Jon Oye

Jon and gorgeous son Matthew

Like most Baby Boomers, my first knowledge of Bing Crosby probably came from watching his Christmas shows on TV in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. Even at that late stage in his career, Bing was a perpetual presence, part of that select pantheon of unique celebrities – like Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope, James Stewart and a handful of others – who were so reassuringly likeable and familiar to the public that they were a part of our lives. It never occurred to me how or why he had reached that level.

I was in my first semester at college when I heard the news of Bing’s passing, and I remember thinking Christmas would never be the same. But there was more to it than that, though I didn’t realize it at the time. There’s an old Peanuts comic strip in which Charlie Brown explains to another character that feeling of security you have as a child when you fall asleep in the back seat of the car at night, with your parents in the front driving. Then one day you’re no longer a child, and you can’t fall asleep in the back seat with that same sense of security ever again. Well, it was kind of like that when Bing died. Even though I had been enjoying the newfound freedom of campus life, and my music of choice was definitely Rock and Roll, Bing had provided a sort of unconscious connection to hearth and home that was now gone. Even though those TV Christmas specials weren’t exactly the greatest source of entertainment around, I always watched them with my family anyway. They were something you could count on. They made you feel secure.

As the years passed, I gradually discovered that Bing had been much more than just a grandfatherly figure who indolently charmed us into drinking Minute Maid orange juice and crooned “White Christmas” once a year on those specials.

While still at college I saw my first “Road” picture (can’t remember which one), and Bing and Bob Hope’s combination of sly wit, roguish behavior and chemistry to burn was a revelation to me. Bing had once been cool!

A couple of years later, at my first real job in the real world, I heard some of the older employees talking about Bing, jazz music, and a couple of guys I’d never heard of, named Paul Whiteman and Bix Biederbeck. “Bing Crosby sang JAZZ?” I interrupted. This was in the early 1980’s, and those 60-something gentlemen had grown up with Bing on the radio and in the movies, in an era when everyone knew all about Bing – so my innocent question probably seemed particularly moronic to them. One of them responded with a disgusted-sounding “yeah”, while the others stared summarily condescending daggers at me. Who knew? All I cared about at the time was getting tickets to see the Stones. But after that I never forgot that Bing Crosby had been a jazz singer.

Somewhere along the way I saw a double feature of Going My Way and Bells of St. Mary’s, and found out Bing could act. I was blown away by his subtle, utterly believable performances in those two great films, but especially by his final scene with Ingrid Bergman in Bells.

When I passed the age of 30, the Stones, Springsteen, Elvis Costello and R.E.M. - whose words and music had previously borne the Secrets of the Universe for me - were no longer knocking me off my feet. And for the first time I realized that being knocked off one’s feet perhaps wasn’t necessarily directly correlated to one’s listening pleasure. In other words, Rock was starting to bore me. It was around this time that I rediscovered Bing - and discovered him for the first time.

I rediscovered him in the sense that his music seemed to fit the bill as a sort of audio comfort food during this period of musical/ideological transition I was going through. Or so I thought.

I was actually discovering Bing for the first time. I began to realize that this guy Crosby, who had been around my whole life in one way or another, was in fact an incredibly talented performer, who had left behind an amazingly diverse body of work, musically and cinematically, and who, it turned out, suited my newfound tastes like a crooner’s voice does an electronic microphone.

I began to “discover” many other great singers and musicians after that: Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Doris Day, the Dorsey Brothers, Les Paul, the Mills Brothers . . .

That was nearly 15 years ago. Now I’m a dad, with three kids who fall securely asleep in the back seat while I do the driving. And I listen to Bing’s music nearly every day. Who knew?

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