Rating: 
Summary: INFORMATIVE BING BIO
Review:
Anyone interested in Bings life should enjoy this book. Does any
one out there know when part two will be released?
Anyone who enjoys Bing work will find this book interesting. Does
anyone know with part two is coming out?
Rating: 
Summary: Aptly titled...
Review: ...for the inception of Crosby's career, as "detailed" by the formidable Mr. Giddins, has a decidedly dreamlike quality. After living what can charitably be described as an unremarkable life up to the time of his fateful journey to CA with Alt Rinker, Crosby is signed by the top bandleader in the US within 12 months time...and never looks back. These things just do not happen, but Giddins spends more time (MUCH more time, as several reviewers have noted) unfolding the Crosby forebears' travails than the "Bing Bang". The (if we're to believe Giddins' account) practically ambitionless and unarguably unschooled (musically, at any rate) Crosby blithely jumps to the head of the popular music pack in the space of a year, spending much less time honing his craft than boozing and whoring, and NO ONE was opportunistic enough to ape his chops? This I can't swallow whole. And Giddins doesn't bite, either, or even gnaw on that matter much. It could be that Giddins' real point is that modern pop music (& by extension, our modern era) is so fundamentally 'pointless'; that one of its prime movers, its driving forces, was in so many ways as ineffable as many of the tunes he "crooned". As Ted Ficklin astutely notes, A Pocketful of Dreams is more about that music's early years than about Crosby - who seems neither nice nor nasty but instead simply, as TF notes, "not that interesting" - but even at that, Giddins' tome is, despite his earnest attention to detail and his unsurpassed passages where the music turns to jazz - ultimately unsatisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: Bu-Duh Bing!
Review: 2000 was a really great year for biographies and this is a really neat book. It really doesn't matter how you feel about Bing Crosby, this is really about the transitions in the American music business from 1903 to 1940. In fact, Bing Crosby's life is not really all that interesting and the strictly biographical details do not take up more than a third of the book. If you enjoy Giddens' commentary on the recent Ken Burns Jazz Series, this book is a feast.
Rating:
Summary: Bing Crosby, Pocketful of Dreams
Review: 600 pages packed with unnecessary trivia. Would have been much more interesting if this bio was boiled down into about 300 worthwhile pages.
Rating:
Summary: Bing must be smiling down...
Review: A biography well researched, thoughtful and fair. Growing up with Bing's music constantly on the radio, film and on TV, he became part of my life without my really knowing it. The mention of so many familiar stars who worked with Bing was delightful. White Christmas became a fond joke in my family, since we were "marooned" at my grandfather's house on one snowy Christmas Eve, and "blamed" Bing. High Society showed Bing at his best, and his duet with Frank Sinatra (Did You Ever) was one of my favorite scenes of all time. I, too, look forward with great anticipation to Part Two. Thanks, Gary Giddins, for a wonderful read!
Rating:
Summary: Bing Finally Gets His Due
Review: A serious, authoritative biography of the unjustly forgotten Bing Crosby (a more complex man than is generally assumed) has been long overdue. Finally, Gary Giddins delivers the goods, and presents Bing as what he was: nothing less than a social and cultural phenomenon. He was the first multi-media superstar, influencing not only all singers who came after him , but also the way Americans perceived themselves (or wanted to be perceived) during the heyday of the Greatest Generation. Giddins gives us a straight from the shoulder look at a man who was neither the Father O'Malley figure he portrayed in "Going My Way" (to whom he was unfairly compared in his lifetime), or the exaggerated monster his troubled oldest son portrayed him as in an infamous book published after Bing's death. Crosby was loved by millions like a member of the family for decades, yet few people were actually close to him. Nevertheless, everyone who was associated with him personally or professionally claimed that what you saw was what you got: he was a regular, likeable, nice guy. Who just happened to simultaneously be the world's top radio, movie and recording star! An enjoyable, satisfying read and an enlightening window into the first four decades of the past century. Painstakingly well-researched.
Rating:
Summary: I CAN'T WAIT FOR PART 2 !
Review: Although I am very happy with the 4 cd set I own of Bing Crosby's songs over a period of 4 decades ("The Legendary Years")I glanced at the Crosby entries tonight on Amazon.com and there are 204 of them !! That makes perfect sense after you read Gary Giddens' superb, fascinating biography of Bing...a man who knew from the beginning of his career exactly what kind of star he could be. And, interestingly enough, he may have actually underestimated exactly how big a star he'd become. 204 entries which include everything from Broadway to gospel to country and western to Hawaiian to Christmas to nutty character stuff. Before I heard the cd's and read this book, I had ignorantly misjudged him: Bing was no ordinary crooner. He was a super jazz singer who also knew exactly the kind of pop music his audience wanted and knew exactly how to give it to them. He obviously loved singing and he was as adept at improvisation (in his movies, too) as he was a superb technician. This is no kiss-and-tell bio. It is thoroughly researched with so much to tell that this volume ends in 1940 when World War 2 was just about to make Bing a bigger star than he already was.
We learn of his unhappy marriage and his fights to include minorities in all of his work. We learn of his battle with alcoholism and his generosity when a friend, a relative or actually strangers needed emotional or financial support, given many times anonymously. All of the recording sessions are here and his radio performances and all of the movies too. We learn, most fascinatingly, how the characters he played on the radio and in movies were actually, more and more, created to BE Bing: Art imitating Life. That nonchalant, "lazy," ad-libbing, bon vivant WAS Bing...This was no character. This was the man, himself. Giddens has so much material that he promises a second volume. I can't wait. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !
Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Bing Biography
Review: Amazingly, no one had written a serious Crosby biography since 1948 - when Bing was a household name - until Gary Giddins gave us this incredible first volume of what promises to be the definitive study of the man of whom it used to be said, "the voice of Bing Crosby has been heard by more people than the voice of any other human being who ever lived." "Pocketful" is a thorough, heavily researched evaluation of the first half of Crosby's life and career, and his cultural significance. As such, Giddins covers not only the landmark moments and achievements, but also the minutiae. To me, this is not a drawback. The subject is worthy of such intellectual scrutiny. It isn't a gossip-laden Hollywood tell-all, so if that's what you're looking for, look elsewhere. Bing Crosby personified everything Americans of his generation found admirable: he was self-assured, easygoing, intelligent, quick-witted and athletic, yet modest and self-effacing. Possessing a relaxed manner and a mellifluous and universally appealing baritone voice, he was adored by women and admired by men, and was the nation's most beloved entertainer throughout the Great Depression and the Second World War. The across-the-board nature of his of fame and longevity - he was simultaneously the world's top singer, actor AND radio star for a number of years, and he remained popular to the end of his life - is almost unfathomable in this age of perpetually divergent trends in entertainment, and disposable celebrity. The cold, hard facts of Crosby's career, laid out for us by Giddins, are staggering: * He had sold 400 million records by 1980.
* He charted more records (368) - and scored more #1's (38) - than any other recording artist in history, including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson.
* His rendition of "White Christmas" is the most popular single ever, and the only one to make the American pop charts 20 times.
* He dominated the medium of radio for over 30 years with his top-rated programs, regularly attracting 50 million listeners in his peak years (about 1/3 of the population of the U.S. at the time!).
* His "Road" films with Bob Hope were the highest grossing comedies of their time.
* He was the #1 box office movie star for five consecutive years (1944-48), a streak which still hasn't been topped.
* He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times, and won it in 1944.
* "Going My Way" became the top grossing film in the history of Paramount Pictures. A fluke you say? The next year "Bells Of St. Mary's" became the top grossing film in the history of RKO!
* He was a key figure in the development and popularization of audio- and videotape.
* He started the first celebrity/pro-amateur golf tournament, which raised millions of dollars for charity over the years. After Bing's death in 1977, his reputation diminished to the point that he was almost forgotten, or simply dismissed, in part due to a hyped-up hatchet job of a book by his eldest son. This straightforward, factual effort by Giddins has begun to turn the tide back in Bing's favor. Since the publication of this essential work, a reassessment of Bing Crosby's life and career has taken place in many circles. A scholarly conference entitled "Bing Crosby and American Culture" was held at Hofstra University in 2002, and last year his alma mater, Gonzaga University, celebrated the centennial of his birth with a three-day event. Giddins understands that to know about Bing Crosby is to know about American culture from the 1930's through the early 1950's, because Bing WAS American culture during those years.
Rating:
Summary: Still Don't Understand Much About Crosby
Review: And I suppose that's the point. No one does, certainly not Giddins, who says a number of times that Bing Crosby was "unknowable." Well, maybe he was just a unique genius who appears once in a century, but after almost 600 pages, readers deserve to understand at least his likes and dislikes. But they seem to be "unknowable" too--Crosby either likes you or he doesn't, (why? and what is the magic chemistry?), he's crazy about horses and race tracks (why?--he certainly didn't grow up in that atmosphere), mad about golf, an alcoholic who can turn it on and off (why?). Sorry, I want some answers, this isn't King Tut we're talking about. Giddins seems utterly determined to make Bing Crosby "likeable," but I came away from this wrist-sprainer feeling like I had only a tedious, unsatisfying peek at a man who was not, on many levels, "likeable" at all. But without any explanations for his behavior, his likes and dislikes, who can say? Further to the wrist-sprainer comment, as another reviewer mentioned, Giddins really needed a good editor. The endless discussions of plot points of minor films and two reelers, of each recording, each radio show, enough already! Crosby certainly deserves a good biography, but this isn't it. I can't imagine reading volume two--Giddins warns several times that Bing's greatest successes lie ahead--and suffering through an even greater level of pointless detail and encomia that Giddins is probably planning for unwary readers. Ironically, exactly the kind of thing which Giddins says Crosby disdained (but why?).
Rating:
Summary: The original American superstar
Review: Bing Crosby was the American "Everyman." An extremely popular musician, actor, and public figure, his legacy is deserving of an extensive biography that examines his importance to popular culture. In this first volume of Gary Giddins' biography of Crosby, a valiant effort is made by Giddins to capture what made Crosby such a popular and important figure. This volume details Crosby's early years and his rise to fame; ending in 1940, shortly before the height of his popularity. Giddins' understanding of jazz serves him in good stead here; with in depth analysis of Crosby musical talent. As I am not a musician, I will bow to Mr. Giddins obvious understanding of how Crosby was able to synthesize many influences (not the least of which was the great Louis Armstrong) and create an entirely new take on many songs. With his ability to articulate, combined with his talent for understanding a song's natural rhythm; Crosby became one of the most important innovators of jazz, but Giddins shows the reader how that talent was eventually homogenized by the influence of Jack Kapp, the man who is most responsible for Bing's gradual transition from jazz artist to the most popular recording artist of the 1st half of the 2oth century. Giddins also has a solid grasp of Crosby's gradual rise to success; as he worked his way from vaudeville performer to radio and film star. Where the book falls short is in its examination of the man himself. Crosby remains a cipher, an accusation that was often made of him by his contemporaries. The death of his close friend and accompanist, Eddie Lang is shown by Giddins to be a major cause of his distant relationship with people, but there seems to be more of a story here than Giddins was able to discover. Giddins also makes some unfortunate choices in his descriptions of others. Words like "effeminate" and "dwarfish" are used in descriptions where they really have no purpose in context. Dixie Crosby's gradual drift into the haze of alcoholism is mentioned, but without any major examination into the effects of this circumstance on Bing or their children. But it's early yet. Giddins' examination of Crosby has just begun and I look forward to the second.
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