Radiolab - Mixtape: Jack and Bing

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

In 1946 Bing Crosby was the king of media. He was the movie star, the pop star and his radio show was reaching a third of American living rooms each week.  But then, it all started to fall apart. His ratings were plummeting and his fans were fleeing. Bing however, was not going down without a fight.  Today, the story of how Bing Crosby and some stolen Nazi technology won his audience back, changed media forever and accidentally broke reality along the way.  Mixtape is reported, produced, scored and sound designed by Simon Adler with original music throughout by Simon Adler. Invaluable reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen. Special thanks to: Michele Hilmes, Pete Hammer, Rich Flores, Mara Mills, Jonathan Sterne, Claudia Mewes. Though their voices weren’t in the piece, input certainly was. And to Mary Crosby and Robert Bader, for opening up Bing’s archive for us, and enabling us to fill this episode with so much of Bing’s music. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    

Wait, you'll find important and valuable information above. Your voice and individual singing style. We've prepared this instructional tape so that you will be able to edit yourself. And therefore, singing with a more authentic voice. I'm Simon Adler. This is Mix Tape. A mini series about how the cassette tape changed the world. Oh. Got to admit, growing up cassettes weren't a huge part

of my family's life. But my family did have a giant VHS camcorder. Massive. My mom carried it around everywhere. Where am I now, right? Where color is it? Where color book are we coloring it? We need a poop bear.

We need a poop bear. Can you look at the camera? So we ended up with a pile of tapes. Tell the camera how old you are. And years later, she asked me to digitize those tapes. And I decided to make sort of like a one hour highlight real of our family. And I remember there is this moment where the weight of that hit me, like, huh,

like what do I put on this, like which vacations? There's my family's road trip down to Alabama, which has my brother coming of age in it, so it'd be good to get him in there. But I don't know, Tellmark, Wisconsin, in 1991, just captures a more vibrant version of my parents. Speaking of my parents, like my mom did all the filming, so how was I going to get her in front of the camera?

And like my dad, he got sicker over the years. Do I show his body changing or just kind of skip over that? These aren't earth shattering questions, very ordinary actually. But it just made me think a lot about like, what version of the past is true? Because I knew that no one was going to go back and watch the original raw tapes. So any choice that I made on the highlight reel, that was just going to become the defective version of my family's history. Which gave me pause.

Okay, so why am I telling you this? Well, it turns out that this trap I'd found myself in, that we're all living in all the time I would argue, it was created unintentionally by one man, a man who oddly enough you can hear singing in the background of many of my family movies. Excuse me Tim. And hit on a brain. No money, don't run. High five. That song in the background. What kind of rap is it?

We're going to want to know who's the first. That guy right there. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Mr. Bing Crosby. I'll bring us some piggy pudding. I'll bring us some thingy pudding. The voice of Christmas. Yes, keep putting and bring it out here.

Now, I like being crossbeap, but whether you do or don't, we are all living in this world. The world he created with a magical device in America's worst enemy. But just for context. magical device in America's worst enemy. But just for context. In case you don't know who Bing Crosby is. What? I mean, it's very hard to think of a bigger stock. Colleagues it. Colleagues it.

Yes, this is historian Mark Clark. And think Michael Jackson plus George Pudding. If you've never heard of Bing Crosby, you probably had your head in a barrel for the last 25 years. Imagine one guy being the best-selling recording artist. The Lian Chapman of Paris. The number one movie star. The premieres here come with a group. Me starring in a picture with Frank Leroy.

And the pilot's rated show and radio. And this is Archivist Robert Baker. There is nobody who could compare today. I mean, according to One Source, in 1948, if you turned on the radio, there was a 50% chance you'd hear big. It's amazing. Half the songs on the radio were him. So, who is the King of all media?

It's Ben Crosby. So that's the backdrop. Our specific story begins with his weekly radio show. The Kraft Music Hall with Ben Crosby, John's got Trotter and his orchestra, Marilyn Maxwell, the music major. The Kraft Music Hall. And here's Ben Crosby. Imagine you imagining that you love me. I'm starting on a family tree.

Okay, and Crafth music show is that the same Crafth is Crafth macaroni and cheese? That's right. Crafth sponsored the whole thing. And so here's the, and so this is a live show. All through the world. That's right. Craft sponsored the whole thing. And so here's the, and so this is a live show. Oh, through the day. He sings, he interacts with people. You know when we stopped to think that in every corner

a good boy, a good boy. A good boy. They would do comedy skits. Good boy. Good boy. No, I'm not leaving. I'm just saying goodbye to a relative. Good boy. Hey, wait, wait. Do you'm just saying goodbye to a relative. Good bye.

Hey, wait, wait. Do you have to holler like that? Oh, yeah, he's a distant relative. Bye. Long story short, this was a massively popular show. Fifty million people a week were tuning into the craft musical. Fifty million people in the 30s and 40s was a stunning percentage of the population. More than a third of America.

It's just a crazy number to think about. But here is the big problem. Well, the audience was happy, and NBC who was broadcasting the show was definitely happy. Bing was not. His whole life was just wrapped around always working. He had to perform two live radio shows a week, acting all these movies. And on top of that, he's also got other stuff going on.

Like a family. Hang on. Check if you want to switch to a different microphone. I do. Okay. Click that. Okay, I'm clicking. Okay. Can you hear us? Can I what? You can hear that. Okay, I'm clicking. Okay, can you hear us? Can I

what? You can hear us. Oh, I now hear you. This is Mary Crosby, who is a celebrity in her own, right? But for the purpose of this story is Bing's daughter from his second marriage. Okay. How old was your dad when you were born? He was like 54. Long after the craft music hall. Yeah, and he was semi-retired when we came along. So I was fortunate enough to actually have him be just dad. He taught me how to hunt and fish and play baseball and ride horses. And he used to sing little songs. He would take songs and then make a rewrite lyrics to them.

Down in the la, la la, manage show. And then sing them at the dining table. Like this never before released, parody about a bird hunt he went on. Charmed, blah, blah, beg your pardon. Cause we didn't get our limit. But who gives a damn with his good? So we were a very connected family.

It wasn't big Hollywood parties and none of that. When those pointers get to sent, then you're in the main event. Shoot and quail and search fields, I'll abound. Yes, ma'am. But back when he was doing the craft show, what I know about his first family is that They had a very different life Because he was working non-stop So he wanted to scale that back and he wanted to try and be better for his kids for his personal life

And so he decided the simplest and easiest way to do that was to pre-record the craft radio show. That way he'd only have to perform it once, not twice, once for each coast. And because it wouldn't be live, the pressure would be way down. Yeah, something like that. Got it.

Okay, well, and like Bing walks into, I don't know, the corner office in LA where the head of NBC studio is and says, dude, I need to be able to record this. What does the NBC exec say back to him? Well, if you want to know the truth and it's much less dramatic, Bing didn't go have that conversation. He sent this lawyer. Fair enough. What did they say back to the suit representing thing? They all look at him like he's crazy. You can't not go on the radio live. You're being cross-by, you have to be there live. At this point, pretty much all radio was live. Almost nobody pre-taped. Or should I say pre-recorded to vinyl or shellac records. Remember, this is back in the days of 78 RPM.

Now why don't we give the folks first? And so the sound quality was not as good as a live performance. Oh, listen to the tale of a tall white male who lost his well-known manny. I mean, here's a recording on a 16 inch transcription disc. The type they would have been using at the time. I like this much funny style, when such a thing is on the cap say that's 30. You would hear clicks and pops. And now here.

The same when she starts on her travels. Lazily flows from her soul. Is what being would have sounded like life. Slowly her length, she unravels. I mean, it's just better. It sounds like being is right in front of you. Deep in the country she'll tell you, not knowing which way to go.

Whisper and sweet nothings into your ear. Tell the enchantment of Paris. Telling chat mode of power. And so NBC was freaked out. There was this fear that if they record these shows, nobody would listen. And so the network simply said, NBC simply says, no. We're not going to do that. So Kraft said no.

And dad was totally frustrated. And so, he walked out of the NBC show over the recording dispute. Took his talent and relocated to this small, scrappy media startup. ABC. ABC was perfectly happy to have been Krosbe pre-recorded. They were just perfectly happy to get any stars on that network at that time. Wow, Bing, here we are on a brand new program with Philco. What kind of show are we gonna have?

Well, I figured on something ever-vescent, charming, gay, carefree, bright, sparkling, scintillating, a boolean. It was the exact same show. Uh, no dull spots, though. Well, there may be a lot of tonight Bob Hoops coming over a little later. Only difference was it was pre-recorded But when it aired the ratings are considerably less and They go down during the season and

Interviewing people that sort of meelson ratings at the time said, you know the sound You guess next week back. He Robert Taylor just doesn Robert Taylor. He just doesn't sound as good. Hey, I make him back myself. You're always welcome to Hey, goodnight folks. He sounded far away. This was a problem. After you've gone, I left me cry.

And this could have been the beginning of the end. After you've gone, there's no denying. and this could have been the beginning of the end. But then... being gets a lucky break. courtesy of... America's greatest enemy. And... One of the world's greatest audio engineers. Working late at night, we used to listen to the radio. This is BBC One.

The next program now on BBC Two is the Virginia. It was my favorite program. This is Jack Mullin. He was an audio engineer. And this is him speaking to a room full of audio engineers back in the 1980s. I was still active in the signal car and in 1943, as he explained to the room, during World War II, he was stationed in the UK working for the signal corps. Well, we found that the receivers were interfered with very greatly by radar, doing some kind

of technical work involving radio transmissions. And one day he sawdering some cables or something and he's listening to the radio. I always like classical music. And that went off earlier than the others actually. The thing was is that... Time now, midnight. The BBC went off the air. It will be with you again in the morning.

At midnight. And he and his colleagues the morning. At Middive. And he and his colleagues, I wanted to continue to listen. And so what he would do is he would tune through the dial. Yeah. You fish around and we generally landed on Germany because they were putting out good, strong signal and lots of classical music. Big orchestra's playing and the music would go on all night long.

And he says he was always amazed at just how clear the sound was. These programs from Germany sounded amazing. They sounded live. You wondered if they weren't just using live orchestras and Hitler said, okay, you will play all night, you know, so that was what it was. But we found out later of course what it was. Fast forward two years, the Allies are slowly marching across Europe, and Jack is there with them.

Whenever they took a new town, he'd swoop in and collect whatever machinery or devices that the Nazis had left behind. Our function was to study this stuff and to write reports on it. And one day just outside of Frankfurt, Jack bumps into this British officer who's all excited about this tape recorder. He's just seen. This man had been down to the radio Frankfurt operation and he said he had seen this machine down there that used this tape and it sounded great. Well, I thought he must have had a tin ear. Because again, Jack was an engineer. He knew that tape recorder sounded terrible.

And so I didn't think much of it. Says Cheerio hops in his Jeep. And as we left the top of the hill and came down the mountain, of course I had a rain tension just going back home because it was late in the afternoon. But those late night German radio broadcasts were ringing in his ears. So we went.

So he ends up at this improvised radio studio. Just a house really. You know, so he comes into this living room. I asked officer in charge if I could hear this machine that they had that used tape. And he said, oh, yeah, sure, okay. And he shows Jack this big tape player. It was called a Magneetophone. And he shows Jack this big tape player. It was called a Magneetophone. And it looked like one of those real, to real tape machines you see in studios sometimes. Didn't really look that different

from other tape recorders he'd seen. The guy went out in the back room and got a roll of tape and brought it in, put it on the machine, turned it on. And I, that's when I flipped. had I heard anything like that. He is utterly amazed at the quality of what he's hearing. He literally cannot distinguish it from a life performance. There was something very magical about them. And when the war finally ended.

He managed to get back to the United States with two of these machines. Again, Robert Baker. This pair of two machines as a souvenir of war. How did you manage to get that? They were laying around in the lab, sending some samples. sending some samples. Nobody was that interested. And about 50 pieces of tape. 50 of these rolls. That was my supply of tape.

Now as for what made the Magneetophone sound so good, it's a little bit technical, but basically what the Nazi engineers had done was taken all of the different advances in recording technology from around the world and put them into one box. For example, they had something called AC bias where they would insert these super high frequencies into the recording to smooth out the sound. They had these reliable motors on the reels which produced a more consistent sound.

And Jack wanted to understand all this stuff. So Mullin comes to Hollywood and he wants to get some research and development funds and really work this thing out. So the first place he went was movie studios and he did some demos. October of 1946, he gets a bunch of Hollywood execs into an auditorium, and their onstage is the MGM Symphony Orchestra, and Jack, along with his Magnetophone. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, the orchestra starts to play.

[♪ Music playing in background, Jack records them as they're playing on his Magnetophone. And then drops the curtain. So now the execs can't see what's happening on stage. Then the music stops. From behind the curtain the execs hear Jack or someone say to the orchestra. Okay boys that's fine let's do another take. One two three four they stop playing again and this time in the middle of the playing, they raised a curtain. And it's not the musicians playing.

No. Musicians were all walking around smoking cigarettes and shaking hands and talking to each other while the magnetophot is playing back what they had just recorded. And everyone's jaw hits the floor. That was a night when it hit. Bing's radio producer witnessed that demo and said, I got to bring you to meet my boss because he's gonna want to be in on this. And that is how Jack Moen met Bing Crosby.

Dad was given a demonstration. And he immediately saw the huge potential of these new machines. Binks famously said, what do you need to make this thing work? Jack says $50,000. I'm doing the movie version of this and Binks turns to some guy and says, hey, write him a check. But basically that's what happened. So, being started recording Phil Co-Radio time with Jack. On the two Magnetofone machines that he had, using the stack of tapes he brought back from Germany.

Yeah, this was all these 50 rolls that I brought. So they just got rolling right off the bat. And season 2. The ratings shoot back up. Bing was back. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, it's just like the whole world changed. I mean, you could point to this moment, this collaboration between Jack and Bing and the Nazis,

as really the beginning of modern media making, as well as, I don't know, the turning upside down of what is real. Which for a moment at least would send Jack and Bing in very different directions. That's after the break. Collegiate, collegiate, yes we are collegiate. Nothing in a meet it. No, no, no. Webcore stereophonic sound, wonderful reality. Now that you've reached the end of the reel, just turn it over. You have another complete recording. This is Ronia from Ipsilanti Michigan. Mixed tape, a special series from Radio Lab, is supported in part by Science Sandbox,

the Simon Foundation Initiative, the Shanahan Family Charitable Foundation, at the Alfred Peace Loan Foundation. Hello, before we continue, let's just consider home movies the editing. Similar to cutting tape, to produce better sound programs, you can use a cut-in shot to guide the viewer to the relevant feeling to wish to emphasize. For example, stand by the thing out. You're not gonna be in the pictures. Hey, stop it. Daddy got the camera. Sure.

Oh, I'm yelling at them. Okay, guys, Elliot, please. I'm Simon Adler. This is Mix Tape. Okay, the Magneetophone, this device, allows Bing Crosby to pre-record his show in such high quality that when he broadcasts it out to millions of Americans. It will sound just like it's live. But that slide of hand, according to historian Mark Clark, there, was only the beginning of what this tape made possible. Because you can edit it.

And so suddenly now you don't have to be so constrained. Wait, so was there no editing before the magnitophone? Film, of course, does this long before that, right? You know, this whole notion of editing and cuts and so forth, that all was pioneered well before this in film. But what's new is you can do it with sound and not just images. Which is a deceptively huge shift. Whereas with film, you can literally see the jump cuts happening in front of your eyes.

With audio, that was all invisible. You can cut those pieces of tape and splice them together. Anyway you want. And no one was the wisest. It's a very nice ballad written by two of the best writers in the band. And Bing Crosby started taking advantage of this. This is some raw tape from Bing's family archive that I don't think has ever been publicly played before.

He would do a rehearsal run through and then he would then do another performance, and both of those were recorded. And so if something like this happened, look at me. Wait a minute, time. Long words. Go back a little, John. I lost the place here.

It was no big deal. You got carried away listening to my own voice. They just grabbed the take of this song from the rehearsal and spliced it onto that authentic feeling introduction from the version we just heard. They were able to combine that, and so you could make the best possible show out of two different shows. Get on in. What's the schedule now? But ultimately, Bing wanted even more flex to do it.

You roll them back, and you just work more. And so, before long... They hardly ever did it in front of a live audience. I mean, listening to it, you'd swear there's an audience there. But believe me, it's a fake live show. They were just really, really good at making them. Almost always the audience was spliced in later, which made for some awkward moments. Oh, thanks for the memory.

Like in this New York show broadcast in June of 1948. Well, good evening, Bing. Good evening, Fred. We're Bing has a comedian on. Fred Allen. Say that applause. That applause had a lot of life to it. Did you sense it?

As I walked on, the electric quality. Did you have a transcribed out in sunny California for release here in the gloom of West 48 Street? I mean, Fred Allen is trying to make a joke about how there isn't actually an audience there and being sort of bats a damn. No, Fred that applause came from those lovely people sitting out there in the audience, really. I mean, there was no audience.

And yet, you hear an audience that isn't there laughing at a joke about an audience that isn't there. I mean to be fair, well they were recording there might have been a few people standing around, so maybe there was a tiny audience, but that's kind of the point that then, as well as now, some 70 years later, there's no way to know what was actually happening. That's right. It could create essentially a lie. All those things, all those things I've ever, all the what the hell you plan. All those things you've always pine for, all those things you've always pined for, G-Un. All those things you've always pined for, G-Un. Like to see you look and swell. Baby.

I think he didn't see a conflict between live and on tape in terms of authenticity. Again, Mary Crosby. In terms of him making jokes, he only saw the freedom and the reach and the possibilities. Except for the last note, isn't it? Now, I can't really hold this against Bing. Here at Radio Lab, we do stuff like this all the time. But Jack Mullin, in at least one moment felt

differently. Good morning, this is Eve. Hi Eve. Simon here from Radio Lab. Hey, Simon, how are you? I'm okay. How are you doing? I'm doing fine thanks. So this is Eve Mullin Collier and you are among many things, the daughter of Jack Mullen. Yeah, I'm sitting in one of his chairs and I just said a little Hail Mary to call me, which is something he would have done. According to Eve, a huge appeal of the magneto found to Jack wasn't just the flexibility, but how it could capture the sounds of real life. She says her dad was always really obsessed

with recording things. You know, as an elementary school kid, he made his own record. You could buy blanks, apparently, at the store and record your own discs. And he was super interested in photography. He started producing documentaries on film. Like this travelogue from 1928.

Returning one of California's lesser traveled routes through the Sierra, crossing the Sandwalking Valley. A company by records for a sound which included him self-narrating. One of the most impressive sites is Cathedral Peak, towering above Lake Denea. This is some super early documentary footage. You see the bay bridge being built. Although a relatively difficult course, altitude is gained quite rapidly on this yellow stone when it only had a dirt road. And talking with Eve and watching some of these clips, the sense I came away with is that

he was trying to capture something real and true. Like what it was actually like to walk through a bombed-out city, or stand on the bank of a mountain lake. Grey granite, blue sky, green trees, emerald water. And that the magnetophone to him, well, it could reproduce real life better than anything. This is the machine I brought back from Germany, but this back here, the electronics, is made up of American components. It was authenticity through the fidelity of the recording. Here's the machine and I'm going to play it now. They were in fact the only sound recorders in the whole United States that performed

with such fidelity. There wasn't anything that sounded as good as my two little German machines. And according to Eve, he loved that machine. It was on multiple times a week. He was playing something on that particular machine. And at a certain point, working with Ben Crosby, he became uncomfortable with how his machines were being used. I remember him telling me about when this was all really new.

There was a comedian that came on the show and told the joke and the crowd just cracked up. They just laughed their heads off, but they couldn't play that joke on the air. The joke was a little too blue. But the producer came in and said, I want that laugh, I'm gonna save that laugh. That was a great, a glorious laugh. Pretty soon the producer was asking Jack to keep a whole library of laughs, like 12 laughs, you know, one through 12, that they could use whenever they wanted. They would think, oh, that's good for a laugh number three. And this all came to a head in 1947. I kind of I sort of hesitate to mention this one, but one

day she says Jack was there recording the show. A comedian comes in and tells a joke that's just not funny. And the producer came in and said, Hey, I want you to use laugh number three after this joke. And it didn't warrant. He thought the joke didn't warrant that voice to a stuff of a laugh. He thought that was wrong. That was the wrong thing. She says she's not exactly sure why that particular moment stopped him in his tracks.

But maybe it was a question of degrees. I mean, it's one thing to take a chuckle and turn it into a belly laugh, but to completely invent a laugh when there was no laugh before. It was leading the audience and it wasn't honest. He was big on, you know, he had his highly guard for purity and authenticity in sound, of course, but in joy. She says as an example, he wouldn't touch the family movies that he'd shot of her and her siblings.

Those were off limits. Yeah, those were all just raw. All the home movies were just raw things. John, it's never been on skates before. Old time Swedish lady. It was always some project on... Yep. It's interesting to me that you're...

that the family footage that your dad took he never edited. I don't know. I think it was important to him. He did, you know, all once a month or so. He'd pull him out and we'd watch like one reaper baby. Happy Mama. And he'd tell stories. That's how he grew up. Everybody sat on the front porch telling stories. There we are.

That's still his kind of what spoke to his heart. So it was a good day's fun. And so in that moment when the producer told him to put in that laugh, Eve says Jack would have crushed back and said no. And well yes, this moment small. It was the start of something massive. So distorted videos of how Speaker Nancy Pelosi on super realistic videos that use art of foreign tone. This pseudo reality we inhabit. Now we have fake voices.

I'm having a very lovely pregnancy so far. I mean, every time we pull up Facebook or Instagram to post something, we find ourselves torn between, I guess you could say, Jack and Bing, you know, between wanting something real and true, and then on the other hand, wanting the freedom, the flexibility, to edit ourselves into whatever version we want. And what we often end up with then is this cut up overdubbed mix tape of an identity where even we forget where the manipulation ends. And the real begins.

Where the blue of the night meets the girl. Yeah! Oh, good job! Here you go! Okay, bye-bye! Next week. I remember him, like, exclaiming, you know, being super excited about cassette tapes. Oh, really?

Thinking, oh my god, this is like the perfection of all of this. We fast forward to the cassette, with the story of what happens when this identity manipulation gets weaponized. Mixed tape is reported produced scored and sound designed by me Simon Adler with original music throughout by me. Incalculable reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen. I'd like to give a special thanks to Michelle Helms, Pete Hammer, Rich Flores, Mara Mills, Jonathan Stern, and Claudia Muse.

Though their voices weren't in this piece, their input certainly was… And to Mary Crosby and Robert Baderader for opening up Bing's archive for us and enabling us to fill this episode with so much of Bing's music. I'm Simon Adler and we'll have another tape for you next week. Radio Lab was created by Jada Broomrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer and Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca

Brestler, Rachel Qsick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gabel, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Snduniana Sambandum, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwan, Alex Niesin, Sara Cary, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Tanya Chavla, Shima Oliai, and Sarah Sombok. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Shibil.