- Born
- Died
- Birth nameMitchell William Miller
- Nickname
- The Beard
- A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and a classically trained oboist, Mitch Miller first entered the pop music scene in 1948 at Mercury Records, where he guided such acts as Vic Damone, Frankie Laine and Patti Page to success. In 1950 he was lured by Goddard Lieberson to Columbia Records as that label's A&R director, where he made stars out of Tony Bennett, Johnnie Ray, Guy Mitchell and many others. Miller himself first shot to prominence in the late 1950s with his "Sing Along" series of albums, which ultimately led to his own series, Sing Along with Mitch (1961). His opposition to rock and roll, however, undercut Columbia's market position for several years until after he left the label in 1965. In recent years he has occasionally served as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras across the country.- IMDb Mini Biography By: W.B.
- SpouseFrances Alexander(September 10, 1935 - March 3, 2000) (her death, 3 children)
- He played the oboe in the orchestra for George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" when it opened on Broadway in 1935.
- Daughters Margaret Miller Reuther, Andrea Miller, and son Mitchell Jr.
- Miller was the Midas of novelty music, storming the charts with records like Jimmy Boyd's "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and providing singers with unusual instrumental backing: a harpsichord for Rosemary Clooney, French horns for Guy Mitchell. One of Mitch Miller's earliest hits, "Mule Train," was recorded by the muscular-voiced Frankie Laine with three electric guitars, and Mitch himself using a wood block to simulate the snapping of a whip. Miller was a studio innovator. Along with the guitarist Les Paul and a few others, he helped pioneer overdubbing, the technique by which different tracks are laid over one another to produce a richer sound effect; he employed it memorably with Patti Page, whose close-harmony "duets" with herself became her signature. Miller also achieved what he called a sonic "halo" on numerous recordings by the use of what came to be called an echo chamber -- actually an effect an engineer produced by placing a speaker and a microphone in a tiled restroom.
- Mitch Miller came up with the idea for his singalong albums in 1958, drawing on a repertory that ordinary people had sung in churches and parlors for decades. By the time he recorded the first "Sing Along With Mitch" album, he had already had success with this approach on the singles chart, scoring a No. 1 hit in 1955 with an arrangement of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Mitch Miller and the Gang eventually recorded more than 20 long-playing discs, many of which made the Top 40. By 1966 they had sold about 17 million copies. In 1960 his singalong concept was given a one-time television test on NBC. The response was favorable that "Sing Along With Mitch" became a mainstay of family television, running -- every other week at first, then weekly -- from 1961 to 1964, then returning in reruns in the summer of 1966. The TV show ranked in the top 20 for the 1961-1962 season, and soon children everywhere were parodying Miller's stiff-armed conducting an all-male chorus, joined by a few female singers, most prominently Leslie Uggams. Viewers were encouraged to sing along and instructed to "follow the bouncing ball" -- a large dot that bounced from word to word as the lyrics were superimposed on the screen. The ratings were good, but the critics were mostly unimpressed. Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times, suggested in 1962 that "Sing Along With Mitch" might best be viewed with the sound turned off. "He is an odd-looking man, his sharp beard, twinkling eyes, wrinkled forehead and mechanical beat make him look like a little puppet, as he peers hopefully into the camera. By now most of us are more familiar with his tonsils than with those of our families. Miller is 'first rate,' praising the clean tone of the singing, the clarity of the lyrics, the aptness of the tempos, the variety and the occasional delicacy of the instrumental accompaniment." Miller said in the book "Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music, "To me, the art of singing a pop song has always been to sing it quietly. The microphone and the amplifier made the popular song what it is - an intimate one-on-one experience through electronics. It's not like opera or classical singing. The whole idea is to take a very small thing and make it big." Even at the singalong's height, many Americans considered them hopelessly corny. That sense only intensified as a younger generation came of age in the 1960s and musical tastes changed. There were news reports that shopping malls had begun piping Mitch Miller music on their sound systems as a way to discourage teenagers from congregating. Years later, in 1993, when Daid Koresh and members of his Branch Davidian cult were holed up in their compound in Waco, Texas, F.B.I. agents tried to flush them out by blasting "Sing Along With Mitch" Christmas carols.
- In 1956 Miller, then A&R director of Columbia Records, hosted a panel discussion show on CBS-TV on which he brought on two psychiatrists who warned parents about the "negative effects" rock music had on teenagers and gave a list of "signs" to watch out for.
- [When asked his opinion, in the early 1960s, of rock music] It's not a music, it's a disease.
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