No. of Recommendations: 2
Not to pick on him, but Bing wasn't much of a musician. He -to my knowledge- didn't play anything, he didn't compose anything. He just sang (with a pleasant voice). That's it. Color me not impressed.
Okay - then somebody.
Grab a hundred young'uns in their twenties today (not literally) and figure out the furthest back in time musical performer that they've heard a performance from within the last few months or so. Leave aside X-mas music or the kids who are studying music and deliberately seeking out old performers to learn from. Hust what's the furthest back artist a twenty-year old is likely to have encountered just as an enjoyer of music, in their ordinary listening pleasure?
I suspect the answer is Sinatra. No one older. They're not likely to have taken a moment to listen to Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington the Ink Spots or (as we've established) Bing Crosby. There's no "Millennials Discover Artie Shaw" series on youtube. Partially because of time, partially because of quality of recording, and partially because popular music has moved away from the specifics of Big Band and Swing and Jazz.
But it seems unlikely that none of them were amazing performers. That there was nobody who was "much of a musician" for the decades of popular music before Old Blue Eyes. That there were no legendarily talented artists before then whose recorded performances were "worth" lasting beyond their active years.
That's why I think that even the greatest of the great performers - an Elvis, a Clapton, a Whitney, a Diana, an Aretha - are likely to pull an Ozymandias. Composers can be timeless but performing excellence fades away.
