We recently connected with Phil Crosby jr and have shared our conversation below.
Phil, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
It has taken me many years to acquire my skill set. I wasn’t a great student. From childhood i learned to teach myself much better than i learned to receive instruction. I think all that started due to the overcrowding of the Los Angeles public school system of the 1980’s. I was shy and it was easy to blend into the background and I was gifted with enough natural intelligence and an enjoyment of reading that i could pass classes without fully applying myself and the teachers, much like they do now, were willing to let me fall through the cracks and avoid hands on direction toward the higher learning i oft times now wish i had got. It takes a great amount of work to truly excel and music is no different. However, I found my way in perhaps a longer, more roundabout fashion because it’s just how i learned to learn. It wasn’t expedient but perhaps that makes what i have learned more simmered into me. We often mistake a performers ability to make something look easy as just that. Until we try and do it of course but usually the ‘natural ability’ is years of hard work! But that’s part of the entertainers job. My grandfather Bing Crosby’s ability left the listener feeling like anyone could do what he did. Which couldn’t have been further from the truth. However, our audience wants to live vicariously through us. It’s one of the reasons you should always know that your audience is behind you, so to speak. They need to see you conquer fear just as much or more than hear or see you perform something flawlessly. Your flaws might be your selling point, even, if you can embrace them. Being yourself is a good cheat around being the best but you’re still looking at many hours of painful persistence. Whether it’s all in a year or ten years is up to you. I got there eventually and I’m proud of that because I was sorely tempted to quit half way. Stick to it. Love the journey. Don’t judge or compare yourself to others and be you however that looks like.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m Phil Crosby jr, a vocalist, jazz bandleader, emcee and producer and crooner carrying on the legacy of one of the first, great entertainment families of Hollywood, The Crosbys. My paternal grandfather was American icon and singer and movie star Bing Crosby. I sing and interpret what’s called the great American songbook like he and the many singers he inspired, like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Dean Martin and Louis Prima did. I perform at clubs for jazz fans, vintage enthusiasts, swing dancers as well as produce my own shows in tribute to the music of the era of the mid twentieth as well as share my personal journey and stories and anecdotes about life in and around the industry. I also make my bread and butter doing many private events of all types. Most recently I have completed an album of music I call Crosby by Crosby as it features many of my favorite songs recorded by my grandfather but it my own fashion. I will release this body of work with an accompanying scrapbook/ family album with personally written chapters accompanying the old family photos and personal journey milestones. I think it will be a really wonderful piece of memorabilia to have with your support for the hard work musicians must do to produce music for the world.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
My most serious misstep as a singer occurred as a side effect of possibly the same thing that inspired me to pursue singing professionally past my first foray at all! And that was trying to sound like person who inspired me the most, my grandfather. I’ve never had ‘his voice’. I’ve always had my own voice, as everyone really does, but it was a voice that needed work. Where I got side tracked was in thinking trying to be more like him would help me be a better singer. In the long run it really had actually but I would have been much better served to have focused on making my sound better and still listening to Bing as inspiration but I had tools he never did and I’ll never have his particular tool set. If you learn to do something great in the way you would naturally do it you will have exactly the instrument you need.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
When you go to support your friends live performance creative endeavors ask them how much they got paid by the management of the venue. If the answer is zero ask them how that’s a viable model for the greater performance community and why it’s ok for them to technically make less money than the dishwasher.
Contact Info:
- Website: philcrosbyjr.com
- Instagram: @Crosbycrooner
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crooner.crosby?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Twitter: @philcrosbyjr
- Youtube: @MrPcrosby1