![]() Crosby re-recorded the track on March 19, 1947, accompanied again by the Trotter Orchestra and the Darby Singers, with every effort made to reproduce the original recording session. The 1942 master was damaged due to frequent use. The version most often heard today on the radio during the Christmas season is the 1947 re-recording. Of course, a lot of those boys were killed in the Battle of the Bulge a few days later." They did an outdoor show in northern France… he had to stand there and sing 'White Christmas' with 100,000 G.I.s in tears without breaking down himself. Lilley's orchestra and chorus, for the film's soundtrack album.)Īccording to Crosby's nephew, Howard Crosby, "I once asked Uncle Bing about the most difficult thing he ever had to do during his entertainment career… He said in December, 1944, he was in a USO show with Bob Hope and the Andrews Sisters. (Crosby made yet another studio recording of the song, accompanied by Joseph J. The song would feature in another Crosby film, the 1954 musical White Christmas, which became the highest-grossing film of 1954. In the script as originally conceived, Reynolds, not Crosby, would sing the song. This now-familiar scene was not the moviemakers' initial plan. In the film, Crosby sings "White Christmas" as a duet with actress Marjorie Reynolds, though her voice was dubbed by Martha Mears. In Holiday Inn, the composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1942. The recording became a chart perennial, reappearing annually on the pop chart twenty times before Billboard magazine created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases. 1 spot during the holiday seasons of 19 (on the chart dated January 4, 1947), thus becoming the only single with three separate runs at the top of the U.S. Re-released by Decca, the single returned to the No. Crosby's first-ever appearance on the black-oriented chart. The original version also hit number one on the Harlem Hit Parade for three weeks, The song also topped the following weekly charts in the same year: Songs with Most Radio Plugs, National record sales, and National sheet music sales. In 1942 alone, Crosby's recording spent eleven weeks on top of the Billboard charts. The recording is noted for Crosby's whistling during the second chorus. The Armed Forces Network was flooded with requests for the song. It has often been noted that the mix of melancholy-"just like the ones I used to know"-with comforting images of home-"where the treetops glisten"-resonated especially strongly with listeners during World War II. It remained in that position until well into the new year. By the end of October 1942, "White Christmas" topped the Your Hit Parade chart. The song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed by Holiday Inn's first hit song: "Be Careful, It's My Heart". Dave Marsh and Steve Propes wrote, "'White Christmas' changed Christmas music forever, both by revealing the huge potential market for Christmas songs and by establishing the themes of home and nostalgia that would run through Christmas music evermore." However, "the popular culture industry had not viewed the themes of home and hearth, centered on the Christmas holiday, as a unique market" until after the success of "White Christmas" and the film where it appeared, Holiday Inn. Lankford, Jr., wrote, "During the 1940s, 'White Christmas' would set the stage for a number of classic American holiday songs steeped in a misty longing for yesteryear." Before 1942, Christmas songs and films had come out sporadically, and many were popular. The song established that there could be commercially successful secular Christmas songs -in this case, written by a Jewish immigrant to the United States. He just said "I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving." At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song. Crosby subsequently recorded the song with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers at Radio Recorders for Decca Records in 18 minutes on May 29, 1942, and it was released on July 30 as part of an album of six 78-rpm discs from the musical film Holiday Inn. ![]() A copy of the recording from the radio program is owned by Crosby's estate and was loaned to CBS News Sunday Morning for their Decemprogram. The first public performance of the song was by Bing Crosby, on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941, a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote." Bing Crosby versions One day he told his secretary, "I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California, while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-director-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song. ![]()
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