I've always loved this album. It was one of my earliest Crosby LP purchases in the very early 70s, as "The Special Magic of Bing & Satchmo", but it was a re-release in the UK MGM/Polydor "The Special Magic of..." series with no sleeve notes apart from a track listing (no "Lazy River"...) so it was a while in those far-off, pre-internet days before I learned of the original 1960 release. In the same series, "The Special Magic of Bing Crosby" turned out to be "Bing Sings Whilst Bregman Swings"! 

I like this album a lot, but it is second to last place when ranking Bing's duets albums for me. I simply adore the Bing and Fred duet album from 1975, along with the Fancy Meeting You Here, then this album, and last the That Travelin' Two Beat album. All of them I enjoy though.

Good points Archiefit! I'll have to relisten to his albums with Rosemary Clooney. I don't dislike Rosemary Clooney, there is just a ton of other female singers that I like more.

Regarding Rosemary Clooney, I don't know if it was years of smoking, but her voice didn't age well. I can't really listen to anything she did in the 1970s or later. I need to relisten some of her other work thought.

This one always confused me due to the varying accounts that Crosby and Armstrong recorded their tracks separately and then were dubbed together. Also I had read at some point the vocal chorus recorded their part  with Armstrong and then it was all dubbed together. Not sure. I did find a quote on why Lazy River was not on the original album.

"Eleven tracks were issued on the LP, excluding "(Up A) Lazy River" because Armstrong had recorded it for another company. Permission was granted for it to be included in the All Star Festival LP issued in 1963 on behalf of the United Nations to help refugees around the world. Johnny Mercer sings a few lines with the chorus on this track."Dardanella" and "Muskrat Ramble" were released as singles in October 1960. Billboard magazine commented that the tracks would be popular with "jocks".

Last edited by Benclink (07/10/2022 4:00 pm)

Lobosco wrote:

Archiefit wrote:

I read that also that Bing & Satch supposedly recorded their tracks separately, but I find it hard to believe.  You hear them interacting with each other, reacting to the other, unless their reactions were all scripted into the song (which I doubt, these 2 reacted naturally when singing, no script needed) I just don't believe they were recorded separately at different places and times.   If not, they did a masterful job of sounding like they were talking with each other.  A bit too natural sounding to sound pre-planned.

No I believe they were in the studio together. Back in 1960 there is no way they would have been able to make it sound that good if they weren't in the same room. I've been wrong before though!
 

The use and history of multitracking is interesting....AMPEX....Les Paul...by the 1960's the Beach Boys were utilizing it.

Patti Page was the first vocalist to record her own voice, sound on sound, with a song called "Confess" in 1947 for Mercury records. This was months before Les Paul  and Mary Ford had their first multi-voiced release.  Four-track recording was the studio standard through the mid 1960s Les Paul had utilized 3-track recording.

https://theaudiophileman.com/bing-crosby-tape-revolution/  (Concise article)

Crosby did do a multitrack recording with his own voice for Decca in the thinking mid to late 1950's...I cannot think of the name but of the song... it was a multitrack with only his voice...can anyone recall that one?


 

I hadn't played this album for years and so this lovely conversation propelled me towards my vinyl cupboard and the same MGM LP version David mentions at the top of the page. I found it a complete pleasure and I so agree with you, David with your choices of "Dardenella" and "Muskrat Ramble". I'd also like to add "Rocky Mountain Moon" which I thought a beautifully lilting track with the the lead vocals, Louis' trumpet and the band and chorus all as one.

From a later LP reissue I have, I think I'd also give a nod to the afore mentioned "Up a Lazy River", a song which just seems such a natural for both of them. My mind may be playing tricks - but might I have also heard Bing and Louis perform a radio version of this?. I wonder why this and "Bye-Bye Blues" were missing from the MGM edition? I'm also always surprised to learn that even sixty years ago and beyond, different parts of recordings even then were pulled together from different sessions. Naive little me always  thought "our kind of music" began only doing this with Sinatra's digital fibre telephone lines used to conjure the illusion of same time studio duets  from his as titled brace of charted albums in the early 1990's! 

The album does seem to have some similarities with Bing and Rosie's, "That Traveling' Two Beat" and I must confess an initial disappointment thirty-odd years ago on first listening - along the same lines of Colin's comment, that I was expecting a lot more of the jazzier drive from Bing and Louis' "High Society" duet of "Now You Has Jazz". This thread has now made me think how wonderful it would have been to have had (straight off the back of that film), an album of Bing and Louis and his " …All Stars" group as present in the movie. 

However, over the years and due to repeated plays - I've become very fond of "Bing and Satchmo" and appreciated its more mainstream, easy listening sensibilities with the chorus, arrangements and of the course the shining vocals of its two fabulous leads.

Duets wise (and also favourite-album-of-all-time-wise), it's always going to be Bing and Rosie's, "Fancy Meeting You Here" for me, due to a combination of it being (outside a compilation), the first album of Bing's I ever heard and just such an incredibly joyful, rip-roaring musical meeting of the minds of Messrs Crosby, May and Ms Clooney.

Thank you David and everyone for helping me re-visit a long neglected album. It's now made me think of purchasing a CD or indeed original LP with all the tracks present on one!  

Last edited by Ian Kerstein (18/10/2022 8:47 am)

Great album. However, it would have been better if it was Bing with Louis' All-Stars. Now that would have been an album.

Don't get me wrong - I love Billy May's work. I just think an album with the All-Stars would have been better.

Dardenella, Muskrat Ramble & Lazy River already mentioned are certainly highlights.

However, Pops' trumpet playing on The Preacher is outstanding. And I love Sugar. Bing makes chemistry cool.

The Preacher was almost going to be the opening track to my Bingville Buglers presentation for the ICC Online Meetings. However, I deliberately went looking for something from their radio work where Satchmo exclusively played trumpet and didn't sing - that's why My Honey's Lovin' Arms from a Chesterfield Show became the opener.

Last edited by Aaron Tickner (21/10/2026 3:57 am)

Aaron Tickner wrote:

Great album. However, it would have been better if it was Bing with Louis' All-Stars. Now that would have been an album.

Don't get me wrong - I love Billy May's work. I just think an album with the All-Stars would have been better.

Dardenella, Muskrat Ramble & Lazy River already mentioned are certainly highlights.

However, Pops' trumpet playing on The Preacher is outstanding. And I love Sugar. Bing makes chemistry cool.

The Preacher was almost going to be the opening track to my Bingville Buglers presentation for the ICC Online Meetings. However, I deliberately went looking for something from their radio work where Satchmo exclusively played trumpet and didn't sing - that's why My Honey's Lovin' Arms from a Chesterfield Show became the opener.

I could not agree with you more, Aaron. I naively thought when I bought my second hand vinyl copy many decades ago that it would automatically be Louis with his All Stars. I think if there had to be just one album with Pops and Bing, I would have plumped for one with his All Stars.

I really, really enjoy this album and think it was very well made and produced. It has a warmth to it that I so enjoy.
I stand by everything I previously said about it ....

However, your comments have reminded me of my initial dissapointment of that high blowing, free wheeling spirit isn't nearly as present on the album at hand and when listening to it, I also ache for some solos from his All Stars, too when instead we have a vocal chorus. A very well meaning and enjoyable project could in other hands, have been a great one. 
 

Last edited by Ian Kerstein (23/10/2026 10:14 pm)

Oh I see. So at least the chorus was faithful to some earlier roots. The chorus does sound well placed and not too intrusive it's just that your perceptive words so reminded me of my previous disappointment all those years ago. Over the decades, I then became very fond of the album and now so, so wish again that it could have been Bing with Louis and his All Stars. By the way, do you know if their earlier commercially released recording of "Gone Fishing" was from a radio show? 

Last edited by Ian Kerstein (24/10/2026 4:29 am)

Oh, thank you, Aaron - this makes it much clearer. 
I sometimes forget that from the mid-forties onwards, Bing's radio shows were being recorded on his developed Ampex magnetic tape and so they were crystal sounding, edited shows and tracks. 

Time again to hang my head in shame because after just undertaking a search, I don't own any of the "Through the Years" CDs. I often confuse them with the shorter "Good and Rare" Sepia series (liner notes, again by our esteemed Malcolm). Come to think of it a few years back, just before joining the ICC, I do remember looking into buying them and pouring all over the tracks.

Yes, I had forgotten that there's no trumpet from Pops on this one. But can we forgive this because of the sheer sleepy peace of the song and peerless vocal delivery of those two beyond greats? Why were they so perfect together in every way? 

Last edited by Ian Kerstein (24/10/2026 6:22 am)

Goodness me, I think that is the most succinct musical explanation and I am certain (even though I am not musically trained but bow to your expertise) to ever receive. I'll have to look this up. 
The chemistry and the sheer goodwill (musical and otherwise) they extolled is both so moving and effortlessly humorous . 

Last edited by Ian Kerstein (Yesterday 6:34 am)