Jazz Flashes Podcast - Malcolm Macfarlane on Bing Crosby's Christmas Recordings

Despite the size and depth of his recorded output, forty years after his passing on a golf course in Madrid, Spain, Bing Crosby is still mostly remembered by the general public for his holiday recordings, especially the many he made for Decca Records between the 1930s and 1940s. These are classic readings of tunes that have become popular Yuletide standards, such as "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas," and most of all, Irving Berlin's "White Christmas." Several years ago I wrote about these here.

Malcolm Macfarlane, co-editor of the ICC's BING Magazine

As the holiday season approaches, I've had the chance to sit down with my friend Malcolm Macfarlane, British co-editor of BING Magazine, the journal of the International Club Crosby, to discuss at length the importance of Crosby's Christmas output. On this new episode of the Jazz Flashes Podcast, Malcolm and I cover Bing's classic Decca sides, but we also delve into his holiday movies (1942's Holiday Inn and 1954's White Christmas), Christmas radio and television specials, and other holiday albums he made in the 1960s and 1970s, including I Wish You a Merry Christmas (1962) and A Time to Be Jolly (1971). All of these are the perfect records to get in a holiday mood Crosby-style. If you're interested in listening to our whole 75-minute program, it's available at the end of this post.

Like every year, Jazz Flashes would like to wish our entire readership around the world the happiest (and jazziest) of holidays! Thanks for your attention!

Bing Crosby and Some Jazz Friends

Back in 2010 I began The Vintage Bandstand with a post about Bing Crosby, so it's only fitting that I'd start this new blog talking about Crosby as well, particularly because in my early teens, Der Bingle was one of my main gateways into jazz. Crosby, who is mostly known to the general public for his Christmas recordings these days (which is a sad state of affairs, in my opinion), was a jazz singer of the first order. When Crosby changed the face of popular singing forever in the early 1930s, he did so not only by mastering the use of the microphone, but also by inflecting pop music with the tones, the sensibility, and the rhythm of jazz. And throughout his career, he always enjoyed singing and recording in a jazz setting and with jazz musicians. The 1991 Decca compilation, Bing Crosby and Some Jazz Friends, is a great way to get introduced to the jazziest side of Crosby's output via a series of fantastic duets recorded in the 1930s and '40s.

Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby

As Crosby shares the studio with fine artists such as Jack Teagarden ("The Birth of the Blues"), Connie Boswell ("Basin Street Blues"), Woody Herman ("I Ain't Got Nobody"), Eddie Condon (two takes of "After You've Gone"), and Lionel Hampton ("On the Sunny Side of the Street"), we are reminded of how thoroughly the singer understood the jazz idiom and how relaxed and extremely hip his phrasing always was. Crosby's two sides with Louis Jordan, "Your Socks Don't Match" and "My Baby Said Yes," are two obvious highlights of this album, which also includes duets with his brother Bob Crosby ("When My Dreamboat Comes Home"), Lee Wiley ("I Still Suits Me") and Louis Armstrong on the semi-impromptu "Gone Fishin'." One of the most charming tracks features Crosby having a ball with Satchmo and Jimmy Dorsey on a very appealing reading of "Pennies from Heaven." Overall, this is a CD that all vocal jazz fans should own lest they forget that there was a jazzier side to Bing Crosby than can be heard on "White Christmas."