There’s a massive brouhaha right now over Celine Dion not making Rolling Stone’s list of “The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.” .Bing Crosby, one of the greatest and most influential singers of all time, didn’t make the cut either. .Should we care? Should I care if someone imagines Ozzy Osburne should be on the list? .Rolling Stone’s opinion means less to me than that of the editorial pages of the Toronto Star but that’s not the point. .This serious lack of judgment is indicative of a larger phenomenon in the history of entertainment. Bing Crosby has been almost forgotten in 2023, his music, his mastery of vocals, his stardom evanescent. In his prime he was the biggest star in the world; no entertainment figure today can compare dominance that Crosby demonstrated in the industry. He was the most famous man In the world. His records sold in the tens of millions, he had more number one hits than Elvis Presley, the Beatles or any contemporary performer. His rendition of White Christmas was the best-selling single in history, briefly surpassed by Elton John’s Candle in the Wind dedicated to the late Princess Diana, but regained its status a few years later. .Crosby was the first singer to use the microphone as an instrument and completely altered the style of singing in the twentieth century. Instead of belting out of every song, he introduced the world to crooning and influenced every pop singer that was to follow him for 50 years. .He set a record as the top box office star for five consecutive years, 1944-49. He was among the top 10 money makers for a decade. He was nominated for three Academy Awards for best actor, winning once for Going My Way. .His radio show, The Kraft Music Hall also dominated the airwaves. His work for the United Services Organization in the Second World War brought him the adoration of the troops and the public and he was voted the person who contributed most to the war effort in a 1945 poll. .Yet it was more than just the titanic success of his recordings and his films, greater than his superstardom: Crosby became a symbol of the American good life and often came to B.C. to fish and Alberta to hunt. My father met Bing at the Banff Springs Hotel. Crosby asked his waiter who had cooked the steak he had just enjoyed so much. My dad was rushed to the table to meet one of the few celebrities that he had time for. .And of course there was the golf. He could have been a professional and sponsored an annual championship. He always seemed to be enjoying life with the fedora tilted to one side and the pipe clenched between his teeth. He’d run from Paramount studios to the greens to hit a bucket of balls or shoot 18 holes. It was all delightful magic. .Who cared if Crosby wasn’t always in character? He had problems with his first wife and family. Dixie Lee Crosby became an alcoholic and died prematurely. Things did not go entirely well for the four sons from that marriage and Gary Crosby would be especially resentful of his father’s parenting. .But the public life and the private life seemed to unite with his second marriage to Katharine Grant and the three children from that union all experienced private and professional success. .When Crosby left this world at 74, he was still recording, continuing to do annual Christmas specials and was doing live performances to sold-out crowds. He died on Oct. 14, 1977 — poetically collapsing of a heart attack after just putting on the 18th hole. His last words? “That was a great game of golf, fellers.” .Crosby was not only one of the greatest singers of all time, he was probably the biggest star and hugest celebrity of the twentieth century. Composer Jerome Kern was once asked what place his friend and musical competitor Irving Berlin had in American music. Kern responded that Berlin (who wrote White Christmas) had no place in American music because “Irving Berlin is American music.” .The same could be said of Bing Crosby and we should remember that today.
