Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 2, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an
American popular singer and
actor whose career lasted from 1926 until his death.
One of the last multimedia stars, from 1934 to 1954 Bing Crosby held a nearly unrivaled command of record sales, radio ratings and motion picture grosses.
Widely recognized as one of the most popular musical acts in history, Crosby is also credited as being the major inspiration for most of the male singers of the era that followed him, including
Frank Sinatra,
Perry Como, and
Dean Martin.
Yank magazine recognized Crosby as the person who had done the most for
American G.I. morale during
World War II and, during his peak years, around 1948, polls declared him the "most admired man alive," ahead of
Jackie Robinson and
Pope Pius XII.
Also during 1948, the
Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music.
Crosby exerted an important influence on the development of the postwar recording industry. In 1947, he invested US$50,000 in the
Ampex company, which developed North America's first commercial
reel-to-reel tape recorder, and Crosby became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings on magnetic tape. He gave one of the first Ampex Model 200 recorders to his friend, musician
Les Paul, which led directly to Paul's invention of
multitrack recording. Along with
Frank Sinatra, he was one of the principal backers behind the famous
United Western Recorders studio complex in Los Angeles.
[Cogan, Jim and William Clark. Temples Of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios. (Chronicle Books, 2003) ISBN 0-8118-3394-1]
