What is Crooner?

Information about Crooner

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Left To Right, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Dean Martin


Crooner is an epithet given to a male singer of a certain style of popular songs, dubbed pop standards. A crooner is a singer of popular ballads and thus a "balladeer". The singer is normally backed by a full orchestra or big band. Generally, crooners sang and popularized the songs from the Great American Songbook. Crooner was originally bestowed as a negative term, and many people given the term, such as Russ Colombo, did not consider themselves to be crooners. In an interview, Frank Sinatra said that he did not consider himself or Bing Crosby to be crooners.

Evolution

Crooning is a style that has its roots in the Bel Canto of Italian Opera, but with the emphasis on subtle vocal nuances and phrasing found in Jazz as opposed to elaborate ornamentation or sheer acoustic volume found in opera houses. Before the advent of the microphone, popular singers, like Al Jolson, had to project to the rear seats of a theater, which made for a very loud vocal style. The microphone made possible the more personal style. Crooning is not so much a style of music as it is a technique in which to sing.

Some crooners, most notably Ed Cox, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby, incorporated other popular styles into their music, such as Blues, Dixieland and even native Hawaiian music. Crooning became the dominant form of popular vocal music from the late 1920s to the early 1960s, coinciding with the advent of radio broadcasting and electrical recording. For example, Bing Crosby's radio show, Kraft Music Hall (1935-1946) was heard by 50 million listeners every Thursday evening (Giddins, Gary. "A Pocketful of Dreams")

Decline

After 1954 popular music became dominated by other styles, especially rock 'n' roll, while the music of latter-day crooners such as Perry Como and Matt Monro was recategorized as "easy listening" or "adult contemporary." Crooners have remained popular among fans of traditional pop music, with contemporary performers such as Tony Bennett, Tom Jones, Michael Bublé and Engelbert Humperdinck keeping the form alive. While both male and female singers sang in this style, the term "crooner" is rarely, and improperly, used to describe a female singer.

List of famous crooners

(Grouped by the decades in which their careers began.)

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s & 2000s

Sources

  • Michael Pitts and Frank Hoffman. The Rise of the Crooners (Scarecrow Press, 2002).
  • Giddins, Gary. "A Pocketful of Dreams" Boston: (Little, Brown and Company, 2001).
  • Various Artists. "Fabulous 50's Crooners Sing Their Hard To Find Hits" Ontario: (Hit Parade Records, 2006)
An epithet (Greek — επιθετον and Latin — epitheton; literally meaning 'imposed') is a descriptive word or phrase that has become a fixed formula.
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Traditional pop or Classic pop or Standards music denotes, in general, Western (and particularly American) popular music that either wholly predates the advent of rock and roll in the mid-1950s, or to any popular music which exists concurrently to rock and roll but
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ballad is a narrative poem, usually set to music; thus, it often is a story told in a song. Any story form may be told as a ballad, such as historical accounts or fairy tales in verse form.
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orchestra is an instrumental ensemble, usually fairly large with string, brass, woodwind sections, and possibly a percussion section as well. The term orchestra derives from the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus.
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big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s, although there are many big-bands around nowadays.
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Great American Songbook is an informal term referring to the interrelated music of Broadway musical theater, the Hollywood musical, and Tin Pan Alley, in a period that begins roughly in the 1920s and tapers off around 1960 with the coming of rock and roll.
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Ruggero Eugenio di Rodolfo Colombo (January 14,1908–September 2, 1934), better known by the name Russ Columbo, was an American singer, violinist and actor, most famous for his signature tune, "You Call It Madness, But I Call It Love," and the legend surrounding his
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Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an Italian American jazz-oriented popular singer and Academy Award-winning actor.

Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a solo artist with great
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Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 2, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American pop baritone and actor whose career lasted from 1926 until his death in 1977.

One of the first multi-media stars, from 1934 to 1954 Bing Crosby held a nearly unrivaled command of record sales,
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Bel canto (Belcanto, bel canto) (Italian, beautiful singing), an Italian musical term, refers to the art and science of vocal technique which originated in Italy during the late seventeenth century and reached its pinnacle in the early part of the nineteenth century
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Anthem
Il Canto degli Italiani
(also known as Fratelli d'Italia)


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Opera is a form of musical and dramatic work in which singers convey the drama.[1] Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition.[2] An opera performance incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and
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Jazz is an original American musical art form that originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in and around New Orleans.

Overview

Jazz has been called "America's only original art form.
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The volume of a solid object is the three-dimensional concept of how much space it occupies, often quantified numerically. One-dimensional figures (such as lines) and two-dimensional shapes (such as squares) are assigned zero volume in the three-dimensional space.
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microphone, sometimes referred to as a mike or mic (both IPA pronunciation: [maɪk]), is an acoustic to electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal.
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Al Jolson (May 26, 1886–October 23, 1950) was a highly acclaimed American singer, comedian and actor of Jewish heritage whose career lasted from 1911 until his death in 1950.
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For other persons of the same name, see Edward Cox.


Edward Ridley Finch Cox, born October 4, 1946 in Southampton, Suffolk, New York, the son of Howard Ellis Cox and Anne Crane Delafield Finch Cox, is a lawyer who is most well known as the
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Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an Italian American jazz-oriented popular singer and Academy Award-winning actor.

Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a solo artist with great
..... Read more.
Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti, June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an Italian American singer, film actor, and comedian. He was one of the most famous music artists in the 1950s and 1960s.
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Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 2, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American pop baritone and actor whose career lasted from 1926 until his death in 1977.

One of the first multi-media stars, from 1934 to 1954 Bing Crosby held a nearly unrivaled command of record sales,
..... Read more.
Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes and a repetitive pattern that most often follows a twelve-bar structure. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants,
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Dixieland or Dixie is a name for the southeastern portion of the USA; see: Southern United States, Dixie. This article is about the musical genre.


Dixieland music
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The music of Hawaiʻi includes an array of traditional and popular styles, ranging from native Hawaiian folk music to modern rock and hip hop.
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Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 2, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American pop baritone and actor whose career lasted from 1926 until his death in 1977.

One of the first multi-media stars, from 1934 to 1954 Bing Crosby held a nearly unrivaled command of record sales,
..... Read more.
Radio is the wireless transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space.
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The Kraft Music Hall was a major NBC radio variety program, featuring top show business entertainers, in a 16-year span from 1933 to 1949. Kraft Foods was the first advertiser to sponsor a two-hour radio program, in an era when many radio programs were only 15 minutes long
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Rock 'n' Roll (short for Rock and Roll), is a genre of music that evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to the rest of the world. It later spawned the various sub-genres of what is now called simply 'rock music'.
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Pierino Ronald Como (May 18 1912 – May 12 2001) was an American crooner. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with it in 1943.
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Matt Monro
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Easy listening music is a style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the mid-20th century, evolving out of swing and big band music, and related to Beautiful music and Light music.
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