The Night Has A Thousand Eyes Not to be forgotten in charting
Bing Crosby's influence is the music itself. His song knowledge
and sense of laid-back swing was learned from early jazz music,
far less formal than the European-influenced classical and
popular music used for inspiration by the vocalists of the 1910s
and '20s. Jazz was by no means his main concentration, though,
especially after the 1930s; Crosby instead blended contemporary
pop hits with the best songs from a wide range of material
(occasionally recording theme-oriented songs written by non-
specialists as well, such as Cole Porter's notoriously un-
Western "Don't Fence Me In"). His wide repertoire covered show
tunes, film music, country & western songs, patriotic standards,
religious hymns, holiday favorites, and ethnic ballads (most
notably Irish and Hawaiian). The breadth of material wasn't
threatening to audiences because Crosby put his own indelible
stamp on each song he recorded, appealing to many different
audiences while still not endangeri