Crooner Music
tagStarted c. 1926Peak 1932–1958Last big hit c. 1963
Located in 1 route
Crooner Music is built on soft microphone singing, legato lines, understated vibrato, and a kind of practiced ease that projects intimacy without oversharing. The band or orchestra supports the singer, but the genre’s real “instrument” is proximity itself.
History
The crooner emerged when new microphones allowed singers to lower their volume and increase their expressive nuance, changing pop singing at the level of physiology and style; Bing Crosby became the archetype, and later Perry Como, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, and Johnny Mathis extended the approach from radio and film into television and LP-era adult pop, making crooning one of the 20th century’s most durable vocal idioms.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica on Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra
- Wikipedia, “Crooner.”