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This day in history: Bing Crosby performed comeback concert in LA. Piano tuner warned of calamity facing nation

Two miners were rescued from the Morning Mine in Mullan, Idaho, but another miner, E.J. Roesner, was killed in a different part of the mine, the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported on March 18, 1926. The newspaper also reported the president of the National Association of Piano Tuners warned in a speech at the Davenport Hotel that Americans were doing a poor job of keeping their pianos in tune. The Chronicle’s front page featured a picture of E.G. Faires, 77, and Sarah E. Funk, 75, who got married at the Coeur d’Alene Hotel in Spokane. The two had been friends in Ohio as children but got separated when Faires went to fight for the Union Army in the Civil War. Both had recently lost their first spouses. (Spokesman-Review archives)
By Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review

From 1976: Bing Crosby, Spokane’s biggest celebrity, returned to the concert stage in Los Angeles to celebrate his “demicentennial in show business.”

“It was just 50 years ago this month that my partner Al Rinker and I got a job at the Boulevard Theater here,” Crosby told the crowd. “The theater was close to the USC campus and a lot of college boys and girls dropped in to see how a couple of guys from Spokane were doing.”

Crosby had cut back on appearances over the last few years following a serious lung infection, but decided to stage a comeback with a series of charity concerts.

Bing Crosby returned to the concert stage at age 71 in Los Angeles to celebrate 50 years in show business, the Associated Press reported in an music review that ran on March 18, 1976, in the Spokane Daily Chronicle. He sang some duets with Rosemary Clooney and “clowned” with impressionist Rich Little. (Spokesman-Review archives)
Bing Crosby returned to the concert stage at age 71 in Los Angeles to celebrate 50 years in show business, the Associated Press reported in an music review that ran on March 18, 1976, in the Spokane Daily Chronicle. He sang some duets with Rosemary Clooney and “clowned” with impressionist Rich Little. (Spokesman-Review archives)

“One of the things that made me decide was when I came out of the NBC artists’ entrance one day and somebody asked me, ‘Didn’t you used to be Bing Crosby?’ ”

The Associated Press reviewer said, “The Crosby baritone sounded as sure as ever.”

From 1926: Clarence McMurray and Dan Knuppenberg were rescued from the Morning Mine in Mullan, Idaho, after rescuers penetrated “the final six feet of rock and debris in less than an hour.”

The two men had been trapped for a day and a half, but emerged uninjured. They had been able to talk to their rescuers for most of the operation. Rescuers were forced to work slowly at first because of the danger of further cave-ins

Yet the news out of the Morning Mine was not all good. Just before the rescue, E.J. Roesner, 25, was killed when a slab fell on him. He was in a different part of the mine and was not part of the rescue effort.

Meanwhile, Charles Deutschmann, the president of the National Association of Piano Tuners, gave a speech at the Davenport Hotel and warned of a growing problem facing the nation. He noted that no county in the world spent as much on music: “But with all this liberality, we neglect the home piano. If this is not remedied by keeping these home instruments in tune, all the money in the world will not prevent America from losing its musical ear.”