Posted on 05/03/2023 12:48:00 AM PDT by Ozguy1945
Bing Crosby was born on 3rd May, 1903.
Bing said of his profession: “I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.”
For my personal tastes, popular music’s peak was spread across the middle of the twentieth century: Bing, Count Basie, Glen Miller, Sinatra, Elvis, Hank, The Beatles, Dylan, The Beach Boys, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, David Ackles, Michael Murphey, The Dillards, Steve Young, Paul Siebel and Willie Nelson.
I rate the zenith of last century’s popular music as lasting from 1965 with the Nobel Prize quality of Highway 61 Revisited to 1972’s return to something like highbrow vaudeville through David Ackles’ critically revered album “American Gothic“, which included Love’s Enough a song that could have been written for Bing:
“Every time you fall in love / that’s the best time of all. / It’s holding sunlight in your hand, / it’s heaven come to call ………”
Apart from the Beatles, Van and Joni, all of my personal favorites listed above from last century were Americans.
God Bless America – the nation which showed the world how to sing.
Bing helped kick that off.
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I disagree.....the best music to me happened between 1928 -1938......having said that,all music is great to who appreciate it.
I do love Motown and the British Invasion of the 60s & 70s. And Rockabilly starting with Buddy Holley through Elvis and on toward Righteous Brothers and Willie.
Yeah, I probably can’t draw a beat circle around it. I love a lot.
Don’t know if it’s the best, but Christmas ain’t Christmas without Bing and Dean doing some of the songs...
Close, but I suggest 1924 as the start which then covers the
Charleston through early swing area (including the early Bing years) as the rough peak and where I conduct the vast majority of my listening.
The advent of electrical recording in 1925 allows us to enjoy these works in true fidelity near 100 years later. Over the past couple of years I’ve downloaded over 3,000 recordings from the period which, after some benign cleanup, tend to be surprisingly listenable.
“the best music to me happened between 1928 -1938”
My preference is your range extending through Crosby’s.
Today’s pop music is not art. The only satisfaction a composer or performer can feel today is that it makes money.
What did ‘gentleman’ Crosby do that 2 of his kids felt the need to blow their own brains out in their 50s
Thanks to boomer parents I had an enriched exposure to 20th c entertainment, and my favorites are generally from the 1950’s. The folks say pop music went downhill in the late 60’s. Dad even pinpoints blame: Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band, a Beatle offering I have only heard a snippet of. He says that pushed it off the cliff.
I find almost nothing comparable in quality, today, to the music of sixty years ago. Especially in pop tunes, Broadway musicals, and individual performers.
So in my 20’s I am on long drives and plugged in to Sinatra, Jolson, the songs of My Fair Lady and Camelot, Sam Cooke, Dinah Shore, Dean Martin, and Elvis Presley.
P.S. I often wish someone would record pop tunes of the twenties without the horrid tinny sound quality. As Joan Morris and William Bolcom did for vaudeville songs.
contemporary Christian music
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzwubyoFKp4ImevaCsMOKZOm0cGYogyu6
It is shorthand to think that everything is caused by our childhood. It can disposition us toward unhealthy thinking and action. but sometime it is we that are flawed or ill behaved.
The current #1 song on my personal Top 10, which changes periodically, is Wasn't it Beautiful While it Lasted? by Waring's Pennsylvanians (1930).
Wistful & Blue--Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra (1927)
Here's another disc that he waxed with the Rhythm Boys. In this one, his voice is distinct.
I Left My Sugar Standing in the Rain (aka Mississippi Mud)--Whiteman's Rhythm Boys (1928)
I think the Beatles offering that pushed it off the cliff was "I Want to Hold Your Hand," which reached #1 on the Hot Hundred only a couple-three weeks after it first charted. It ended an era by knocking Bobby Vinton's version of the 1945 hit There! I've Said it Again out of the top spot. Incidentally, this had been preceded by Dominique, a French-language song about a Spanish crusader. After the Beatles, first opus, pop music would be dominated by guitars and drums up to the present day.
“God Bless America – the nation which showed the world how to sing.”
“The good old days” = Bing, Frank, Nat King Cole, and
dancing under the stars with Fred and Gene.
I thought Don Draper came up with that one.
Not a fan of Crosby. Or Sinatra or much of the white music of the era. Delta blues, old time country, real Jazz (before beebop/cool Jazz). 50s 60s 70s rock. Good stuff.
Listened to your last one. Guess the sound is from a ‘78 record.
“For best results use Victor needles” - cool!
“Vocal refrain by The Three Girl Friends” - today that would sound like another unusual sexual preference.
As musical notation (1) and instruments were standardized (2) classical music reached its zenith from 1500 to 2000.
The next one hundred years brought sound recording, broadcasting, amplification for concerts and video recording culminating in the internet distribution and hi-def sound and electronic manipulation. What happened was vocal and musical perfection could be created and also saved for repeated hearing and viewing. It was perfectible in a manner it was not during the previous five centuries.
I am amazed and impressed that music writers could put black dots on 5 lines on a page, and when we see and perform that many years later, play it back as concerts and symphonies, with expression and feeling, etc.
For me, that is one evidence that we humans are not an accident.
#19 Rap music has just 1 dot
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