2.3 Bing Crosby and the Ubiquity of Microphones
The advent of the microphone, amplifier, and loudspeaker freed singers from the confines of acoustical recording and the need to physically project their voices, leading them to become the first artists to employ the microphonic process in live performance. In the 1920s there were a growing number of singers who were known for their use of the microphone, but it was Bing Crosby who fully harnessed the microphonic process to master the microphone as a musical instrument. Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby Jr. (1903-1977) was an American singer, actor, and media star whose work topped charts in record and film sales, as well as radio ratings, between 1930 and the 1950s. In contrast to the projecting approach of acoustic singers at the beginning of his career, Crosby “crooned” into the microphone with a conversational singing style that employed much softer dynamics and a lower, narrower range.
Crosby had sung without a microphone at the start of his career (often using a megaphone); although his early recordings with the [Paul] Whiteman band feature his high head voice and falsetto registers he was…more of a light baritone than a tenor, and his voice became richer and deeper as he got older. [Using the microphone] he extended the head voice downwards, enriching the tone but not sufficiently to give the illusion of a classical baritone, creating a sound that was very close to his speaking voice. He used the microphone with complete mastery, extending [early microphone singer Al] Bowlly’s technique into an even more mannered delivery underpinned by consummate breath control.1
Crosby harnessed the limitations of early microphone technology to develop this new vocal style2 and while he was not the only well-known crooner,3 he codified the vocal style and its associated image4 to elevate it to become a sensation in popular vocal performance, going on to influence singers such as Frank Sinatra and Michael Bublé. While crooning began as a distinct popular vocal style closely related to the microphone, as Crosby’s fame grew and technology developed, the microphone became fully integrated into vocal performance practice in nearly all forms of music. “As these singers performed more and more, they developed their microphone styles until the loud ‘premicrophone’ singing of only ten or fifteen years earlier must have seemed aesthetically passé, bombastic, and abrasive.”5 As with any paradigm shift, microphone singing began as a revolutionary phenomenon but soon became normalized. By the mid 20th century, the ubiquitous microphone no longer innovated vocal performance practice as it did in the 1920s and 30s, consequently changing its perception as an interactive musical instrument to that of a tool that passively supported the voice.
This loss of perceived instrumentality points to why van Eck questioned how Ella Fitzgerald could be perceived as not playing the microphone, as well as Stockhausen’s claim of pioneering the use of the microphone as an instrument. Their perspectives do not accurately reflect the history of the microphonic process, as I have discussed, and even counter attitudes in contemporary classical vocal practice. A brief conversation with any classically trained opera singer reveals a world of difference in technique, not to mention aesthetic, between acoustic singing meant to project to a large audience and microphone singing. Since Bing Crosby used, and was perceived as using, the microphone as an instrument, Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz and popular singers should be similarly considered. Though it is beyond the scope of this chapter, there of course was someone who first manipulated the distance between the microphone and their mouth for various timbral and dynamic effects (to reference van Eck’s example) – the fact that this technique was standard practice by Fitzgerald’s time does not lessen the microphone’s instrumental nature, nor should it discourage in-depth analysis of the microphone as part of a microphonic instrumentarium.
While the first popular musician to fully embrace and codify the microphonic process was Bing Crosby, his successors like Ella Fitzgerald employed it as well, albeit not in ways that transformed their practice. Granting such a perspective to popular microphone technique, however, undermines analyses that do not adequately consider non-classical musical-technological innovations. Considering this, do Stockhausen’s claims of innovation in Mikrophonie I hold up to scrutiny?