May 29, 1942 – A Holiday Classic – Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian

It was 83 years ago today that the man who became known as “the voice of Christmas” recorded a classic. The song that he recorded would forever be connected with his name. The song was written by the great Irving Berlin for the film Holiday Inn. Now you know who and what song I am talking about, right?

Bing Crosby – White Christmas.

Bing actually had performed the song once on his radio show – The Kraft Music Hall. That was on Christmas Day 1941 (a few weeks after Pearl Harbor). He didn’t record it until this day in 1942. He recorded it with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers for Decca Records. The classic only took 18 minutes to record!!

At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song. He just said “I don’t think we have any problems with that one, Irving.” In the Marsh/Propes book “Merry Christmas, Baby” it says: “‘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.”

Bing’s version would stay atop the charts for 11 straight weeks that year. It would hit the top again at least a dozen more times over the years. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, White Christmas is “the best-selling single of all time” that “was released before the first pop charts. It was listed as the world’s best-selling single in the first-ever Guinness Book of World Records (published in 1955) and—remarkably—still retains the title more than 50 years later.”

The version most often heard today on the radio during the Christmas season is the 1947 re-recording. The 1942 master was damaged due to frequent use. 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. However, it is easy to hear that it is a rerecording because of the addition of other instruments.