work, and his world to vivid life — firmly reclaiming Crosby's central role in American cultural history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780316887922 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Little, Brown and Company |
| Publication date: | 10/30/2018 |
| Pages: | 736 |
| Sales rank: | 653,585 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d) |
About the Author
His other books include Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams-The Early Years, 1930-1940, which won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Sound Research; Weatherbird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century; Faces in the Crowd; Natural Selection; Warning Shadow; and biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. He has won six ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Peabody Award in Broadcasting. He lives in New York, NY.
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Prelude 4
Part 1 Time Out
1 Meanwhile 11
2 Independence 32
3 Ghosts 49
4 Prewar Air War 62
5 Right All the Way 89
6 Coventry 113
7 South America, Take It Away 137
8 Happy Holiday 152
Part 2 Metamorphosis
9 Keep Away from Eunuchs 171
10 Caravan 190
11 Friends 210
12 Home Fires 233
13 Divertissement 261
14 Just an Old Cowhand 277
15 The Leo McCarey Way 308
16 Padres 322
17 Swinging on a Star 343
18 Put It There, Pal 373
Part 3 Der Bingle
19 Heer Shpreekht Bing CROS-by 409
20 Somewhere in France 433
21 A Little Touch of Harry in the Day 468
22 Dial O for O'Malley 487
23 Nothing but Bluebirds 513
24 A Long, Long Time 541
Bing Crosby Wartime Discography 583
Bing Crosby Wartime Filmography 595
Notes and Sources 599
Interviews and Bibliography 663
Acknowledgments 683
Index 691
What People are Saying About This
“Gary Giddins is the finest jazz critic of his generation and Swinging On A Star adds another splendid story to the literary mansion he is constructing for Bing.”
“Long-awaited, Swinging on a Star is the scrupulously researched companion to Gary Giddins' marvelous first volume on the life of Bing Crosby. And like its companion, it brims with music, movies, family drama, religion, love-- and, now, war, when the master of jazz performed on a public stage to a country, and most particularly, an armed forces, in need of cheer. With loving precision, Gary Giddins documents those performances-- and that man-- so that we can participate, hearing as if for ourselves the compassion in Crosby's song; and witnessing, too, as if first-hand, just how this stoic, incomparable crooner became an American icon.”
“A magnificent, monumental biography. Of course the chapters about him in wartime England and France –Der Bingle – fascinated me most, not least his extraordinary mixture of showbiz courage, universal charm and absolutely hard driven energy. The ritual singing of “White Christmas” at the end of each show, producing that huge significant silence among the GIs, is a haunting image and told me something quite new about America at war. I was also impressed by the swift syncopated narrative, and the sly shifts between lyrical and analytical presentation. So how would I sum it up in a phrase? – a cultural biography to croon over!”
"What an astonishing act of narrative and scholarship Gary Giddins has performed. He has drilled deep into a complex, deeply flawed and extraordinarily talented human being and has brought back not only this fascinating figure but the age that shaped him and which he in turn helped to shape."
“Brilliant and unsurpassable: Gary Giddins’s powers as a music critic, film scholar, and historian are all on display in Swinging on a Star, the much anticipated second volume of his Bing Crosby biography. Giddins zeroes in on the war years and richly documents Crosby's remarkable career as it reached its zenith as singer, actor, and canny business man, not to mention tireless star entertainer to our troops. He raised the morale of all of America and was beloved by millions. Der Bingle was a marvel and so is Giddins. He has captured one of the greatest molders of popular culture who ever lived and I couldn’t put the book down; it is that engrossing. Bravo!”