1.
Album
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Album, is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century album sales have mostly focused on compact disc and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used from the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl, an album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed live, the majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, historically, the term album was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, the LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. It was adopted by the industry as a standard format for the album. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, the term album had been carried forward from the early nineteenth century when it had been used for collections of short pieces of music. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, as part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some commenters have declared that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs, Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yess Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks. There are no rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as albums. These are known as box sets, material is stored on an album in sections termed tracks, normally 11 or 12 tracks. A music track is a song or instrumental recording. The term is associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks. When vinyl records were the medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves
2.
Bing Crosby
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Harry Lillis Bing Crosby, Jr. was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, from 1931 to 1954 Crosby was a leader in sales, radio ratings. His early career coincided with technical recording innovations such as the microphone and this allowed him to develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influenced many of the popular male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin. Also in 1948, the Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music, in 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of only 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, Crosby influenced the development of the postwar recording industry. He became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. In addition to his work with early tape recording, he helped to finance the development of videotape, bought television stations, bred racehorses, Crosby died at the age of 74 on October 14,1977, from a sudden heart attack in Alcobendas, Spain. Crosby was born on May 2,1903 in Tacoma, Washington, in 1906, Crosbys family moved to Spokane, and in 1913, Crosbys father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The house now sits on the campus of Crosbys alma mater Gonzaga University and he was the fourth of seven children, brothers Larry, Everett, Ted, and Bob, and two sisters, Catherine and Mary Rose. His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby, Sr. a bookkeeper, Crosbys mother was a second generation Irish-American. In 1910, seven-year-old Harry Crosby Jr. was forever renamed, the Sunday edition of the Spokesman-Review published a feature called The Bingville Bugle. Written by humorist Newton Newkirk, The Bingville Bugle was a parody of a hillbilly newsletter filled with gossipy tidbits, minstrel quips, creative spelling, and mock ads. A neighbor, 15-year-old Valentine Hobart, shared Crosbys enthusiasm for The Bugle, and noting Crosbys laugh, took a liking to him, eventually, the last vowel was dropped and the nickname stuck. Crosby later described Jolsons delivery as electric, Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He attended Gonzaga for three years, but did not earn a bachelors degree, as a freshman, he played on the universitys baseball team. The university granted him a doctorate in 1937. In 1923, Crosby was invited to join a new band composed of school students a few years younger than himself. Al Rinker, Miles Rinker, James Heaton, Claire Pritchard and Robert Pritchard, along with drummer Crosby, formed the Musicaladers, the group performed on Spokane radio station KHQ, but disbanded after two years
3.
Fred Astaire
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Fred Astaire was an American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter. His stage and subsequent film and television careers spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films and several television specials, Astaire was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fifth greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema in 100 Years. Gene Kelly, another star in filmed dance, said that the history of dance on film begins with Astaire, later, he asserted that Astaire was the only one of todays dancers who will be remembered. Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna Ann, Astaires mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace. Astaires father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Roman Catholicism, Astaires mother dreamed of escaping Omaha by virtue of her childrens talents, after Astaires sister, Adele Astaire, early on revealed herself to be an instinctive dancer and singer. She planned a brother and sister act, which was common in vaudeville at the time, although Astaire refused dance lessons at first, he easily mimicked his older sisters steps and took up piano, accordion, and clarinet. Despite Adele and Freds teasing rivalry, they acknowledged their individual strengths, his durability. Fred and Adeles mother suggested they change their name to Astaire, Family legend attributes the name to an uncle surnamed LAstaire. They were taught dance, speaking, and singing in preparation for developing an act and their first act was called Juvenile Artists Presenting an Electric Musical Toe-Dancing Novelty. Fred wore a top hat and tails in the first half, in an interview, Astaires daughter, Ava Astaire McKenzie, observed that they often put Fred in a top hat to make him look taller. The goofy act debuted in Keyport, New Jersey, in a tryout theater, the local paper wrote, the Astaires are the greatest child act in vaudeville. As a result of their fathers salesmanship, Fred and Adele rapidly landed a contract and played the famed Orpheum Circuit in the Midwest, Western. Soon Adele grew to at least three inches taller than Fred and the pair began to look incongruous. The family decided to take a break from show business to let time take its course and to avoid trouble from the Gerry Society. In 1912, Fred became an Episcopalian, the career of the Astaire siblings resumed with mixed fortunes, though with increasing skill and polish, as they began to incorporate tap dancing into their routines. Astaires dancing was inspired by Bill Bojangles Robinson and John Bubbles Sublett, from vaudeville dancer Aurelio Coccia, they learned the tango, waltz, and other ballroom dances popularized by Vernon and Irene Castle. Some sources state that the Astaire siblings appeared in a 1915 film titled Fanchon, the Cricket, starring Mary Pickford, by age 14, Fred had taken on the musical responsibilities for their act. He first met George Gershwin, who was working as a song plugger for Jerome H. Remicks music publishing company, Fred had already been hunting for new music and dance ideas
4.
Phonograph record
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The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
5.
Irving Berlin
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Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. His music forms a part of the Great American Songbook. Born in Imperial Russia, Berlin arrived in the United States at the age of five. He published his first song, Marie from Sunny Italy, in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights and he also was an owner of the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. Alexanders Ragtime Band sparked a dance craze in places as far away as Berlins native Russia. In doing so, said Walter Cronkite, at Berlins 100th birthday tribute, he helped write the story of country, capturing the best of who we are. He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which him a legend before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including Easter Parade, White Christmas, Happy Holiday, This Is the Army, Mr. Jones, and Theres No Business Like Show Business. His Broadway musical and 1942 film, This is the Army, Celine Dion recorded it as a tribute, making it no.1 on the charts after the September 11 attacks in 2001. In 2015, pianist and composer Hershey Felder began touring nationwide as a show, portraying Berlin. Composer George Gershwin called him the greatest songwriter that has ever lived, Berlin was born on May 11,1888, in Tolochin, Russian Empire. He was one of eight children of Moses and Lena Lipkin Beilin and his father, a cantor in a synagogue, uprooted the family to America, as did many other Jewish families in the late 19th century. In 1893 they settled in New York City, as of the 1900 census, the name Beilin had changed to Baline. By daylight the house was in ashes, as an adult, Berlin said he was unaware of being raised in abject poverty since he knew no other life. Tsar Alexander III of Russia and then Tsar Nicholas II, his son, had revived with utmost brutality the anti-Jewish pogroms, which created the spontaneous mass exodus to America. When they reached Ellis Island, Israel was put in a pen with his brother and his Yiddish-speaking family eventually settled on Cherry Street, a windowless cold-water basement flat in the Theater District of the Lower East Side. His father, unable to find work as a cantor in New York, took a job at a kosher meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side
6.
Compact disc
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Compact disc is a digital optical disc data storage format released in 1982 and co-developed by Philips and Sony. The format was developed to store and play only sound recordings but was later adapted for storage of data. The first commercially available Audio CD player, the Sony CDP-101, was released October 1982 in Japan, standard CDs have a diameter of 120 millimetres and can hold up to about 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or about 700 MiB of data. The Mini CD has various diameters ranging from 60 to 80 millimetres, they are used for CD singles, storing up to 24 minutes of audio. At the time of the introduction in 1982, a CD could store much more data than a personal computer hard drive. By 2010, hard drives commonly offered as much space as a thousand CDs. In 2004, worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs, by 2007,200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide. In 2014, revenues from digital music services matched those from physical format sales for the first time. American inventor James T. Russell has been credited with inventing the first system to record information on an optical transparent foil that is lit from behind by a high-power halogen lamp. Russells patent application was first filed in 1966, and he was granted a patent in 1970, following litigation, Sony and Philips licensed Russells patents in the 1980s. The compact disc is an evolution of LaserDisc technology, where a laser beam is used that enables the high information density required for high-quality digital audio signals. Prototypes were developed by Philips and Sony independently in the late 1970s, although originally dismissed by Philips Research management as a trivial pursuit, the CD became the primary focus for Philips as the LaserDisc format struggled. In 1979, Sony and Philips set up a joint task force of engineers to design a new audio disc. After a year of experimentation and discussion, the Red Book CD-DA standard was published in 1980, after their commercial release in 1982, compact discs and their players were extremely popular. Despite costing up to $1,000, over 400,000 CD players were sold in the United States between 1983 and 1984, by 1988 CD sales in the United States surpassed those of vinyl LPs, and by 1992 CD sales surpassed those of prerecorded music cassette tapes. The success of the disc has been credited to the cooperation between Philips and Sony, who came together to agree upon and develop compatible hardware. The unified design of the disc allowed consumers to purchase any disc or player from any company. In 1974, L. However, due to the performance of the analog format
7.
Guinness World Records
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The book itself holds a world record, as the best-selling copyrighted book of all time. As of the 2017 edition, it is now in its 63rd year of publication, the international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. On 10 November 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob, by the River Slaney in County Wexford. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he involved in an argument over which was the fastest game bird in Europe. That evening at Castlebridge House, he realised that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europes fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must be numerous other questions debated nightly in pubs throughout Ireland and abroad and he realised then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beavers idea became reality when Guinness employee Christopher Chataway recommended University friends Norris and Ross McWhirter, the twin brothers were commissioned to compile what became The Guinness Book of Records in August 1954. A thousand copies were printed and given away, after the founding of The Guinness Book of Records at 107 Fleet Street, the first 198-page edition was bound on 27 August 1955 and went to the top of the British best seller lists by Christmas. The following year, it launched in the US, and sold 70,000 copies, since then, Guinness World Records has become a household name and the global leader in world records. Because the book became a hit, many further editions were printed, eventually settling into a pattern of one revision a year, published in September/October. The McWhirters continued to compile it for many years, Ross McWhirter was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1975. Following Ross assassination, the feature in the show where questions about records posed by children were answered was called Norris on the Spot, Guinness Superlatives Limited was formed in 1954 to publish the first book. Sterling Publishing owned the rights to the Guinness book in the US for decades, and, under their management, the group was owned by Guinness PLC and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment. Gullane was itself purchased by HIT Entertainment in 2002, with offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records global headquarters remain in London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida, US. Recent editions have focused on record feats by person competitors, many records also relate to the youngest person who achieved something, such as the youngest person to visit all nations of the world, being Maurizio Giuliano. Each edition contains a selection of the records from the Guinness database, as well as new records. The majority of records are no longer listed in the book or on the website. For those unable to wait the 4–6 weeks for a reply, the Guinness Book of Records is the worlds most sold copyrighted book, earning it an entry within its own pages
8.
Musical film
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The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline. The musical film was a development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater, performers often treat their song, in a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it. The 1930s through the early 1950s are considered to be the age of the musical film. Musical short films were made by Lee de Forest in 1923–24, beginning in 1926, thousands of Vitaphone shorts were made, many featuring bands, vocalists and dancers. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was the first to include a track including non-diegetic music and diegetic music. This feature-length film was also a musical, featuring Al Jolson singing Dirty Hands, Dirty Face, Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Blue Skies and My Mammy. Historian Scott Eyman wrote, As the film ended and applause grew with the houselights and she saw terror in all their faces, she said, as if they knew that the game they had been playing for years was finally over. Still, only isolated sequences featured live sound, most of the film had only a musical score. In 1928, Warner Brothers followed this up with another Jolson part-talkie, The Singing Fool, theaters scrambled to install the new sound equipment and to hire Broadway composers to write musicals for the screen. The first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, included a sequence in a night club. The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than an all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively. The Broadway Melody had a plot about two sisters competing for a charming song-and-dance man. Advertised by MGM as the first All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing feature film, it was a hit, there was a rush by the studios to hire talent from the stage to star in lavishly filmed versions of Broadway hits. The Love Parade starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton, Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, The Desert Song in 1929. They spared no expense and photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor and this was followed by the first all-color, all-talking musical feature which was entitled On with the Show
9.
White Christmas (song)
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White Christmas is a 1942 Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the single of all time. Other versions of the song, along with Crosbys, have sold over 150 million copies, accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song. He often stayed up all night writing—he told his secretary, Grab your pen, I just wrote the best song Ive ever written—heck, I just wrote the best song that anybodys ever written. At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song and he just said I dont think we have any problems with that one, Irving. The song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed by Holiday Inns first hit song, Be Careful, by the end of October 1942, White Christmas topped the Your Hit Parade chart. It remained in position until well into the new year. A few weeks after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Crosby introduced “White Christmas” on a Christmas Day broadcast, the Armed Forces Network was flooded with requests for the song. The recording is noted for Crosbys whistling during the second chorus, in 1942 alone, Crosbys recording spent eleven weeks on top of the Billboard charts. The original version hit number one on the Harlem Hit Parade for three weeks, Crosbys first-ever appearance on the black-oriented chart. Re-released by Decca, the returned to the No.1 spot during the holiday seasons of 1945 and 1946. The recording became a perennial, reappearing annually on the pop chart twenty separate times before Billboard magazine created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases. In Holiday Inn, the won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1942. In the film, Crosby sings White Christmas as a duet with actress Marjorie Reynolds and this now-familiar scene was not the moviemakers initial plan. In the script as originally conceived, Reynolds, not Crosby, the song would feature in another Crosby film, the 1954 musical White Christmas, which became the highest-grossing film of 1954. The version most often heard today on radio during the Christmas season is the 1947 re-recording, the 1942 master was damaged due to frequent use. Crosby re-recorded the track on March 19,1947, accompanied again by the Trotter Orchestra, the re-recording is recognizable by the addition of flutes and celesta in the beginning. Although Crosby dismissed his role in the success, saying later that a jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully
10.
Decca Records
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Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U. S. label was established in late 1934 by Lewis along with American Deccas first president Jack Kapp and later American Decca president Milton Rackmil. In 1937, as a result of anticipating Nazi aggression leading to World War II, Lewis sold American Decca, the British label was renowned for its development of recording methods, while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre. Both wings are now part of the Universal Music Group, which is owned by Vivendi, the US Decca label was the foundation company that evolved into UMG. The name Decca was coined by Wilfred S. Samuel by merging the word Mecca with the initial D of their logo Dulcet or their trademark Dulcephone, Samuel, a linguist, chose Decca as a brand name as it was easy to pronounce in most languages. The name dates back to a gramophone called the Decca Dulcephone patented in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel. That company was renamed the Decca Gramophone Co. Ltd. Within years, Decca Records Ltd. was the second largest record label in the world, Decca bought the UK branch of Brunswick Records and continued to run it under that name. In the 1950s the American Decca studios were located in the Pythian Temple in New York City, in classical music, Decca had a long way to go from its modest beginnings to catch up with the established HMV and Columbia labels. The pre-war classical repertoire on Decca was not extensive, but was select, heinrich Schlusnus made important pre-war lieder recordings for Decca. John Culshaw, who joined Decca in 1946 in a junior post and he revolutionised recording – of opera, in particular. Hitherto, the practice had been to put microphones in front of the performers, Culshaw was determined to make recordings that would be a theatre of the mind, making the listeners experience at home not second best to being in the opera house, but a wholly different experience. To that end he got the singers to move about in the studio as they would onstage, used sound effects and different acoustics. His skill, coupled with Decca engineering, took Decca into the first flight of recording companies and his pioneering recording of Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen conducted by Georg Solti was a huge artistic and commercial success. In the wake of Deccas lead, artists such as Herbert von Karajan, Joan Sutherland, however, Culshaw was, strictly speaking, not the first to do this. Far from being a mere rendering of the score, the 3-LP album set used sound effects to recreate the production as if the listener were watching a stage performance of the work. Until 1947, American Decca issued British Decca classical music recordings, afterwards, British Decca took over distribution through its new American subsidiary London Records. American Decca actively re-entered the classical music field in 1950 with distribution deals from Deutsche Grammophon, American Decca began issuing its own classical music recordings in 1956 when Israel Horowitz joined Decca to head its classical music operations
11.
Merry Christmas (Bing Crosby album)
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Merry Christmas is a compilation album of phonograph records by Bing Crosby, released in 1945 on Decca Records, catalogue A-403. It includes Crosbys signature song White Christmas, the single ever. The original album consisted of ten songs on five 78 records, each one had a holiday theme with the exception of Danny Boy, paired with Ill Be Home for Christmas on its original record. Prior to the long-playing album era, such assemblies were not uncommon for popular music, the 78rpm album quickly reached the top of the Billboard Best-selling popular record albums chart in 1945 and remained there for several weeks. Decca and Crosby undertook the remake with the orchestra and chorus. The original recording of White Christmas to this date, has never been stamped on LP records or 45 rpm singles, the 1955 vinyl LP configuration is the one extant to date, consisting of the entirety of Decca A-550 plus four additional tracks. The Andrews Sisters, often Crosbys recording partners in the 1940s, are featured on the tracks Jingle Bells, Mele Kalikimaka, after the original cast recording to Oklahoma. Also from Decca Records, released in 1943, the 1955 album configuration has been continually in-print longer than any album in the history of the United States. After the introduction of the LP by Columbia Records in 1948, Decca reissued the eight song Merry Christmas album in the form of a 10-inch LP in 1949, catalogue Decca DL-5019 with its standard brown label. The original 78rpm album cover had a blue background and showed a large black. This was the cover design that had been used on all issues of the 78rpm album. Copies released after 1951 featured a newly designed red and green cover, Merry Christmas was also issued as a 45 rpm box set in 1950, catalogue Decca 9-65. In 1952, the 45rpm box was discontinued, replaced by a 2-EP set and this had the same cover as the second version of the 10-inch LP, each 7-inch single had two songs per side, and the sides were numbered 91123 and 91124, respectively. The new songs were Silver Bells and Mele Kalikimaka, both recorded in September 1950, and Its Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas and Christmas in Killarney, the albums track listing was also adjusted slightly, with Faith of Our Fathers now preceding Ill Be Home for Christmas. This issue has remained unchanged to present, first pressings of the album were released on Deccas all-black label with the number in the top left corner of the front cover. This album was exactly duplicated for the 2014 re-issue by Geffen Records, in 1963 the album was made available in electronically re-channeled stereo, Decca DL-78128. Mono copies made after the introduction of stereo have DL-8128 in the left corner of the front cover. All copies from the 1960s feature the Decca rainbow label, the mono version was temporarily deleted in 1968
12.
Bob Crosby
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George Robert Bob Crosby was an American jazz singer and bandleader, known for his group the Bob-Cats. Crosby was born in Spokane, Washington, the seven Crosby children were brothers Larry, Everett, Ted, and Harry, sisters Catherine and Mary Rose, and Bob. His parents were English-American bookkeeper Harry Lowe Crosby and Irish-American Catherine Harrigan, Crosby attended Gonzaga College, but he dropped out to seek a career in music. During World War II, he served in the U. S. Marines, Bob Crosby began singing in the early 1930s with the Rhythm Boys, which included vocalist Ray Hendricks and guitarist Bill Pollard, and with Anson Weeks and the Dorsey Brothers. He led his first band in 1935 when the members of Ben Pollacks band elected him their titular leader. In 1935 he recorded with the Clark Randall Orchestra led by Gil Rodin and featuring singer Frank Tennille, father of Toni formerly of Captain, Glenn Miller was a member of that orchestra, which recorded the Glenn Miller novelty composition When Icky Morgan Plays the Organ in 1935. Crosbys singing voice was similar to that of his brother Bing. A much later account from 1943 mentions a young trumpeter by the name of Gilbert Portmore who occasionally played with the band. The orchestra was one of the few bands of its time established as a corporation of its members. The band was formed out of the ruins of the Ben Pollack Orchestra. Needing a vocalist, they chose Crosby simply for his personality, looks and he was made the front man of the band, and his name became the bands public identity. In the spring of 1940, during a performance in Chicago, a novelty bass-and-drums duet between Haggart and Bauduc, Big Noise from Winnetka, became a hit in 1938-39. The enduring popularity of the Bob-Cats led by Bob Crosby, whose biography was written by British jazz historian John Chilton, was evident during the frequent reunions in the 1950s and 1960s. Bob Haggart and Yank Lawson organized a band that kept the spirit alive, combining Dixieland, from the late 1960s until the mid 1970s, the group was known as the Worlds Greatest Jazzband. Since neither leader was happy with that name, they reverted to the Lawson-Haggart Jazzband. The Lawson-Haggart group was consistent in keeping the Bob Crosby tradition alive, three of his songs were featured in three hit video games, Fallout 3, Fallout, New Vegas, and Fallout 4, published by Bethesda Softworks. Crosby has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for television and radio, both were dedicated February 8,1960. During World War II, Bob Crosby spent 18 months in the Marines touring with bands in the Pacific and his radio variety series, The Bob Crosby Show, aired on NBC and CBS in different runs from July 18,1943, to July 16,1950
