The Bob-o-links

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of Tommy Dorsey’s Pied Pipers, vocal groups be­came all the rage in the early 1940s. Other band­lead­ers soon sought to cash in on the trend, and among them was Bob Crosby. While per­form­ing in De­troit dur­ing mid-​1940, Crosby and band man­ager Gil Rodin heard a vocal quar­tet called the Down­beat­ers on radio sta­tion WWJ and promptly hired them, chang­ing their name to the Bob-​o-links. Com­posed of three men and one woman, the Bob-​o-links are best re­mem­bered today, if at all, for singer Johnny Desmond, who got his start in the quar­tet. Other mem­bers were Tony Paris, Ed Lavine, and Ruth Red­ding­ton.

Though an early re­port sug­gested that au­di­ences raved about the four young singers, music jour­nal­ists were not im­pressed. Re­views of the group were often harsh and some­times hos­tile, es­pe­cially from Down Beat mag­a­zine staff. Down Beat writer Dave Dex­ter Jr. once com­plained that they “clammed up many an arrange­ment with their trite and un­re­fresh­ing vo­cals.” In a re­view of one new Crosby record, Dex­ter’s first words were: “No Bob-​o-Links! The ab­sence of that vocal quar­tet’s name on the la­bels is enough to make any­one hear the ac­tual per­for­mances.”^[1] In an­other re­view of the record­ing “Far Away Music,” Dex­ter said it “might have been bet­ter had the Bob-​o-Links been far­ther away.”

In an April 1941 Down Beat ar­ti­cle re­view­ing the ter­ri­ble Crosby band film Let’s Make Music, John Henry Aegis lamented the fact that ad­ver­tis­ing had promised the band’s Bob Cats Dix­ieland unit “but the Bob­cats turned out to be four things called the Bob-​o-links.” This prompted Bob-​o-link mem­ber Paris to write an angry let­ter to the mag­a­zine’s ed­i­tor.

I ran across a line call­ing my­self and my col­leagues “4 things.” I thought I’d let you know that we con­sider it an in­sult and the first chance I get, per­son­ally, I’m going to make Aegis re­tract that state­ment.

I don’t think there is any other quar­tet that tries or works any harder than we do, and we take all the bad crit­i­cism with the good. But when a man in his po­si­tion pub­licly in­sults us, that’s too much.

The Bob-​o-links never over­came their de­trac­tors. They were gone by July 1941. In not­ing their de­par­ture, Down Beat writer George Fra­zier said “I don’t hon­estly think any­one will be gravely dis­ap­pointed.”

Desmond quickly found work with Gene Krupa, where he re­mained until mid-​1942 when he be­came caught in the draft. He spent part of his ser­vice tour as vo­cal­ist for Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band and after the war began a suc­cess­ful solo ca­reer. Paris ini­tially re­mained with Crosby as the band’s as­sis­tant man­ager and in 1942 was part of the vocal combo Six Hits and a Miss and the vocal quar­tet the Mel­lowaires.

Crosby res­ur­rected the name Bob-​o-links from time to time over the years.

Notes