Word: rinker
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Obviously Mildred had not thrown away the big money she used to make singing with Paul Whiteman and the Rhythm Boys (Bing Crosby, Harry Barris and Al Rinker, who is Mildred's brother) -back in the days when people used to sit up until after midnight listening to that still novel gadget, radio. She had done all right, too, with the band that she and husband Red Norvo (now divorced) had for years...
...Alton) Rinker can remember when he and his friend Crosby had a band at Gonzaga University in Spokane. Says Al: "Bing had a swell set of trap drums with a beautiful Hawaiian sunset painted on the big drum and lit from the inside. . . . He still can't read music and wasn't much of a drummer; he never could roll." In 1925 the boys left school and began a hazardous professional life with the help of Bing's brother Everett, a truck salesman, and Al's sister, who later turned out to be the superb blues...
...Rinker sang and played the piano. Crosby sang with him and whacked a small cymbal. Their style could be described as modified vo-do-de-o-do. It was original enough to get them a job with Paul Whiteman, but seemed to burden many audiences. The Manhattan reception of their Red Hot Henry Brown prompted them to rename the song Lukewarm Henry Brown. It was not until Paul Whiteman put Harry Barris into the act that the Rhythm Boys really got to town...
...Eddie Cantor's, was a song writer of considerable savor (I Surrender, Dear; It Must Be True; Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams). He was also such a cocky little entertainer that the partners nicknamed him "Mr. Show Business." He worked up a fast routine with himself and Rinker at baby pianos, Crosby at his baby cymbal, rapid patter, breaks, and percussive slamming of the piano top by Barris himself. He wrote Mississippi Mud. The Rhythm Boys' record of it, with Crosby's doleful passage about the melting away of his sugar who was left standing...
...Rinker went on to become a top radio producer of the William Esty advertising agency. Barris sang in Pacific Coast joints and regularly played small parts in his friend Crosby's motion pictures. Mississippi Mud went out of general public hearing. But when the Rhythm Boys got together to rehearse last week's broadcast, they did not need to sing the number twice-after more than a decade, they knew it the first time, word for word...