Word: binge
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...Bing Crosby was one of the very few new stars of the early talking pictures - we can't think of another - who hadn't previously been paid to talk. Most of the other imports to Hollywood had honed their verbal skills on the Broadway or vaudeville stage; reading dialogue was nothing new to them. Crosby had read only lyrics: he was a singer, part of Paul Whiteman's trio The Rhythm Boys. Who could even guess that, when the group broke up in 1930, Bing would be successful as a solo singer, let alone as a movie idol...
...Bing Crosby--a hipster? Sure, he may have cut more No. 1 singles than the Beatles, but was the smoothly affable elder statesman of Eisenhower-era middle-brow pop ever really...cool? You bet. In Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams--The Early Years, 1903-1940 (Little, Brown; 728 pages; $30), critic Gary Giddins takes a fresh and compelling look at the forgotten first half of Crosby's long career, turning the clock back to the Roaring Twenties to show how Crosby started out as a hard-drinking, hard-swinging jazzman whose nonchalant way with a song was universally regarded...
...argues convincingly, was a major musical innovator who all but single-handedly created the modern manner of microphone-assisted singing that dominates pop to this day. He roomed with Bix Beiderbecke, recorded St. Louis Blues with Duke Ellington and formed a mutual-admiration society with Louis Armstrong (Louis taught Bing how to scat; Bing taught Louis how to croon...
...star, turning his back on hot jazz in order to serve up "musical comfort food" for the masses. But the cutting-edge Crosby of A Pocketful of Dreams remains undiminished by the bass-baritone blandness of his postwar incarnation as the Ghost of Christmas Specials Past. By concentrating on Bing Crosby the jazz master, Gary Giddins does him justice at last...
Official propaganda hasn't changed?Tibetan song-and-dance troupes still pirouette on television to folksy ditties like The Communist Party Turned Bitter to Sweet. The change comes instead from people like artist Li Bing, whose father once oversaw Chairman Mao's travel plans. Backpacking through China, she grew enamored of Tibet. After studying its language for a year, she spent six months on the plateau in 1998 and later produced an exhibition of her work featuring Polaroids of Chinese and Tibetans next to their overlapping handprints. Since then, travel to the Roof of the World has become as common...