A KOOL Day for Music

A song that has made a place in American history that was recorded for the 1942 film ‘Holiday Inn’ by a Spokane native that will be forever associated with Christmas.

Bing Crosby

White Christmas

The iconic Christmas classic started out as a melody in 1935 when master songwriter Irving Berlin was working on the soundtrack to ‘Top Hat’ starring Fred Astaire, but wasn’t fully developed into what we know today until the melody was used for the 1942 film ‘Holiday Inn' starring Bing Crosby and Astaire.

The first time it was heard in public was at the Christmas day radio broadcast on the ‘Kraft Music Hall’ a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The song went on to pick up the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but it is much more than a holiday classic. ‘White Christmas’ has gone to number one on the music charts every year since the movie soundtrack was released until 1963 when Billboard magazine retired the song to its own category as the most played song ever recorded.

It also makes American history by marking the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. As the North Vietnamese surrounded Saigon, an evacuation plan was put into effect to bring the remaining Americans to safety. Their cue to leave was when a radio announcement stateing that the tempurature was ‘105 degrees and rising’ followed by playing Bing’s version of ‘White Christmas.’ That was the signal for the mad dash to the U.S. Embassy where helicopters were waiting.