A style of popular, usually male, singing. The word is Scottish in origin: ‘croyne’, meaning a loud, deep roar, became ‘croon’, a low, murmuring sound. In the 19th century the term was associated with lullabies, and in America particularly with those of ‘black mammies’. Hence, the injunction to ‘croon a tune’ appears in Schwartz, Young and Lewis’s 1918 song, Rock-a-bye your baby with a dixie melody, made famous by Al Jolson. By the 1920s, however, the term was associated with a style of singing that arose as a response to the particular requirements of microphone, as opposed to theatre, singing. The sensitive amplification of the microphone allowed or, some might say, required singers to apply less breath to the vocal cords, resulting in an intimate and conversational sound. Singers gradually discovered as well that the microphone favoured lower-pitched voices and that the use of head or mixed chest-head voice in lower registers (where operatic and theatrical singers had used only chest) aided the production of quiet singing and equalized notes across the range.
Crooning also involved certain stylistic traits: sliding into notes rather than attacking them squarely on pitch, the careful use of rhythmic and melodic variants (especially the mordent), and an anodyne, understated expression. It is this last quality more than any technical traits that separated crooning from other popular singing styles of the 1920s, such as those of classic blues or Broadway. Early crooners included ‘Scrappy’ Lambert, Smith Ballew, ‘Whispering’ Jack Smith, Rudy Vallee and Gene Austin: these medium-high tenors were usually found fronting a dance band, where their presence was limited to one or two choruses of a song. Bing Crosby also started in this mould, but gradually shifted to a lower baritone range. Moreover, he had a darker sound and a more energetic approach to phrasing that set him apart from his predecessors and formed the blueprint for most of his successors.
Although Crosby had been established as a solo artist since 1930, it was not until after World War II that the demise of the swing-era big bands led to the predominance of the solo singer, as exemplified by the careers of Dick Haymes, Buddy Clark, Perry Como, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. While crooning tended to be associated primarily with white male singers, some postwar black artists, namely Billy Eckstine and Nat ‘King’ Cole, were also included in this category. By the end of the 1960s, however, crooning was practically extinct as a distinct performance style.
The term always had some pejorative connotations; even in its heyday, crooning was considered effeminate, whining or excessively sentimental by some writers. It should also be remembered that the best exemplars, such as Crosby, Sinatra and Cole, always incorporated less restrictive elements into their interpretations, especially those improvisational approaches derived from instrumental jazz.
H. Pleasants: The Great American Popular Singers (New York, 1974/R)
W. Friedwald: Jazz Singing: America’s Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond (New York, 1990/R)
HOWARD GOLDSTEIN