Editing Crooner (section)

==History==
[[Image:Gene Austin 01.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Gene Austin]]]]
{{listen
| filename     = Learn_To_Croon_sung_by_Bing_Crosby.ogg
| title        = "Learn to Croon"
| description  = [[Bing Crosby]] demonstrates how to croon in this 1933 recording
| format       = [[Ogg]]
}}

This dominant popular vocal style coincided with the advent of radio broadcasting and [[electrical recording]]. Before the advent of the [[microphone]], singers had to project to the rear seats of a theater, which made for a very loud vocal style. The microphone made a more personal style possible.<ref name="Crooners">{{cite web |url=http://www.shsu.edu/~lis_fwh/book/roots_of_rock/support/crooner/EarlyCroonersIntro2.htm |title=The Coming of the Crooners |author=Whitcomb, Ian |work=Survey of American Popular Music |publisher=Sam Houston State University |access-date=24 June 2010}}</ref> [[Al Bowlly]], [[Bing Crosby]], [[Gene Austin]], [[Art Gillham]], and by some accounts [[Vaughn De Leath]]<ref>''Father of Radio: The Autobiography of Lee de Forest'', 1950, page 351.</ref><ref>Irving Settel, ''A Pictorial History of Radio'', p. 58, Grosset & Dunlap (1967).</ref> are often credited as inventors of the crooning style, but [[Rudy Vallée]] brought the style widespread popularity.<ref name="Crooners" /> 

{{blockquote|In his popular radio program, which began with his floating greeting, "Heigh ho, everybody," beamed in from a New York City night club, he stood like a statue, surrounded by clean-cut collegiate band musicians and cradling a saxophone in his arms.|[[Ian Whitcomb]]<ref name="Crooners"/>}}

His first film, ''[[The Vagabond Lover]]'', was promoted with the line, "Men Hate Him! Women Love Him!"<ref name="Crooners" /> while his success brought press warnings of the "Vallee Peril": this "punk from Maine" with the "dripping voice" required mounted police to "beat back crowds of screaming and swooning females" at his vaudeville shows.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pitts |first1=Michael |last2=Hoffman |first2=Frank |title=The Rise of the Crooners: Gene Austin, Russ Columbo, Bing Crosby, Nick Lucas, Johnny Marvin, and Rudy Vallee |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Deb9AAAAQBAJ&q=%22Vallee+Peril%22&pg=PA32 |series=Studies and Documentation in the History of Popular Entertainment, No. 2 |publisher=The Scarecrow Press |location=Lanham, MD |year=2002 |page=32 |isbn=0-8108-4081-2 |oclc=46976469}}</ref>[[Image:Perry Como, New York, ca. Oct. 1946 (William P. Gottlieb 01641).jpg|thumb|left|[[Perry Como]], October 1946]]By the early 1930s, the term "crooner" had taken on a pejorative connotation.<ref name="Crooners"/> Cardinal [[William Henry O'Connell|William O'Connell]] of [[Boston]] and the [[New York Singing Teachers Association]] (NYSTA) both publicly denounced the vocal form, O'Connell calling it "base", "degenerate", "defiling" and un-American, with the NYSTA adding "corrupt".<ref name="Crooners"/> Even ''[[The New York Times]]'' predicted that crooning would be just a passing fad. The newspaper wrote, "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]]."<ref name="Crooners"/> Voice range shifted from [[tenor]] (Vallée) to [[baritone]] ([[Russ Columbo]], [[Bing Crosby]]).<ref name="Crooners"/> Still, a 1931 record by Dick Robertson, "[[Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee]]", called upon men to fight "these public enemies" brought into homes via radio.<ref name="Crooners"/>