Canadian Crosby

Canadian crooner Dick Todd sounded enough like Bing Crosby that Crosby once introduced himself to a live audience by saying: "My name's Bing Crosby -- I sing like Dick Todd." Yet the two singers were not identical, and Todd's pleasantly intoned vocals may be appreciated in their own light without the benefits or disadvantages of the comparison. According to Brian Rust, Arthur Richard Todd was born in Alberta, Canada in 1914, was schooled at Montreal's McGill University and became involved in the entertainment industry by performing over Canadian radio during the '20s. Waxed in Montreal, Todd's first recordings are apparently so rare as to exist only as footnotes. Living Era's Dick Todd tribute album presents 27 of his most popular U.S. Bluebird recordings beginning with those made backed by an unidentified studio orchestra in April 1938, just months after his arrival in New York City. Aside from two numbers that he sang with Larry Clinton & His Orchestra in July 1938, the rest of this compilation documents Todd's rise to fame using a series of recordings he made with Leonard Joy & His Orchestra between the autumn of 1938 and the summer of 1942. Todd, who is heard in a couple of duets with Dinah Shore, was sometimes backed with a female vocal trio strangely billed as "The Three Reasons." Living Era's British perspective is evident in Brian Rust's liner notes; he uses the word "Transatlantic" to describe music from North America, and pegs Todd's 1939 rendition of "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day" as a recording that greatly improved British morale during the early years of the Second World War. Listeners from all points of the compass might find Dick Todd's warm and predominately sentimental voice to be as comforting and reassuring as a mug of hot cocoa smothered with a heavy blob of whipped cream.