All-Time Best of Bing Crosby

by Bing Crosby

Product Description:

Personnel includes: Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, The Andrews Sisters.

Includes liner notes by Don Ovens.

This short collection from Curb is mainly notable for the inclusion of a number of vivid duets with Bing Crosby's preferred partners Louis Armstrong and the Andrew Sisters. While the Andrews and Crosby do their utterly professional thing together on Johnny Mercer's "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" and "Don't Fence Me In," Bing and Satchmo are in particularly spry and playful form on "Sugar," "Lazy River," and "Bye Bye Blues," all of which are taken off of a swinging, well-recorded Capitol session from the mid-'50s. In fact, "Lazy River" is such a modern-sounding jazz vocalese romp--complete with hip Lambert, Hendricks & Ross-like backup--that the next track, "Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)," Crosby's signature tune from 1931, sounds truly ancient in contrast (especially with that exotic steel guitar). Luckily, this is the only anomaly in an entertaining and spirited grouping of some of Bing's best.