Authors: Gary Giddins
Vallee’s trademark appurtenance was a small megaphone, his greeting a jaunty “Heigh-ho, everybody,” his sound a dry, nasal
baritone that detractors (they were legion) derisively characterized as “crooning.” By March Vallee had three simultaneous
hit records. By June he was starring in a hit film,
The Vagabond Lover,
which was
advertised, “Men hate him — women love him.” By 1930 he had published the first of three unintentionally hilarious autobiographies,
fabled for their pettiness and vaunted modesty. (“I apparently have always been like the great surgeon who is too busy performing
his superb and skillful operations to take any bows for what he does so easily and naturally.”)
5
By 1931, after watching Crosby perform, Vallee, whose theme song was “My Time Is Your Time,” proved sufficiently astute to
observe to friends, “My time is short.” Yet Vallee’s startling popularity helps explain Bing’s strangely uneven recordings
in the months before he left for California. They suggest a bout of indecision, as if Bing had lost his compass and was no
longer certain what kind of singer he wanted to be.
Bing was now twenty-five and prized by the musicians he admired as well as numerous fans. With Whiteman granting him the freedom
to freelance for Columbia sessions, he was in demand to provide “vocal refrains” for studio orchestras. Before the Vallee
hysteria set in, Bing was on a roll. He demonstrated confidence at a date by a Sam Lanin outfit, inflecting Spencer Williams’s
“Susianna” with a felt ebullience, cannily shading the lyrics with his measured breathing. On the British evergreen “If I
Had You,” he embellishes the melody and stresses the vowels, often with a slight turn or mordent. The next day he was on hand
for the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, a recording unit copiloted by Jimmy and Tommy, the battling brothers from Shenandoah, Pennsylvania,
two of the most sought-after freelancers in New York. Glenn Miller arranged the material, and for the first time Bing’s chorus
was backed by the ingenious guitarist Eddie Lang. On “The Spell of the Blues,” Bing bends notes for bluesy effect and, despite
one Jolsonesque ringer, is clearly his own man. He is no less assured on Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It,” encouragingly supported
by Lang. Best of all is “My Kinda Love,” a flimsy song that he projects stirringly without a trace of the frangible crooning
style.
Several days after Vallee’s theatrical breakthrough, however, Bing recorded with Whiteman and for the first time appeared
discombobulated. He sang two waltzes — including his second Berlin tune, “Coquette” — in a key too high for him and in a style
that might be described as a poised croon, deft but diffident. The second tune, “My Angeline,” was deemed unreleasable; a
week later Bing gave Whiteman an acceptable version, but even then his top notes were soft.
Bing was clearly in a state, and we can only speculate about what threw him. Perhaps he would have been more himself if Challis,
not William Grant Still, had arranged “Coquette.” Perhaps he withered under the glare of the despotic anti-jazz producer Eddie
King. Perhaps he simply had a bad day. Most likely, Vallee had gotten to him in a way drink never did, as witness the far
more significant follow-up session.
On March 14, encouraged by the Vallee phenomenon, Columbia offered Bing his first date under his own name. He was backed by
three Whiteman musicians (violinist Matty Malneck, pianist Roy Bargy, guitarist Snoozer Quinn). All his experience during
the four years since the Musicaladers should have been consolidated in this hour, yet the records are unaccountably lifeless.
Spurred by the vitality he achieved on “My Kinda Love” with the Dorseys, Bing chose to rerecord it, but this time he overloaded
the song with self-conscious vocal techniques; for the first time, he was thrown off-kilter by a doubled-up tempo change.
On the wholly undistinguished song “Till We Meet,” he sounds not unlike singers he was in the process of demolishing.
By contrast, he was in splendid form a few weeks later, in April, for arguably the best of the Rhythm Boys sessions. “So the
Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together,” by Harry Barris and Billy Moll (“I Want a Little Girl”), recounts an ornithological
covenant while advancing the merrily subversive subtext of miscegenation, a theme previously explored in 1924, when Eva Taylor,
accompanied by Louis Armstrong, recorded “I’m a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird.” Bing begins the number with his
hand cymbal and sings his solo parts with aplomb, using mordents and a midrange croon, but without the corn of “My Kinda Love.”
Later passages suggest a rapping modernism, and the unison harmonization shows the trio at its best. In case anyone doubted
the soloist’s identity, “Louise” begins with a phone call for Bing (“I wonder who could be calling when I’m recording,” he
grouses. “Louise? That’s different.”) The phone found its way into their live act. On some nights the routine had Hollywood
on the line, calling for Bing to make pictures. And why not? After all, Hollywood had called Rudy Vallee.
Returning to the studio with Whiteman, Bing appeared perplexed once again, casting about for style. He did as well as could
be
expected on the ineffable Jolson tearjearker “Little Pal,” tossing in a tearful mordent and somehow managing to sound rational.
The potentially vital “Reaching for Someone,” a Challis arrangement recorded on Bing’s twenty-sixth birthday, is marred by
his misguided attempt to vocally mimic Tram’s saxophone glissandi at the turnbacks, a tasteless conceit in an otherwise fine
performance and one he never repeated. Bing, Tram, and Bix all enliven “Oh, Miss Hannah,” a southern song (“the moon am shining
bright”). Bing stresses the word
roses
with a mordent employed not for sentiment but to underscore rhythmic pulse, and swells the final cadence. Yet at the same
session he is indifferently orotund on Gus Edwards’s “Orange Blossom Time.”
Unlike Armstrong, who was born practically fully formed, Bing flirted with styles before settling into one unremittingly his
own, one that would prove applicable to every kind of song. His natural reserve led him toward an economy of expression, but
the times encouraged his inclination toward grandiloquence. To a certain degree his dilemma was created by his obligation
to fulfill Whiteman’s requirements. When he was afforded good material, Bing could make the whole band shine. But Paul’s more
bombastic pieces demanded a stolid projection. The miracle of Bing’s tenure with the band is how consistently he held himself
apart from its pomposity. Like Bix, Bing seems to open a window and let in fresh air almost every time he stands up to solo.
Only in the spring and summer of 1929, Vallee’s brief time in the sun, did Bing blink. He was the one, after all, who should
have been moving into the limelight, not that mewling throwback to the kind of dullards he and Louis Armstrong were consigning
to oblivion.
Bing’s musical confusion did not detract from his appetite for good times, leading to one professional and personal lapse
that almost ended in disaster. Whiteman’s orchestra played a two-week engagement at the Pavillon Royal on Long Island’s Merrick
Road. On Sunday, May 12, Bing, Al, Harry, and Mischa Russell, a violinist in the band, entertained some
Ziegfeld Follies
girls at the apartment of a wealthy friend. Late in the afternoon their host proposed a sailboat cruise on Long Island Sound.
As they launched onto the water, Bing leaned against the rail, hoisted a glass of champagne, and began a song just as the
boat hit a wave. He was tossed overboard. Wind drove
the boat 300 yards before the skipper could come about. Bing’s expertise as a swimmer saved him. He was treading water and
laughing when they fished him out — reason enough to return to New York and resume the festivities.
At 2:00
A.M
. the Whiteman foursome and the Ziegfeld girls repaired to the apartment of one of the chorines. They slept late and missed
the bus Whiteman had chartered to take his musicians to Long Island. When they realized that there was no way they could make
the gig in time, they knew they were in serious trouble and had no recourse but to apologize profusely. Whiteman threatened
to fire them. The boys had never seen him angrier. Yet he calmed down when they promised to reform. Asked years later whether
Bing had been hard to handle, Paul replied, “No, he was never hard to handle. But sometimes he was hard to find.”
6
On May 24, hours before the Whiteman caravan headed west, Bing made his second date as a leader. Backed by three musicians,
this time including Lang on guitar, he covered Vallee’s adaptation of a German song, “I Kiss Your Hand, Madame,” humming,
whistling, and finishing with jazzy adornments. But then he lost his moorings on “Baby, Oh Where Can You Be?,” missing a note
and veering out of tune on a scat break. Even his usually flawless time failed him. Bing needed a break from New York.
The
Whiteman—Old Gold Special
chugged out of Pennsylvania Station on May 24, a privately chartered train of eight coaches, two for baggage alone, another
for Paul’s Duesenberg. The party of fifty included thirty-five musicians, managers, a crew of audio experts, staff arranger
William Grant Still, the vice president of P. Lorrillard (Old Gold footed the bills), and reporters, most notably
Variety’s
Abel Green, who filed regular dispatches along the way as, over the course of twelve days, the band performed — in addition
to weekly broadcasts — free concerts in sixteen cities, from Philadelphia to Salt Lake City. It was a public-relations bonanza,
the showbiz story of the year. When they did not have a hall, the band performed on the train’s extended observation platform,
and no one complained when local radio stations set up microphones. Indeed, the sponsor was overjoyed to have the whole country
tracking the bandleader’s journey to California. “This is a nite club, all stag, on wheels,” Green reported,
“except that the club is going all hours, day and night.”
7
In Nebraska the band entertained 4,500 at Omaha’s City Auditorium in the afternoon and 1,500 at the Lincoln train station
at night. In Denver Whiteman participated in a much photographed reunion with his parents. Throughout the trip black porters
(“Ethiops” in the parlance of
Variety)
greeted him as king and treated him accordingly.
Shortly before the band left New York, the premier violin-guitar team of Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang signed on as members of
the troupe (previously they had been contracted for individual recordings), and they provided much of the journey’s intramural
entertainment, not all of it musical. Along with banjoist Mike Pingitore and violinist Wilbur Hall, they formed a string quartet
to serenade the king at dinner. Venuti was a dedicated practical joker. Heading through Utah and finding Bix in a dead sleep,
he gathered sand buckets (used to extinguish fires) from passenger cars and heaped the sand on Bix’s lap, the adjoining seat,
and the floor. When Bix came to and blanched, Venuti reassured him that they had safely emerged from the worst sandstorm in
years. Bix protested, “Why didn’t someone wake me up? I could have suffocated.”
8
Lang and Venuti were two prodigiously talented Italians from Philadelphia. After Bix, they were arguably the most influential
white jazz musicians of the 1920s, serving as a sort of template for the famed European jazz ensemble of the 1930s, the Quintette
du Hot Club de France, which featured guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelly. They blended their instruments
in virtuoso ten-string exercises that combined classicism and swing in astonishing breakneck exhibitions, but they were also
capable of poignant lyricism. Inseparable in their school years, they remained personally and musically close and had no need
for arrangements; once they agreed on a key, they could improvise all evening. Yet as individuals they could not have been
more different. Venuti, a physically imposing man with a growly voice and temperament, was a resolute gambler and joker, said
to be the only man to nettle the placid King of the Cowboys, Roy Rogers. (When they shared a stage bill in the 1940s, Joe
struck up a conversation with Roy as he awaited a cue astride his palomino, Trigger; while they conversed, Venuti triggered
the horse with his violin bow, producing an immoderate erection that convulsed the audience.) Joe was a loner who worked when
he felt
like it, an eccentric and natural comedian — just the type of personality Bing relished.
Lang was his polar opposite: quiet, thoughtful, responsible, a ruminative Catholic. Bing came to regard him as a counterpart.
Eddie was one of the few people in Bing’s life to get beyond the role of a jester or playmate and become a genuine confidant.
He was Bing’s most intimate friend, almost certainly the closest he would ever have. Until Lang’s tragic death in 1933, they
traveled together, making wonderful music on records and in films. Eddie’s wife, Kitty, whom he met in 1920, when she was
touring in a
Ziegfeld Follies
road company and he was playing banjo with a band in Philadelphia, described him as a “shy boy with black, curly hair and
grey-green eyes. He could barely say hello, but he had the sweetest smile I ever saw.”
9
They eloped in 1926, enduring rough times until the good jobs began coming Eddie’s way. He introduced Kitty to Bing in a
nightclub: “Eddie and I were with Jimmy Dorsey and his wife Janey. Bing came over to our table and sat down for a few minutes.
He was a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow, a perfect gentleman at all times, though he had had a few drinks. Eddie told me afterwards
that he believed this guy Bing would go places as he had everything going for him once he settled down to business.”
10
“Well we are wending our way westward and having a truly marvelous time of it,” Bing wrote home to his mother. After detailing
the itinerary, he penitently reassured Kate: “If nothing else our return to Whiteman has been fruitful because of this trip.
Not only are we having a great time but my name is being prominently featured in the newspapers and in the broadcasts and
considerable invaluable publicity thus redounds to me. What awaits us on the Coast is as yet problematical and whether we
get much of a break in the picture or not I can’t tell now. However, I intend to bear down heavily and really try to accomplish
something worth while.”
11
He told her that they figured to be in Los Angeles on June 20 and that she could write him in care of Everett, who had recently
married the former Naomi Tillinghast and settled in what Bing later described to Kate as a “cute home.”
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