Crooners

Crooner is an American epithet given to male singers of jazz standards, mostly from the Great American Songbook, backed by either a full orchestra, a big band or a piano. Originally it was an ironic term denoting a sentimental singing style made possible by the use of microphones. Some performers, such as Russ Columbo, did not accept the term:Frank Sinatra once said that he did not consider himself or Bing Crosby "crooners".

This dominant popular vocal style coincided with the advent of radio broadcasting and electrical recording. Before the advent of the microphone, popular singers like Al Jolson had to project to the rear seats of a theater, as did opera singers, which made for a very loud vocal style. The microphone made possible the more personal style.Al Bowlly, Gene Austin, Art Gillham and by some historical accounts, Vaughn De Leath are often credited as inventors of the crooning style but Rudy Vallée became far more popular, beginning from 1928. He could be heard by anyone with a phonograph or a radio.

His first film, The Vagabond Lover, was promoted with the line, "Men Hate Him! Women Love Him!" while his success brought press warnings of the "Vallee Peril": this "punk from Maine" with the "dripping voice" required mounted police to beat back screaming, swooning females at his vaudeville shows.

By the early 1930s the term "crooner" had taken on a pejorative connotation, both Cardinal O'Connell of Boston and the New York Singing Teachers Association (NYSTA) publicly denouncing the vocal form, O'Connell calling it "base", "degenerate", "defiling" and un-American and NYSTA adding "corrupt". Even The New York Times predicted that crooning would be just a passing fad. The newspaper printed, "They sing like that because they can’t help it. Their style is begging to go out of fashion…. Crooners will soon go the way of tandem bicycles, mah jongg and midget golf." Voice range shifted from tenor (Vallée) to baritone (Russ Columbo, Bing Crosby). Still, a 1931 record by Dick Robinson, "Crosby, Columbo & Vallee", called upon men to fight "these public enemies" brought into homes via radio.

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