Yes, I'll have a good old search on YouTube.
It's an excellent source for sampling and listening.
On CD, I do have an augmented soundtrack of  Mr Young's "Around the World in Eighty Days" and it is sumptuous. All I need, now is to actually watch the Oscar winning film for the first time. Without Bing being one of the few Hollywood guest stars who didn't participate, all I can do is offer the tenuous connection that its director Michael Anderson also directed Gary Cooper, who handed Bing his Oscar, in his final film, "The Naked Edge". 
I know, I'm now sounding desperate. 

Ooooooooh, now I am panicked into pressure.
The Athens air is making you most mischievous.
Don't tell me. Bing was originally going to play Cooper's part?
Kathryn was originally going to play Deborah Kerr's?
Harry Crosby was originally cast to play Diane Cilento's little boy?
Bob Hope had an inappropriate, edit removed cameo as the killer closes in?
Can I sound any more desperate? 
Please relieve me of my misery.  

Ah! Well that's all a relief. Agony over.
Trust me to plump for the wrong film in the first place.
Undoubtedly Kathryn would have made a beautiful Princess Auda but I'm relieved she didn't have to risk the skirt chasing, clammy clutches of the notorious Cohn, who undoubtedly liked her.  

I just need now to think how I can work this back to Bing's recorded output in the 1950's before there's trouble.... 

Last edited by Ian Kerstein (24/10/2025 9:51 pm)

Oh yeas that is also a nice connection, Bing did a great version of Around the world. It sure works fine.

I'm only weighing in on this poll eight years after David initially posted it here. I went with the 1940s considering how prolific Bing was and with the variety of styles and accompaniments utilised in the recordings.

I tried to think about my preferences of the decades, but I really can't. May I be so bold to break Bing's recording years into the following categories. 

1. The Decca cataolgue
2. The Brunswick Years
3. The albums/singles of the late 1950s to early 1960s, excluding the sing-along albums
4. 1972-1977.
5. The Paul Whiteman Years and "I've Got the Girl"
6. The Reprise Years
7. Other 60s to early 70s. 
8. The sing-along albums. 

In decades, I guess it would be
1. 1940s
2. 1930s
3. 1950s
4. 1970s
5. 1920s
6. 1960s

It is a curious thing to do - rank your favourite era of your favourite singer. Quite a difficult thing to do. My wife said when we get to the stage of life where we need to down-size, she said just the essential collection please. My response was very Australian - "No worries, love!" What my wife doesn't know yet that my idea of essential Bing is 1926 to 1977.

It is a little easier to do this with Frank Sinatra. Capitol and Reprise are a must. Not that interested in the Columbia Years. Maybe I haven't listened to enough early Sinatra to appreciate him.

Louis Armstrong - I would also say everything. However, if pushed I'd say the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s along with selected albums from the 1960s - Disney Songs the Satchmo Way!

Billie Holiday - I can rank her career by labels.
1. Verve (& Satin Lady on Columbia)
2. Decca
3. Columbia
4. Commodore  

David Lobosco wrote:

Aaron Tickner wrote:

I'm only weighing in on this poll eight years after David initially posted it here. I went with the 1940s considering how prolific Bing was and with the variety of styles and accompaniments utilised in the recordings.

I tried to think about my preferences of the decades, but I really can't. May I be so bold to break Bing's recording years into the following categories. 

1. The Decca cataolgue
2. The Brunswick Years
3. The albums/singles of the late 1950s to early 1960s, excluding the sing-along albums
4. 1972-1977.
5. The Paul Whiteman Years and "I've Got the Girl"
6. The Reprise Years
7. Other 60s to early 70s. 
8. The sing-along albums. 

In decades, I guess it would be
1. 1940s
2. 1930s
3. 1950s
4. 1970s
5. 1920s
6. 1960s

It is a curious thing to do - rank your favourite era of your favourite singer. Quite a difficult thing to do. My wife said when we get to the stage of life where we need to down-size, she said just the essential collection please. My response was very Australian - "No worries, love!" What my wife doesn't know yet that my idea of essential Bing is 1926 to 1977.

It is a little easier to do this with Frank Sinatra. Capitol and Reprise are a must. Not that interested in the Columbia Years. Maybe I haven't listened to enough early Sinatra to appreciate him.

Louis Armstrong - I would also say everything. However, if pushed I'd say the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s along with selected albums from the 1960s - Disney Songs the Satchmo Way!

Billie Holiday - I can rank her career by labels.
1. Verve (& Satin Lady on Columbia)
2. Decca
3. Columbia
4. Commodore  

I like how you organized that. Here are my choices:
1. The Decca Years
2. The Brunswick Years
3. 1972-1977
4. The Paul Whiteman Years
5. Late 50s to Early 60s (non sing along)
6. The Reprise Years
7. Other 60s and early 70s
8. The sing-along albums

In decades, I currently pick:
1. 1930s
2. 1940s
3. 1970s
4. 1950s
5. 1920s
6. 1960s

 

Interesting. Essentially the same order of preferences with regards to the categories only that you shifted the late 50s/early 60s down the list. The reason I put that era higher on the list is because of the albums: Bing/Bregman, Bing/Scobey, the High Society soundtrack, How the West Was Won, the 2 Rosie/Billy May albums, Bing & Satchmo, Holiday in Europe and even the Christmas album. 

Ian Kerstein wrote:

Although my favourite recording era of Bing's is easily the 1970's with all those wonderful "Indian Summer" albums, my second favourite era would be the 1950's with such glorious albums as "Bing With a Beat", "Bing Sings While Bregman Swings", the "High Society" soundtrack, the "Say One For Me" soundtrack (only joking!) but most, most magnificently, my favourite album not only of Bing's but favourite album of all, "Fancy Meeting You Here". I am in seventh heaven when being blasted away by this exceptional concept album, Billy May's brassy and mischievously gutsy arrangements and Bing and Rosie's "as one" harmonising, pitch perfect "adlibbing" and interplay as the album's continuously reunited but separated couple. 

I must agree with you Aaron over not being overly interested in Sinatra's earlier Columbia years.
I find so many of these recordings too sugary sweet compared with the more mature sounding, all knowing, finger snapping swinger of "Songs for Swinging Lovers" and "Come Fly With Me". 

Regarding Sinatra's Columbia years, I put a lot of the blame at Mitch Miller. I have never liked him, and he wasted a lot of great singers like Guy Mitchell, Johnnie Ray, and Frankie Laine on corny novelty songs. I could on and on how much I dislike Mitch Miller. 

But back to Bing, it is hard to pick a favorite of anything, but sometimes it is fun to do. I like to pick a top list each year and then see how my mood or tastes change.
 

Ian Kerstein wrote:

I couldn't agree with you more, David - and neither would have Frank. 

I sometimes get the feeling that Miller was wreaking some sort of vengeance on a weakened Sinatra before Frank's control and career prestige returned with Capital Records and his Oscar victory. Making him record against his will such appalling novelty monstrosities as "Mamma Will Bark", Sinatra never forgave him.

This was to the point when years later Jack Entratter, manager of The Sands hotel where Sinatra was now king and hoping to perform a reconciliation, unwisely dragged Mitch Miller over to Frank's dining table group where Miller on request, willingly extended his hand. This was met with a simple F-worded instruction from Frank for him to leave. Feelings still clearly ran very deeply there.

Yes, each year some favourites with Bing can change - there is just so much material to choose from but decades on, "Fancy Meeting You Here" remains my favourite LP and "Seasons" remains my favourite solo Crosby album. I think much of this has to do with things catching us during our influential, formative years. 

I think you're right about things catching us in our formative years. Compact cassettes were the thing when I started collecting and I remember "Seasons" being the first concept album I had. I've always had a fondness for it. I couldn't believe how vibrant and fresh Bing sounded. I mistakeningly thought it was "newly" recorded - this would have been 1989. 

That last statement needs clarification - and it might shock younger members to learn about the pitfalls before the internet. Information wasn't always at your finger-tips.

I'll be as brief as I can.

I was introduced to Bing via Road to Utopia in 1987. My father taped it off TV in the middle of the night to show my cousins who were living with us at the time. They loved films such as Flying High (Airplane!) and the Police Academy films. Dad wanted to show them that what they thought was revolutionary in comedy had been done before. Well, I was hooked. I had to get my hands on more Bing movies. I linked a tape recorder up to the TV and recorded the songs off the films.

1988 - I started high school. During that year I looked up two encyclopaedias to read about Bing. They were published in 1972 and 1975. The second one spoke about Bing's upcoming tours. My parents and grandparents had missed the news apparently on 14 October 1977 because they never knew if Bing was still alive or not. With the little information I had on hand I thought he was still alive. 

Christmas 1988 - two things occured that sparked my further interest in Bing. There was an afternoon TV show aimed at early teens (my age bracket at the time). The host played the Bing/Bowie duet but made no mention of Bing having died over a decade before. I thought I was watching a recent duet. (Incidently - the host of that show - James Valentine only passed away this year of a rare form of cancer. He was only in his mid-60s).

The other event was the passing of my own Nanna. Wonderful lady. Left us too soon.

She had a few cassesttes of 1940s music which everyone in the family seemed to be happy that I collect. No one else was interested and without my discovering them, they probably would have ended up in the bin. One was the MCA compilation - A Nostalgic Hour of Bing Crosby. (The tape has long gone, but I found a copy on vinyl a few years back).

Then in 1989 I bought copies of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", "White Christmas", "The Small One/The Happy Prince", one of the Ken Barnes/Pete Moore over-dubs and "Seasons" - all cassettes.

As I said earlier, when I heard "Seasons" I couldn't believe the resonance and how vibrant Bing sounded. Coupled with the Bing/Bowie duet, I got excited as to what I would hear next from the octogenarian Bing. Remembering, the only up-to-date information on Bing I had access to were those two encyclopedias that were printed before Bing's death.

By then I was talking about how great Bing was to anyone who didn't really want to listen. One of my teachers said, "You speak like Bing is still alive". "Yes, of course..."  

She said, "Just wait a minute". She rang through to one of the staff rooms to a teacher who was a trivia nut. He had appeared on quiz shows on TV and radio. "Chris, is Bing Crosby still alive...uh-huh...okay, I'll tell him." 

"Sorry, Aaron. Bing died on a Spanish golf course in 1977". 

I wouldn't have it. Mr Ostrowski must have been wrong.

I've told the story else where how a girl I went to high school introduced me to her Uncle, Les (an avid Bing collector). One of the first things I asked him was whether Bing was still alive or not. 

In amongst Les' collection was a laminated copy of the front page of the Brisbane Daily Telegraph of 15 October 1977 - BING DIES. How could my parents and grandparents missed that back in 1977???

I wonder if my old high school has upgraded its resouces too?

Thankfully Les had spare copies of Charles Thompson's book and George Carpozi Jr's book, The Fabulous Life of Bing Crosby". These were duly read and all of a sudden my true knowldege of Bing was under way. Les also cautiously gave me a copy of Gary Crosby's book and The Hollow Man. Les said, "Take them with a grain of salt".

I was only recently speaking to David C. about this  - it is amazing that I became a collector at the height of the "discredit and defame Bing era".  

Anyway, I still think Bing sounds vibrant and resonant on "Seasons" and I eagerly await an up and coming album from our 123 year old singer!