Last modified: Thursday, October 11, 2007 11:24 PM EDT NESI: Bing still matters A few months back, America observed the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. Radio stations played Elvis marathons, and loyal fans made the pilgrimage to Graceland. Life magazine, which ceased publication in April, still published a special tribute issue. Why all the fuss? A headline in the Chicago Sun-Times gave an explanation: "30 years after death," the paper declared, "Elvis still matters." This coming Sunday also marks 30 years since the death of a pop culture icon, perhaps the only man who can challenge Elvis in the pantheon of stars: Bing Crosby. The two men were a generation apart - in fact, Elvis's ascendance brought down the curtain on the era that Crosby dominated completely. In "A Pocketful of Dreams," jazz historian Gary Giddins' definitive 2001 book on Crosby's early years, the author laments that Americans today fail to appreciate the crooner's pivotal role as the founding father of modern pop culture. "That was the cost of having played Everyman too long and too well," Giddins writes. "Harry Lillis Crosby" - Bing's given name - "was the most influential and successful popular performer in the first half of the twentieth century." Giddins compiled an astonishing set of statistics to make the Crosby case, which extends far beyond music: Bing made the most popular recording of all time, "White Christmas," a 50-million-seller that hit the Top 40 in every year but one between 1942 and 1962, and still made the charts as recently as 1998. Bing had an eye-popping 396 hit records between 1927 and 1962; by comparison, Frank Sinatra had 209, Elvis 149, and the Beatles a paltry 68. Bing holds the all-time record for #1 hits, with 38, far outdistancing the Beatles' 24 and Elvis's 18. Bing was also a movie star - between 1915 and 1980, he was the only actor to rank as the #1 box office attraction five times, and he made the top ten a total of 15 times between 1934 and 1954. Bing won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1944, and was nominated twice more. Bing was an accomplished broadcaster, too - he was a top radio star from 1931 to 1962, longer than any other entertainer, and he later became a fixture on television variety shows and his annual Christmas specials. But an array of facts and stats can only begin to convey just how much Crosby dominated American life in the years before and after World War II. The first bona fide modern superstar, he was a living, breathing, crooning institution. "The thing you have to understand about Bing Crosby," jazz legend Artie Shaw said in 1992, "is that he was the first hip white person born in the United States." Like Walt Whitman or Bob Dylan, Bing's was an authentically American voice - breezy and confident, colloquial, a little sentimental, and eminently democratic. Yet despite all that, 30 years after his death, Crosby is not the same fixture in American pop culture as his two direct descendants, Sinatra and Elvis, who followed him in the pop culture parade. Their legacies are well established. Bing, on the other hand, is brought out only once a year, at Christmas, with the ornaments and the electric window candles, to provide the yuletide soundtrack. It's a nice legacy, but there's so much more. Happily, an abundance of terrific Crosby material is available these days, like the CD release of "Fancy Meeting You Here," his freewheeling collaboration with Rosemary Clooney from 1958, or the pristine DVD edition of the bubbly 1954 blockbuster "White Christmas," also with Clooney, that captures Crosby at his most effervescent. So, this Sunday, listen to a little Bing - and pay tribute to the man who invented American popular music. TED NESI is a Sun Chronicle staff writer. His column appears on Fridays. He can be reached at tnesi@thesunchronicle.com.