"Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy ""Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy"" (sometimes titled ""The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth"") is a Christmas song with an added counterpoint performed by David Bowie and Bing Crosby. ""The Little Drummer Boy"" is a Christmas song written in 1941, while the ""Peace on Earth"" tune and lyrics, written by Ian Fraser, Larry Grossman, and Alan Kohan, were added to the song specially for Bowie and Crosby's recording. The single saw commercial success upon its release in 1982 and peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart. The single became one of Bowie's best selling"
"career. The recording of ""Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy"" by Crosby and Bowie is the special's musical highlight and has become a Christmas classic in the United States and United Kingdom and has been referred to by ""The Washington Post"" as ""one of the most successful duets in Christmas music history"". Originally, the song selected for them to sing as a duet was ""The Little Drummer Boy"" but Bowie did not feel comfortable with the song and felt that his voice did not adapt well to it. Within an hour, the composer/lyricists Buz Kohan, Larry Grossman and Ian Fraser quickly"
"On 14 November 1995, Oglio Records released a special multimedia CD single of ""Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy"" which contained both the standard full-length audio version and the full-length music video of the footage from the 1977 Christmas special accessible via CD-ROM drives. On 9 November 2010, Collector's Choice Music released a 7-inch vinyl edition of ""Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy"" on red-colored vinyl in the United States. The flip-side of the single contained a Bing Crosby/Ella Fitzgerald duet of the song ""White Christmas"", recorded in 1953. The single was limited to 2,000 copies. VH1 placed the duet at number"
"""Little Drummer Boy"". Crosby performed ""Little Drummer Boy"", while Bowie sang the new tune ""Peace on Earth"", which they reportedly performed after less than an hour of rehearsal. A few days after the taping, Crosby said of Bowie, ""clean-cut kid and a real fine asset to the show. He sings well, has a great voice and reads lines well."" Crosby died on 14 October, nearly five weeks after recording the special at Elstree Studios near London; in the US the show aired just over a month later, on 30 November 1977, on CBS. In the United Kingdom, the special first"
"The Little Drummer Boy ""The Little Drummer Boy"" (originally known as ""Carol of the Drum"") is a popular Christmas song written by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. First recorded in 1951 by the Trapp Family Singers, the song was further popularized by a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale; the Simeone version was re-released successfully for several years and the song has been recorded many times since. In the lyrics the singer relates how, as a poor young boy, he was summoned by the Magi to the Nativity of Jesus. Without a"
"The Crosby Boys The Crosby Boys were an American harmony singing group who were popular in nightclubs and on television during the 1950s and 1960s. They were the four sons of the popular singer Bing Crosby from his first marriage to the singer Dixie Lee. The boys had all sung on their father's radio shows and they made a record with Bing on September 5, 1950 called ""A Crosby Christmas"" which charted at number 22 in the ""Billboard"" lists in December, 1950. In 1958, the four brothers decided to form a vocal group called The Crosby Brothers. They were featured"
"like Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. The rapport and mutual esteem between these two splendid troupers are obvious and delightful, although the verbal adlibbing and asides are occasionally overdone and not always intelligible to the listener..."" A Couple of Song and Dance Men A Couple of Song and Dance Men is a 1975 vinyl album made by Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby for United Artists. It was recorded with Pete Moore and his Orchestra, and the Johnny Evans Singers in July 1975 at the Music Centre, Wembley. The songs from the album were included on a 3-CD set called “Bing"
"revived his singing career. He joined Bing Crosby's informal minstrel shows put on by the ""Westwood Marching and Chowder Club"", which included many Hollywood luminaries and brought together Crosby and Bob Hope. A duet ""Mr. Crosby and Mr. Mercer"" was recorded and became a hit in 1938. In 1939, Mercer wrote the lyrics to a melody by Ziggy Elman, a trumpet player with Benny Goodman. The song was ""And the Angels Sing"" and, although recorded by Bing Crosby and Count Basie, it was the Goodman version with vocal by Martha Tilton and memorable klezmer style trumpet solo by Elman that"
"credited solely to Davis and published by Belwin-Mills. In 1957 it was recorded, with a slightly altered arrangement, by the Jack Halloran Singers for their album ""Christmas Is A-Comin""' on Dot Records. Dot's Henry Onorati introduced the song to his friend Harry Simeone and the following year, when 20th Century Fox Records contracted him to make a Christmas album, Simeone, making further small changes to the Halloran arrangement and retitling it ""The Little Drummer Boy"", recorded it with the Harry Simeone Chorale on the album ""Sing We Now of Christmas"". Simeone and Onorati claimed joint composition credits with Davis. The"
"album and the song were an enormous success, the single scoring on the U.S. music charts from 1958 to 1962. In 1963, the album was reissued under the title ""The Little Drummer Boy: A Christmas Festival"", capitalizing on the single's popularity. The following year the album was released in stereo. In 1988, ""The Little Drummer Boy: A Christmas Festival"" was released on CD by Casablanca Records, and subsequently, on Island Records. Harry Simeone, who in 1964 had signed with Kapp Records, recorded a new version of ""The Little Drummer Boy"" in 1965 for his album ""O' Bambino: The Little Drummer"
"for ""Winter Wonderland"". A Christmas Sing with Bing (1955–1962) This was a series of transcribed radio hours hosted by Bing Crosby and broadcast on Christmas Eve for eight years. Insurance Company of North America was the sponsor. Following the demise of the traditional weekly Bing Crosby variety show in the spring of 1954, to be replaced by a nightly 15 minute ‘disc-jockey’ format show, radio listeners missed out on a full-fledged, half-hour Christmas program hosted by Crosby for the first time in twenty years. In 1955, this situation was remedied when Crosby, the undisputed voice of Christmas at the time,"
"as in the 1984 television film, ""The Juggler of Notre Dame""). The popularity of ""The Little Drummer Boy"" can be seen by the number of cover versions (a total of over 220 versions in seven languages are known) in all kinds of music genres: The Little Drummer Boy ""The Little Drummer Boy"" (originally known as ""Carol of the Drum"") is a popular Christmas song written by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. First recorded in 1951 by the Trapp Family Singers, the song was further popularized by a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone"
"were featured on the album. They were renditions of ""The Christmas Song"" and ""White Christmas"", both duets recorded with Bing Crosby and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra from the 1957 ABC television special ""Happy Holidays with Bing and Frank"", which aired only once, on December 20 of that year. A fourth previously unissued track included on the album was an acoustic recording of ""Silent Night"" recorded by Sinatra in 1991 with his son Frank Sinatra, Jr. at the piano, for a children's charity benefit. It was Sinatras last recorded Christmas carol. The then-75-year-old Sinatra had not made any recordings for three"
"by Mary Martin and other members of the original Broadway cast of the 1959 musical ""The Sound of Music"". Vic Dana first charted with ""Little Altar Boy"" in 1961 on the ""Billboard"" Hot 100, where he reached number 45, and Bing Crosby reached number two on the Christmas Singles chart in 1963 with ""Do You Hear What I Hear?"". ""Christmas Holiday"" was composed by Craig Vincent Smith, a member of The Good Time Singers folk group that regularly appeared on ""The Andy Williams Show"" . Smith also composed ""Salesman"", recorded by The Monkees for their 1967 album ""Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn"
"A Christmas Sing with Bing (1955–1962) This was a series of transcribed radio hours hosted by Bing Crosby and broadcast on Christmas Eve for eight years. Insurance Company of North America was the sponsor. Following the demise of the traditional weekly Bing Crosby variety show in the spring of 1954, to be replaced by a nightly 15 minute ‘disc-jockey’ format show, radio listeners missed out on a full-fledged, half-hour Christmas program hosted by Crosby for the first time in twenty years. In 1955, this situation was remedied when Crosby, the undisputed voice of Christmas at the time, embarked on one"
"broadcast hosted by Bing Crosby on Christmas Eve. The recording was later released on vinyl as ""A Christmas Sing with Bing Around the World"". He returned to the United States the following week for the 1955 edition of Edward R. Murrow's ""Years of Crisis"" radio series. He joined other Murrow Boys to discuss the most pressing international political developments of the past year. In 1956, he was abruptly called back from Rome to make room for Winston Burdett, a move that ultimately marked the end of Downs' career as a foreign correspondent. He reported primarily from Washington for the rest"
"came up with lyrics to ""Peace on Earth"" as a counterpart to Crosby and ""The Little Drummer Boy"". Crosby and Bowie met for the first time on the morning of the taping on September 11, 1977 at Elstree Studios; they rehearsed for an hour and recorded the song in just three takes. A few days after the taping, Crosby praised Bowie as a ""clean-cut kid and a real fine asset to the show. He sings well, has a great voice and reads lines well"". The track was eventually released as an official single in three different formats: The single proved"
"to sell more than a quarter-million copies during the 1962 Christmas holiday season. Bing Crosby made the song into a hit when he recorded his own version of it on October 21, 1963, with the record being released as a single on October 26. Crosby also performed the song on a Bob Hope Christmas television special on December 13 of that year. Over the years, Crosby's recording of the song has been widely played on the radio, and has been available on numerous compilation Christmas albums and compact discs put out by Capitol Records. The song was later recorded in"
"Rosie Sings Bing Rosie Sings Bing is a 1978 studio album by the American jazz singer Rosemary Clooney, recorded in tribute to Bing Crosby, who had died the previous year. Clooney and Crosby had recorded two albums of duets (""That Travelin' Two-Beat"" (1965), ""Fancy Meeting You Here"" (1958)), and Clooney had accompanied Crosby at his recent performances at the London Palladium. The following musicians on this album: Jake Hanna, Nat Pierce, Scott Hamilton and Monty Budwig had also worked with Bing on the 1977 Concord album, ""A Tribute to Duke Ellington"". Drummer Jake Hanna had also performed with Bing live"
"to be one of Bowie's fastest selling singles, having sold 250,000 copies within its first month and being certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry one month after its release. The single has total estimated sales of 445,424 in the UK, giving Bowie one of his most successful singles. In the United States and Canada, ""Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy"" has since become a yearly staple on radio stations during the Christmas season. The special was taped September 11, 1977 at Elstree Studios in London, England. ""Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas"" would turn out to be the second posthumous music"
"his career"". He later admitted to having only appeared on the show because ""I just knew my mother liked him"". Buz Kohan was not sure that Crosby knew who Bowie was, but Ian Fraser claimed, ""I'm pretty sure he did. Bing was no idiot. If he didn't, his kids sure did."" According to co-writer Ian Fraser, Bowie balked at singing ""Little Drummer Boy"": ""I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing?"", Fraser recalls Bowie telling him. Fraser, along with songwriter Larry Grossman and the special's scriptwriter, Buz Kohan, then wrote ""Peace on Earth"" as a counterpoint to"
"was a medley of some of Crosby’s Christmas pop hits with Clooney consisting of ""Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"", ""Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"" and ""Here Comes Santa Claus"" and a rendition of ""The Twelve Days of Christmas"" by the entire cast. Ferrer added a reading of ""Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"" - the 1897 ""New York Sun"" editorial. ""Variety"" welcomed the change in format and also commented: ""This was the sixth 'Christmas Sing with Bing. and the Yuletide Eve special is well on its way to becoming an institution which is all for the best since Crosby"
"arranged for the profits from the record to be donated to charity. White Christmas by far is Bing's biggest hit and the entire world's, since it has sold over 50 million copies; No song has ever come close to matching it. There are two versions of this song that were recorded in the studio and many outside of that used for TV and radio. Star Dust (sometimes spelled ""Stardust"") is a song about love. It has over 1,500 recordings and is one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century. Bing Crosby made two main recordings during his career."
"it later emerged, was that the duets, like Rosemary's outing with Sinatra the year before, were studio creations. Crosby put down his vocals first with Rosemary filling in the gaps later. The emergence of a rehearsal recording in which Jay Livingston sang Rosemary's part (“You’re very brave, Mr. Livingston,” said Crosby at the end of the session) was the first indication that the duets were spliced together."" That Travelin' Two-Beat That Travelin' Two-Beat is a duet album by Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney recorded in 1964 and released on Capitol Records in 1965. With its world tour theme, it was"
"A Couple of Song and Dance Men A Couple of Song and Dance Men is a 1975 vinyl album made by Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby for United Artists. It was recorded with Pete Moore and his Orchestra, and the Johnny Evans Singers in July 1975 at the Music Centre, Wembley. The songs from the album were included on a 3-CD set called “Bing Crosby – The Complete United Artists Sessions” issued by EMI Records (7243 59808 2 4) in 1997. This included several studio chat sound bites. In 1999, all the tracks from the album were also included on"
"has that special sense of hominess and belonging that adds an extra kind of warmth to a season when the Christmas song-fests tend to lose their individuality. The 'Sing with Bing’ remains something special, to look forward to each year…Far too many commercials for Insurance Company of North America and pretty hard sell at that. 'Sing with Bing’ being almost an institution it seems about time the commercial aspect of it be accorded appropriately similar treatment."" The seventh broadcast was heard on December 24, 1961 and Kathryn Crosby, Edgar Bergen and Jo Stafford (a late substitute for Rosemary Clooney who"
"ARSC Journal, 43(1), 127–130. Bing Crosby Harry Lillis ""Bing"" Crosby Jr. (; May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1931 to 1954. His early career coincided with recording innovations such as the microphone. This allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin. ""Yank"" magazine said that he was the person who had done the most for American soldiers'"
"Bing Crosby Harry Lillis ""Bing"" Crosby Jr. (; May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1931 to 1954. His early career coincided with recording innovations such as the microphone. This allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin. ""Yank"" magazine said that he was the person who had done the most for American soldiers' morale during World War"
"Whiteman was already using him as a solo performer on record, but the prospects for Rinker were bleak. However, the addition of pianist and aspiring songwriter Harry Barris made the difference, and ""The Rhythm Boys"" were born. The additional voice meant they could be heard more easily in large New York theaters. Crosby gained valuable experience on tour for a year with Whiteman and performing and recording with Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Eddie Lang, and Hoagy Carmichael. He matured as a performer and was in demand as a solo singer. Crosby became the star attraction of"
"and Ray Evans supplied the title track and added new lyrics and countermelodies to the other, more-established songs. Crosby and Clooney were friends, who often performed together on television, radio and stage. ""That Travelin' Two-Beat"" was re-released on CD in 2001 on the Collectors' Choice label, combined with another Crosby album from 1965 (this time without Clooney), ""Bing Crosby Sings the Great Country Hits"". Variety commented: ""This parlay of Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney results in fair session of Dixieland music pegged to a musical Cook’s tour. While the sound is traditional, the repertoire is definitely offbeat, setting some surprising"
"A Christmas Sing with Bing Around the World A Christmas Sing with Bing around the World is an album by Bing Crosby. It was released in December, 1956 by Decca Records. It was taken from a radio broadcast on CBS which was transmitted on December 24, 1955. The program was sponsored by the Insurance Company of North America. Paul Weston and his Orchestra supported by the Norman Luboff choir provided the backing to Crosby's vocals which were recorded on December 19, 1955. Other vocal contributions came from various parts of the world and had been pre-recorded and inserted into the"
"Larry Crosby Laurence Earl ""Larry"" Crosby (January 3, 1895 – February 7, 1975) was the long-time publicity director of his younger brother, singer Bing Crosby. He was the eldest of Bing's six siblings. The seven Crosby children were the four elder brothers Larry, Everett (1896–1966), Ted (1900–1973), and Harry Jr. (1903–1977, popularly known as Bing), two sisters Catherine (1905–1974) and Mary Rose (1907–1990), and the youngest sibling, brother Bob (1913-1993). His parents were English-American bookkeeper Harry Lillis Crosby Sr. (1871–1950) and Irish-American Catherine Helen ""Kate"" Harrigan (1873–1964), daughter of a builder from County Cork, Ireland. Crosby managed the annual Bing"
"1930 exists and is available on YouTube. Harry Barris made regular appearances in Bing's films over the next 13 years. The Rhythm Boys reunited briefly to appear on the ""Paul Whiteman Presents"" radio show broadcast on July 4, 1943 when they sang ""Mississippi Mud"". Harry Barris was the uncle of television personality and producer Chuck Barris. The Rhythm Boys The Rhythm Boys were a male singing trio consisting of Bing Crosby, Harry Barris and Al Rinker. Crosby and Rinker began performing together in 1925 and were recruited by Paul Whiteman in late 1926. Pianist/singer/songwriter Barris joined the team in 1927."