Although upstaged by his elder brother, among crooners the personable Bob Crosby had a distinctive timbre and a style of his own, albeit he was never really a jazz singer. More significantly, however, he won world renown as the front-man of one of the best-organised American swing-bands of the 1930s – a trailblazer in the New Orleans Revival, it was the one which did most to revitalise Dixieland. Born George Robert Crosby in Spokane, Washington on 25 August 1913, Bob first made an impression as a singer during 1933 and 1934 with the Anson Weeks orchestra and famously doubled briefly as a vocalist with the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra. In June 1935 the incipient Bob Crosby Orchestra was taking shape under another ex-tenor-saxophonist Gilbert ‘Gil’ Rodin. Rodin was prime mover of the group affectionately dubbed ‘Pollack’s Orphans’ and it was he who initially hired the casual, easy-going Bob to front the new band. Rodin would remain the group’s leader and musical director. Under Rodin’s wing the Crosby Orchestra swiftly became the pre-eminent, all-white, Dixieland big-band. The Bobcats was a band-within-the-band small group, and between 1936 and the musicians’ strike of 1942 a good third of the band’s recorded output was devoted to Bob Cats arrangements. The Bob Cats are nowadays best remembered for a string of sides generally rated classic Dixieland re-creations.