More than a decade after you posted this Anton, I am sitting in my home office listening to "Dream with Dean" (MY favorite Dean Martin album) and listening to "I'm Confessin" and thinking how good is sounds and a thought crosses my mind and I go search up Bing's version and I'm struck (even though I have heard them both many times before) of how alike they are and how GOOD Bing's version is!

Where we go in different directions is you wondered if Dean was inspired or influenced by the earlier Crosby recording and I wondered what if Bing had gone into the recording studio to record an album, a little more fleshed out than his sessions for CBS and like "Dream with Dean" a laid back set that sounded like a lounge singer, signing a late night set, just HOW GREAT that album could have been!!

However, all those CBS recordings give us the chance to build out our own "Dream with BING" playlists!

Listening to this now and most of the tracks, I believe, are on the Mosaic box set. The Bing Crosby CBS Radio Recordings 1954-56. [/url] "Pledging My Love" & "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" I believe both appear on [url=https://www.discogs.com/release/3633374-Bing-Crosby-So-Rare-Treasures-From-The-Crosby-Archive]So Rare: Treasures From The Crosby Archive and "Born To Be With You" is on the digital album With All My Heart.

At least these are the albums that I have the tracks on already. I think if you don't own the CBS Boxset and have no plans on purchasing, this is a nice package as it offers you 17 tracks that from that collection. 


 

Blonde56 wrote:

Great question! I've been listening to Bing on my collection of Crosley and Victrola antique style radios. I use CDs mostly. Once in awhile, I use the cassette and turntable because my radios have all 3. Bing sound's Great! Years back, I had a Great stereo system and played him on that and enjoyed it very much! Playing Bing on these antique style radios just makes you feel like you are back in that time( even though I'm not from that time!)

I had a few of these radios in the past, loved the look, and yeah they seemed to add some authenticity to listening to old programs!

I'm always amazed someone hasn't made a really good radio that copies the style of some of those great antique radios!

They say great minds think alike!

That radio is the EXACT one I have purchased, down to the color! I have admired it for a while, but have a few Bluetooth speakers, an Amazon device in just about every room and couldn't bring myself to buy another, but FINALLY I just pulled the trigger because I like all the features this packs. And the sound is pretty good!

As for the transmitter.. well I contemplated buying a table radio that does bluetooth and emails a gentleman who has a blog and reviews all sorts of radio gear. I mentioned I had also considered an FM transmitter because I have the Superadio, which like I mentioned before, has very nice sound quality. HE suggested the C. Crane FM Transmitter II or III. He said they were the best he's ever heard the closest to an actual FM broadcast. And he has worked in radio for years. 

I only just used it today but the sound was very good, no distortion or interference. Now the Superadio is IN the same room, but I took the Prunus and went into other rooms in my apartment and it played great (antenna up) in every room. 

My laptop has a ton of music, tons of Bing, Matt Monro, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, and several albums of Doris Day, Perry Como, Sinatra, plus all sorts of other artists. Some of this music is widely available to stream on Amazon or YouTube Music, but I have a LOT that isn't available, so listening off my laptop is really the easiest most convenient option. This transmitter now gives me the ability to not be tethered to computer! 

I hope it exceeds your expectations!

Archiefit wrote:

Rolling Stone hasn't been worth reading for 30 years.  Why bother flattering them with attention. 
As for Al Jolson, his style was certainly more loud and brash and his voice higher when he started out.  But when he came back from his self-imposed exile from radio he had gone thru a lung removing operation from a disease he caught entertaining troops in WWII.  His voice had now deepened significantly.  

It's this '40's period of Al Jolson singing that I really much prefer over his earlier in your face manic high singing.   His singing changed due simply to his now deeper voice and also being older he seemed to have mellowed a bit in his style.  Was this all due to Bing?  I don't think so, maybe he was encouraged by Bing's style in the '40's and gave him confidence to return to radio.  In fact, even Bing has admitted Al was a great influence on his style that he would adopt in his career.   But let's face it, all singers influence other singers to some extent.  
 

There have been plenty of people who have commented on Rolling Stone having gone down hill and sharing your view, but I think the problem is Rolling Stone still generates a lot of buzz with lists like this and to ignore such a blatantly stupid omission just allows that omission to take on some air of legitimacy. 

If someone is going to compile a list like this, they should be willing to defend that list and justify the inclusion or exclusion of someone from the list.  

 

Rolling Stone using a new criteria has released the 200 Greatest Singers of all time.Rolling Stone stated: "This new list was compiled our staff and key contributors, and it encompasses 100 years of pop music as an ongoing global conversation, where iconic Indian playback singer Lata Mangeshkar lands between Amy Winehouse and Johnny Cash, and salsa queen Celia Cruz is up there in the rankings with Prince and Marvin Gaye. You might notice that, say, there isn’t any opera on our list — that’s because our purview is pop music writ large, meaning that almost all the artists on this list had significant careers as crossover stars making popular music for the masses.......In all cases, what mattered most to us was originality, influence, the depth of an artist’s catalog, and the breadth of their musical legacy."And yet Bing Crosby did not make this list.....I applaud a list that values more than just a perfect voice and agree great singers don't always have GREAT voices.. But how do you compile a list that "encompasses 100 years of pop music" and state that "almost all the artists" "had significant careers" "making popular music for the masses" and that " what mattered most to us was originality, influence, the depth of an artist’s catalog, and the breadth of their musical legacy." AND NOT INCLUDE BING CROSBY.

Lobosco wrote:

Graham Pascoe wrote:

I love the song. It's on my copies of the Feels Good Feels Right and The Final Chapter LPs but not on my Seasons LP.

I believe they added it to the CD reissue of "Seasons" but it is not from the original "Seasons" LP. It's a bonus track.
 

Yes, it's a bonus on the CD reissue - but easy enough to find on YouTube - 



 

I was really listening to "Feels Good, Feels Right" and really enjoy Bing singing "The Night is Young and You're so Beautiful" and I wondered if Bing had ever recorded it earlier in his career. 

Well, if he did, I didn't find it, but I did find that I have 3 versions of Bing singing it, one from 1951 that he sang on radio, the version from 1976 on "Feels Good, Feels Right" and lastly a version he recorded just before his death that is included as a bonus on the Seasons: The Closing Chapter CD. 

All three versions are really quite good, the version he sang on radio in 1951 is the shortest, but with a very nice arrangement and Bing sings it with that effortless smoothness defines so much of his work from that period. 

The version on "Feels Good, Feels Right" is an older Bing but a lovely arrangement and Bing sings this with great charm, but I really find myself replaying the version on Seasons, recorded just 3 days before his death, Bing's voice sounds stronger to me here than on the 76 version, the music slightly more up tempo. 

One song, 3 performances over the the span of just over 25 years and though his voice may have changed, deepened, maybe aged, he still could just flat out SING. 

 

I think I have read more than once that Seasons is a fitting final note to Bing's career. It's an album full of reflective songs and Bing's voice, while maybe not as strong as it was 40 years earlier is still wonderfully rich and able. 

As for songs, I love the title track, a great song that Bing really makes you feel, but I also love "Autumn in New York" and I agree with Ian and love how Bing opens the song! There is great warmth in his delivery and if Sinatra's version from '49 has a young man's excitement, Bing's is an older man's warm reminiscences. "Yesterday When I Was Young" is outstanding, but I also love "April Showers". 

Really I love Bing's 70's output and if Seasons is fitting final album, it's also the sad reminder that Bing was was really doing great work and didn't intend for this to be his final album. 

Ron1972 wrote:

I only jump on the board occasionally to see if there is something new here that has not hit Facebook and what a nice surprise to find this post. Listening to this now and even though I have all the Through the Years.. I am tempted to buy this!

As an update I have a YouTube premium account so was able to listen to the whole collection there and even though I have I think the majority of these tracks from the "Through the Years" collection I loved Bing's narration so much I bought the digital download off of Amazon. 

The world of streaming is nice but there are times where I find something that was ONCE available is pulled and is NO LONGER available and so why take the chance? 

A very enjoyable listen! There is so much I wish you had gone more in depth into, but I suppose it would have been a 3 hour video if you had!

I think one interesting thing is you both talk about Bing's voice in the 70's and how it had changed and while certainly I agree he no longer had some of the highs in his voice, some of the range etc. I think the remarkable thing is how much his voice had stayed the same. I sometimes put songs on from the 50's-70's and am always amazed at how similar he sounds even on recordings decades apart. 

There are too many singers to mention that certainly either didn't have a much to work with as they got into their 70's or didn't recognize or didn't want to adapt to their changing "strengths" . Aretha Franklin is a singer whom I always think that if she had just concentrated on where her voice sounded best her last albums would have been so much better!

I do think that as Bing got older he knew what he could do and what he couldn't and focused on his strengths but the strengths were pretty impressive and his 70's Christmas album, "A Southern Memoir", "Bing n' Basie"  and on and on, showed he still retained a lot of usable voice and range, with all the warmth and timbre that he displayed decades before. 

 

Monro has to have one of the best voices ever recorded!