Day 119: Bing Crosby – White Christmas
Album cover courtesy of Decca Records
I’m doing an unofficial late Christmas thing today, so I opted for more of the old seasonal crooner music while I cook. Today’s choice was a classic: Bing Crosby’s White Christmas.
Bing Crosby, real name Harry, was a multimedia star born in 1903, who was known both for his music and for his acting career, having starred in over 70 films and recorded more than 1,600 songs in his life. He was also one of the world’s top selling recording artists of his time.
He became known for being one of the first artists to embrace a crooner style of singing by singing intimately into a microphone in a sound that resembled his speaking voice, instead of doing the loud vaudeville sound that was the done thing at the time.
His 1945 release White Christmas (or Merry Christmas, depending on which version you listen to) is a bit of a classic in the seasonal genre. It’s a fairly standard Christmas record from the pre-Michael Bublé-era. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the record, but I noted to my cooking partner that while I’m enjoying the songs, I like the sound of songs that seem a little bit like the singer has committed a few more sins in their life, but apparently Bing isn’t as squeaky clean as he sounds: his nickname was Binge Crosby for the obvious reasons and he was a big advocate of legalised weed, having smoked a fair bit of the devil’s lettuce, including with Louis Armstrong.
The beginning of the record has your classic Christmas tunes, but the end of the record has some previously unknown Christmas tunes to me, like “Silver Bells” and “Christmas in Killarney”. It’s nice to hear a Christmas song that has no connotation to any stressful holiday shopping experience. He does sing the classics well, too. But maybe it’s because he has inspired so many that came after that the record just sounds like your bog-standard Christmas album made by a man with a lovely voice.
White Christmas is a decent thing to listen to when doing some Christmas preparations, nothing more and nothing less. Not for any other time of the year, unless there’s something wrong with you. Bada-Bing-bada-6.5/10 — might listen again next year, might not. Musically, this may be better, but I do still sort of prefer the sound and personality of the Hoff.