Bingle All The Way Think You Know Everything There Is To Know About Spokane’S Favorite Son? You Might Want To Have A Look-See At This List Of Boo-Boo-Boo Bing Crosby Facts.

Even in Spokane, Bing Crosby’s hometown from age 2, not everyone is aware of All Things Bing.

Today, as a way of getting in the mood for “Spokane Sings Crosby” (see accompanying sidebar, F7), we thought we’d compile a list of well-known and little-known facts encompassing the entire spectrum of Bingology.

Read on:

Number of records sold: 300 million.

Rank among recording artists of the entire pre-rock era: No. 1.

Bing’s best selling single: “White Christmas.”

Rank among all-time best-selling singles: No. 2, having recently been edged by “Candle in the Wind 1997,” by Elton John.

Number of Bing’s hit songs from 1931 to 1939: More than 150.

First hit song: “I Surrender Dear” in 1931.

Last hit song: “True Love,” a duet with Grace Kelly in 1956.

Positively his last hit song: A bizarre duet with David Bowie on “Little Drummer Boy,” which became a hit in England in 1982, five years after Bing’s death.

First ever appearance of “boo-boo-boo-boo” on record: Bing’s scat-singing interlude in “Where The Blue of the Night,” 1931.

Best Bing album: “Bing’s Gold Records,” (Decca), which contains 21 songs encompassing the best of his career.

Worst Bing album: “Hey Jude/Hey Bing!,” a wretched 1969 attempt featuring “Hey Jude” and “The Straight Life” in which he croons the immortal line, “Winkin’ and blinkin’ and blow in my ear” (Bing himself considered this album his worst effort.)

Bing’s favorite kind of music: Dixieland jazz, “those good old Decca LPs featuring Eddie Condon’s band, Red Nichols, or Louis Armstrong.”

First line of “Call Me Lucky,” Bing’s 1953 autobiography: “The autobiographical kick is a new caper for me.”

Origin of the nickname “Bing”: A character in the comic strip “The Bingville Bugle.”

Newspaper that Bing delivered as a boy: The Spokesman-Review.

Worst subject at Gonzaga High School (now Gonzaga Prep): Math.

Name of his most heartfelt essay at Gonzaga High School: “Why Algebra and Geometry Are Unnecessary in High School Curriculum.”

The name of Bing’s first combo at Gonzaga: The Juicy Seven.

Bing’s second Spokane combo: The Musicaladers.

The instrument Bing played for the Musicaladers: Drums.

What Bing said he would have done for a living if he’d ever learned to play the drums properly: “I’d probably be playing percussion instruments in the Spokane Symphony Orchestra right now.”

The Musicaladers’ musical influences: Early black jazz bands such as McKinney’s Cotton Pickers.

The Musicaladers’ top venues: The Clemmer Theater, The Pekin Restaurant on Riverside, and Lareida’s Dance Pavilion in Dishman.

Reason Bing threw a punch at a patron at Lareida’s: The guy called Bing a “pansy.”

Bing’s earliest role models: Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor, who young Bing used to watch from the wings while working as a prop man at Spokane’s Auditorium Theater.

Bing’s most important inspiration: Mildred Bailey, one of the nation’s most popular jazz and blues singers, who Bing said “taught me much about singing.”

Birthplace of Mildred Bailey: Tekoa, Wash. (She was actually Mildred Rinker, the sister of fellow Musicalader Al Rinker.) One reason Crosby and Rinker headed to California in a jalopy in 1925: To follow in the footsteps of Mildred Rinker, who was already beginning to make it big in L.A.

Caption on 1931 Spokesman-Review photo of Bing: “Spokane Boy, Now King of Radio’s Torch Song Crooners.”

Last line of the accompanying story: “He’ll be a smash hit in one of the big Broadway revues yet. That’s a prediction.”

Top Bing Crosby nicknames: Der Bingle, The Crooner, The Groaner.

The man who thought up the nickname “The Groaner”: Bob Hope.

What Bob Hope said stood out about Crosby when he first heard him in 1932: “The tremolo in his voice” and the “wart on his larynx.”

Number of movies featuring Der Bingle: 60, not counting eight Mack Sennett shorts he made before he was “discovered.”

Bing’s first feature: “The Big Broadcast,” 1932 (not counting “The King of Jazz,” 1930, as part of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra).

Best Bing acting performance: His Oscar-winning portrayal of Father O’Malley in “Going My Way,” 1944.

Bing’s general assessment of his acting skills: “I’m not a great actor - I’ll never be one - and I’m never going to create anything of lasting importance. With the exception of a phonograph record or two, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything really worthwhile.”

Quote from director Frank Capra: “I rate him (Bing) in the top 10 of all actors. He’d do anything and do it well.”

Paramount’s original choice for the first “Road” movie: George Burns and Gracie Allen.

Number of Bob Hope-Bing Crosby “Road” movies: 7.

Best “Road” movies: “The Road to Morocco,” 1942; “The Road to Utopia,” 1946; and “The Road to Rio,” 1947 (according to Video Hound’s Movie Guide).

Reason directors and screenwriters went nuts during filming of “Road” movies: Hope and Crosby paid no attention to the script and ad-libbed any lines they thought were funny.

What Hope once yelled to the screenwriters before a scene: “If you recognize anything of yours, yell `Bingo!”’ Bob Hope, reminiscing about the “Road” movies: “When Bing died (in 1977), we were looking forward to doing just one more in the spring. Wouldn’t that have been something?”

Bing’s two favorite sports: Golf and horse racing.

The first thing Bing retrieved after his Los Angelese house burned down in January 1943: $2,000 in horse race winnings, stashed in a shoe in his closet.

Bob Hope’s explanation for what started the fire: “Somebody rubbed two of Bing’s sport coats together.”

The reason Bing loved golf: “It doesn’t matter what my professional or personal problems are, when I step onto that first tee, I get a sense of release and escape.”

Bing’s favorite getaways: His ranch in Elko, Nev., and his summer home in Hayden Lake, Idaho.

Bing’s personal nomination for greatest thrill: “To fish a good trout stream - a stream with plenty of room to throw a dry fly.”

Name of one of three TV stations Bing started up in the early 1950s: KXLY-TV, Spokane (the others were in Tacoma and Yakima).

One explanation for Bing’s personal appeal: He came across as a happy-go-lucky guy who just wanted to have fun.

Bing’s work ethic: “I just hate work.”

Reason Bing was denied admission to a Vancouver, B.C., hotel in 1951: The clerk thought he was a “bum” (he was dressed in leather jacket, jeans and cowboy boots).

Bing’s response: “I’ve been thrown out of better hotels, but for deportment - not for the way I dressed.”

What Bing said he would wear next time: “My blue serge suit, but it’s so long since I graduated from high school, I don’t think it will fit me.”

Bing on his child disciplinary methods: “I laid in a big leather belt - similar to the one I’d backed up to at Gonzaga in the hand of Father Sharp - and when they did something particularly outrageous … I summer-suited them by taking their pants down and fanning their rears.”

Bing’s problem as a parent: He wanted “perfect” children and didn’t get them (according to posthumous detractors).

The name of a 1981 book that “exposed” the bad side of Bing: “Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man.”

Thesis of that book: “Bing Crosby was many things to many people, but he did some monstrously callow things to those who were nearest and who should have been dearest to him.”

Bing on himself: “What it all boils down to is I’m very undemonstrative, and that problem has given rise to the belief that I’m a loner and I live behind an `ice curtain.”’

Phil Harris, comedian, bandleader and longtime friend, on Bing: “He’s an individualist. … A lot of people don’t understand him because he goes his own way, minds his own business, picks his own friends and lives his own life.”

Bob Hope, explaining why he cracked so many jokes about Bing: “You know, I usually make jokes about things I really care about: presidents, the United States, golf, Bing Crosby.”