Richard Crooks

Richard Crooks began singing as a boy soprano in his local church. The famed contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink heard the young Crooks at a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah and foresaw his promise; soon local choirmaster Sydney H. Bourne began formal voice training with him. With World War I's outbreak in 1917, Crooks lied about his age and enlisted to become a pilot in the Army Air Force. Before embarking to France, Crooks made a test record of his singing at the Columbia Records studio in New York, perhaps as insurance against an unlucky fate. Both he and his test survive...