29 October 2024

Bob Crosby Brother of Bing – Phantom Dancer

Greg Poppleton Swing Radio Show

Bob Crosby was the singing, band leading younger brother of Bing Crosby. Bob also had his own radio and TV shows from 1936 on. He’s your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

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BOB

Bob Crosby began singing in the early 1930s. He was with the Delta Rhythm Boys, which included vocalist Ray Hendricks and guitarist Bill Pollard, with Anson Weeks (1931–34) and then the Dorsey Brothers (1934–35).

He became a bandleader in 1935 after Ben Pollack’s band broke up, and many of the former members of that group elected him to lead them.

Crosby’s own band also formed a “band-within-the-band” called the Bob-Cats, a Dixieland octet including soloists from the larger orchestra, many of whom were from New Orleans. The band included at various times Ray Bauduc, Yank Lawson, Billy Butterfield, Charlie Spivak, Muggsy Spanier, Irving Fazola, Nappy Lamare, Jack Sperling, Joe Sullivan, Jess Stacy, Bob Haggart, Walt Yoder, and Bob Zurke.

In the spring of 1940, during a performance in Chicago, teenager Doris Day was hired as the band’s vocalist.

For its theme song, the band chose George Gershwin’s song “Summertime.” The band’s hits included “South Rampart Street Parade,” “March of the Bob Cats,” “In a Little Gypsy Tea Room,” “Whispers in the Dark,” “Day In, Day Out,” “Down Argentine Way,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “Dolores,” and “New San Antonio Rose.” A bass-and-drums duet between Haggart and Bauduc, “Big Noise from Winnetka,” became a hit in 1938–39.

The Bob Crosby Orchestra featured in the 1936 series Ford V-8 Revue and Camel Caravan on CBS after Benny Goodman in mid-1939.

Bob Haggart and Yank Lawson organized a band that combined dixieland and swing to try to carry on the legacy of Bob Crosby. From the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, the band was known as the World’s Greatest Jazz Band, but when both became dissatisfied with the name they changed it to the Lawson-Haggart Jazz Band.

CROSBY

Bob Crosby spent 18 months in the Marines touring with bands in the Pacific during WW2.

His radio variety series, The Bob Crosby Show, aired on NBC and CBS in different runs from 18 July 1943 to 16 July 1950.

This was followed by Club Fifteen on CBS from 1947 through 1953 minus a brief interlude when he was replaced as host by singer Dick Haymes during parts of 1949 and 1950.

On Club Fifteen, he was teamed with the Andrews Sisters three nights per week, singing with them and engaging in comedy skits. He first met the trio in 1938 when his orchestra backed their Decca recording of “Begin the Beguine”.

Bob Crosby and Patty Andrews recorded a hit duet on Decca Records with the novelty, “The Pussy Cat Song (Nyow! Nyot Nyow!),” which peaked at No. 12 on Billboard.

From 1953-57, Bob Crosby had a  half-hour CBS TV daytime series, The Bob Crosby Show.

Bob introduced the Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie to American audiences and guest-starred in 1957 on her NBC television series, The Gisele MacKenzie Show.

In 1952 he replaced Phil Harris as the bandleader on The Jack Benny Program, remaining until Benny retired the weekly radio show in May 1955 after 23 years. In joining the show, he became the leader of the same group of musicians who had played under Harris.

Before joining Benny on the radio, Crosby, based on the east coast, would often play with Benny during Benny’s live New York appearances.

Bob Crosby continued singing and band leading into the 1980s.

BOB CROSBY ON AUSTRALIAN TV

According to an article in ‘The Bulletin’ 21 May 1966, Bob Crosby hosted a TV variety show in Australia on ATN 7 Sydney and HSV 7 Melbourne in the early 1960s. It was directed by a busy Australian TV director, John Collins.

“…The ill-fated Bob Crosby show. Crosby’s supporters claim that Collins and the Willard King organisation notably failed to provide Crosby’s show with a satisfactory packaging.

It was said that studio space at ATN was unavailable for rehearsals, that there were a host of technical hitches, and that Crosby had to take a guitar-player’s wages out of his own salary. (The Sydney and Melbourne shows were recorded on consecutive nights).

He is also said to have offered to pay, himself, for a first-class script-writer, if one could be found, and to have (ultimately) resigned in frustration.

It has also been suggested that Crosby thought he was coming out to a completely packaged (in the American sense) show.

He thought it would be fully directed and produced by professionals and presented to the studio in its finished form.

Others say that he treated his Australian sojourn as a holiday, spent too much time at the golf course, took too little or no interest in his interviewees, and failed to audition them personally.

From the first, certainly, Crosby wore a defeated look, the look of a man who has played too many engagements in the American hinterland.

The image of the sad, ineffectual, tired man was altogether wrong for Australian TV success, which depends on a rawly extrovert bounciness, physical vitality and pace, and a deep understanding of the audience’s needs.

Whatever the faults of Willard King (and the show certainly had a very clumsy look) the simple fact is that Crosby didn’t have the right personality, or the youth, for audiences here to respond to him in the vast numbers essential for the right ratings.

The shortage of suitable interviewees, a chronic Australian problem, can only be overcome here if the interviewer himself does most of the work, and uses them as part of his own act.”