Saturday 24 November 2007

"White Christmas" by Bing Crosby

You'll probably hear this song several times over the next few weeks, just like you've heard it hundred of times before. Yeah, yeah ... it's that time of the year ... blah blah.

But you have to listen to it! It is pure unbridled genius!

The song is so slow that you cannot actually tap your foot to it; towards the end, the backing musicians actually nip out of the room for a comfort break, leaving Bing to stretch out "... and may all your ..." just long enough for the musicians to rush back in and pick up their instruments again.

And there's whistling on it. And it was recorded in one take in 1947. And so on.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's worth listening to early Crosby recordings, with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, sometimes with Bix on cornet. Golly, I loathe his later stuff, but it's presumably what the public wanted. Popular music is usually crap. Capital punishment for Rock Stars would be a good idea.

Anonymous said...

Aha. Like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vveQ4Es9tJY&mode=related&search=%22Paul%20Whiteman%22

CatWoman said...

I'll dust off the ol' vinyl and give it a listen.
My personal fave is the David Bowie with Bing singing little drummer boy. Now that's a musical masterpiece of beautiful singing.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Sure, it's beautiful singing, but we had to sing that song at primary school and I've hated it ever since.

Pa-rup-a-pum-pum.