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Bob Crosby
was born in 1913 in Spokane, Washington, the youngest
of seven
children. His older brother Bing's success in the 1920s
had little impact on his early life. Bob distinguished
himself
as an athlete, playing baseball, football and tennis with
considerable skill. Later he became a fine golfer. |
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His first offer to sing professionally
came from the well known San Francisco band leader
Anson
Weeks. He dropped his $0.25 cents an hour job picking
cucumbers to accept the $100.00 per week singing opportunity.
In 1934, with some help from his brother Bing, Bob Crosby
traveled to the east coast to become the "boy" singer
in the newly formed Dorsey Brothers Orchestra.
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A year later,
Bob was brought together with a group of ex-Ben Pollack
sidemen to form the Bob Crosby Orchestra. His inconsistency
as a vocalist was overshadowed by his attractive stage
presence.
Bob's biggest challenge was to establish his own individuality
and to become something other than Bing's brother. |
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Within weeks
of the Bob Crosby Band debut, noted critic John Hammond
wrote, "The band is infinitely better than at any time
Pollack had it". For want of a better description, the
Crosby Band let themselves be tagged a "Dixieland Band" (their
advertisements proclaimed that they were the "Dixieland
Dispensers"). |
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By means of
the imaginative work of Bob Haggart, Matty Matlock and
Dean
Kincaide, good orchestrations were regularly added to the
band's repertoire. The commercial demand for new material
was so great that in 1937, Matty Matlock dropped out of
the band's reed section just to give him time to write
more
arrangements. |
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In a special radio broadcast
performance in April of 1937, the program notes for
the
concert (a fund raiser for the ailing pianist Joe Sullivan)
referred to the BOB CATS.The combination of Bob Crosby's
name and the then current slang expression for a jazz
fan, soon became synonymous with the best of small
group
jazz.
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The New Orleans
members of the Bob Cats made sure that everyone in the
group
gave as much thought to their work in the ensembles as
they did to their solo playing. The group proved many
times over
that they were an expressive coterie of jazz talents who
could cover many areas of the jazz spectrum. |
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The Crosby
band made a short film in 1937 but had to wait until
the 1940s
to make it big in the movies. One lasting success was in
providing the soundtrack for "Holiday Inn" in 1942 starring
Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. |
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The new Bob
Crosby Bob Cats and Orchestra now reclaim the jazz heritage
of what many jazz historians believe to be the greatest
jazz band of all time. The major difference between
this
new band and other active "ghost" bands now on tour, is
that this group of musicians really was the Bob Cats for
the last few years of Bob's career. |
