[3][4][5] Crosby's early career coincided with recording innovations that allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed, such as Frank Sinatra,[6] Perry Como, Dean Martin, Dick Haymes, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon.

After seeing a demonstration of a German broadcast quality reel-to-reel tape recorder brought to the United States by John T. Mullin, Crosby invested $50,000 in the California electronics company Ampex to build copies.

Through audio recordings, Crosby produced his radio programs with the same directorial tools and craftsmanship (editing, retaking, rehearsal, time shifting) used in motion picture production, a practice that became the industry standard.

[19][20] Crosby was the fourth of seven children: brothers Laurence Earl "Larry" (1895–1975), Everett Nathaniel (1896–1966), Edward John "Ted" (1900–1973), and George Robert "Bob" (1913–1993); and two sisters, Catherine Cordelia (1904–1974) and Mary Rose (1906–1990).

[30] On November 8, 1937, after Lux Radio Theatre's adaptation of She Loves Me Not, Joan Blondell asked Crosby how he got his nickname: Crosby: "Well, I'll tell you, back in the knee-britches day, when I was a wee little tyke, a mere broth of a lad, as we say in Spokane, I used to totter around the streets, with a gun on each hip, my favorite after school pastime was a game known as "Cops and Robbers", I didn't care which side I was on, when a cop or robber came into view, I would haul out my trusty six-shooters, made of wood, and loudly exclaim bing!

Crosby's vocal style helped take popular singing beyond the "belting" associated with Al Jolson and Billy Murray, who had been obligated to reach the back seats in New York theaters without the aid of a microphone.

Signing an agreement with Columbia for a single motion picture, Crosby wanted Armstrong to appear in a screen adaptation of The Peacock Feather that eventually became Pennies from Heaven.

Cohn gave in; Armstrong's musical scenes and comic dialogue extended his influence to the silver screen, creating more opportunities for him and other African Americans to appear in future films.

The June 18, 1945, issue of Life magazine stated, "America's number one star, Bing Crosby, has won more fans, made more money than any entertainer in history.

The day after he sings a song over the air—any song—some 50,000 copies of it are sold throughout the U.S. Time and again Crosby has taken some new or unknown ballad, has given it what is known in trade circles as the 'big goose' and made it a hit single-handed and overnight...

[47] In the wake of a solid decade of headlining mainly smash hit musical comedy films in the 1930s, Crosby starred with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour in six of the seven Road to musical comedies between 1940 and 1962 (Lamour was replaced with Joan Collins in The Road to Hong Kong and limited to a lengthy cameo), cementing Crosby and Hope as an on-and-off duo, despite never declaring themselves a "team" in the sense that Laurel and Hardy or Martin and Lewis (Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis) were teams.

They performed together countless times on stage, radio, film, and television, and made numerous brief and not so brief appearances together in movies aside from the "Road" pictures, Variety Girl (1947) being an example of lengthy scenes and songs together along with billing.

In 1960, he starred in High Time, a collegiate comedy with Fabian Forte and Tuesday Weld that predicted the emerging gap between Crosby and the new younger generation of musicians and actors who had begun their careers after World War II.

Collins was used in place of their longtime partner Dorothy Lamour, whom Crosby felt was getting too old for the role, though Hope refused to do the film without her, and she instead made a lengthy and elaborate cameo appearance.

The company produced two ABC medical dramas, Ben Casey (1961–1966) and Breaking Point (1963–1964), the popular Hogan's Heroes (1965–1971) military comedy on CBS, as well as the lesser-known show Slattery's People (1964–1965).

[51] Paul Whiteman's hiring of Crosby, with phrasing that echoed jazz, particularly his bandmate Bix Beiderbecke's trumpet, helped bring the genre to a wider audience.

From the mid-1950s, Bing was more comfortable in a bass range while maintaining a baritone quality, with the best octave being G to G, or even F to F. In a recording he made of 'Dardanella' with Louis Armstrong in 1960, he attacks lightly and easily on a low E flat.

They were his most frequent collaborators on disc from 1939 to 1952, a partnership that produced four million-selling singles: "Pistol Packin' Mama", "Jingle Bells", "Don't Fence Me In", and "South America, Take It Away".

The quartet's additional Top-10 Billboard hits from 1943 to 1945 include "The Vict'ry Polka", "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin (When the Yanks Go Marching In)", and "Is You Is or Is You Ain't (Ma' Baby?)"

His great popularity throughout the continent led other African singers to emulate him, including Masuka, Dolly Rathebe, and Míriam Makeba, known locally as "The Bing Crosby of Africa".

[76] Presenter Mike Douglas commented in a 1975 interview, "During my days in the Navy in World War II, I remember walking the streets of Calcutta, India, on the coast; it was a lonely night, so far from my home and from my new wife, Gen.

Murdo MacKenzie of Bing Crosby Enterprises had seen a demonstration of the German Magnetophon in June 1947—the same device that Jack Mullin had brought back from Radio Frankfurt with 50 reels of tape, at the end of the war.

The Binglin Stable partnership came to an end in 1953 as a result of a liquidation of assets by Crosby, who needed to raise enough funds to pay the hefty federal and state inheritance taxes on his deceased wife's estate.

In a memorandum dated January 16, 1959, it is said: "The Salt Lake City Office has developed information indicating that Moe Dalitz received an invitation to join a deer hunting party at Bing Crosby's Elko, Nevada, ranch, together with the crooner, his Las Vegas dentist and several business associates."

Either in December 1945 or January 1946, Crosby approached Cardinal Francis Spellman with his difficulties with dealing with his wife's alcoholism, his love for Caulfield and his plan to file for divorce.

[118] After Crosby's death, his eldest son, Gary, published a highly critical memoir, Going My Own Way (1983; written in collaboration with noted music journalist Ross Firestone), depicting his father as cruel, cold, remote, and physically and psychologically abusive.

After Crosby's death in 1977, he left the residue of his estate to a marital trust for the benefit of his widow, Kathryn, and HLC Properties, Ltd., was formed for the purpose of managing his interests, including his right of publicity.

On March 20, 1977, after videotaping a CBS concert special, "Bing – 50th Anniversary Gala", at the Ambassador Auditorium with Bob Hope looking on, Crosby fell off the stage into an orchestra pit, rupturing a disc in his back requiring a month-long stay in the hospital.

[137] On October 18, 1977, following a private funeral Mass at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood, Los Angeles,[140] Crosby was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

"I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You" was his most successful composition, recorded by Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, and Mildred Bailey, among others.