Mitch Miller Dies at Age 99

http://www.newser.com/tag/54238/1/mitch-miller.html | August 2, 2010

[sushiman]

” A better time, sir, a better time. “

Most certainly . I was born in 1952 BTW .

[Mila]

" If the Miller portrait wasn't used on an album jacket, that would make The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper the only album jacket Rockwell was known to have painted under contract.)

I think that is definitely the case. I can't find any album of Mitch's, at least for sale online (Amazon,Barnes and Noble), that features the Rockwell rendering on the cover.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

Our family seldom missed his show. Especially after ABC came out in color and we had one of the first color TV’s. Boy, was it hard to get flesh tones! every hour we had to adjust the color and Mitch had a red and green shadow around him.

It was good wholesome music and America was still innocent. May he rest in peace and we might all live such a full life.

[Dixie Yooper]

My parents tried to get us to sing along with Mitch, but The Lettermen showed up, then The Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Chad & Jeremie, Jan and Dean etc., etc, etc...

[Doogle]

...*smiles*....I remember being invited over to a friends house to watch Bonanza in COLOR....there had to be 20 of us kids packed into their living room....I also remember the lady of the house saying “ a bunch of boys as quiet as a church mouse...incredible”

[jwparkerjr]

We were in a very rural part of Florida, nearly a hundred miles from the nearest TV station, in Miami. The only time we could get a decent picture was late at night. Wed. nights were the fights, sponsored by Gillette. My dad and I would sit up and watch every Wed. night. I loved the theme song “To Look Sharp”. Our high school band had the music and we used to play it.

A bit later WTVJ got a transmitting tower that was 1,000 tall. Then we could get a picture all day, except on really hot days. I remember my whole seventh grade class trouping over to our house, which was right across the street from the school, to watch the a-bomb tests in the mid-50’s.

I went home for lunch every day and Tennessee Ernie Ford was on. I was in love with Molly Bee! I knew when he did the hymn it was time to head back to school.

The kids who brought their lunch had sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. We would use the paper to wax the slide on the playground. It was metal and the sun would have it really hot. We would sit on a piece of wax paper and slide down, thus waxing the surface.

The only air conditioning was the theater and the dime store.

I am so thankful to have grown up in that time and place.

[tflabo]

Someone told me once, that LaLane didn’t even start exercising until he was in his 50’s.

I remember seeing him on TV about 1960 and that would put him roughly at age 42.

[Sicvee]

Blues Duke , yours was the best post and a nice piece of music criticism. I don’t think many true music lovers miss the efforts of Mr. Miller much. I am a used record dealer and I can affirm that there has never been any demand for old Mitch Miller records, even if they are in pristine condition. Actually most of them are in pristine condition because they were rarely actually played. I fantasize about what could be—what if all the Mitch Miller records that are taking up gazillions of cubic feet of covered storage—were to vanish? Wouldn’t that be a net plus for the economy?

[oprahstheantichrist]

"Be kind to your friends in the swamp, for a duck may be somebody’s Mother”

Close.

"Be kind to your web-footed friends
For a duck may be somebody's mother.

Be kind to your friends in the swamp
where the weather is very, very damp.

You may think that this is the end
WELL IT IS!"

[BluesDuke]

I am a used record dealer and I can affirm that there has never been any demand for old Mitch Miller records, even if they are in pristine condition. Actually most of them are in pristine condition because they were rarely actually played. I fantasize about what could be—what if all the Mitch Miller records that are taking up gazillions of cubic feet of covered storage—were to vanish? Wouldn’t that be a net plus for the economy?

You'd have to ask those in the compacting/disposal/vinyl recycling businesses for the best potential answer to that question. ;) Meanwhile, thank you for the kind compliment. I shudder to think of Mr. Miller's response should he have known that Columbia ended up with the rights, too, to the recordings of Robert Johnson. (I believe Miller was no longer A and R chieftain by the time the original King of the Delta Blues Singers set came forth in 1963 . . .)

[Pylon]

We luckily still have a couple drive-ins around San Diego and it’s so much fun once in a while to still go. Something about getting out of the car and walking to the stand for hot dogs and sodas that still seems so right. I’m not even that old, 42, but growing up in Buffalo we would hit the drive-in a few times a year and I still remember those times fondly. I remember seeing Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid at the drive-in. My GF in only 24, had never been to a drive-in until she met me, and doesn’t get why I bug her to go to the drive-in once in a while but I think she is actually enjoying the drive-in now and just doesn’t want to admit it.

[giotto]

Now you may think that this is the end...Well it is!

[OldPossum]

Thanks for that post. You’re right, there was something to that getting out of your car and going to the concession stand for a snack.

Goodness, I have not seen a drive-in theater for many years. I saw an old abandoned one in Fairfax County, Virginia, where I lived at the time, in the 1970s.

[BluesDuke]

Here's one of the best cuts from the Bloomfield/Kooper set for which Rockwell painted the cover:

Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, "Green Onions" (live)

[BluesDuke]

My parents tried to get us to sing along with Mitch, but The Lettermen showed up, then The Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Chad & Jeremy [sic], Jan and Dean etc., etc, etc...

Obviously, the Lettermen, the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys, Chad & Jeremy, Jan & Dean, etc. rescued you from a clear case of child abuse. ;)

[Mila]

Excellent! Love Green Onions, but heretofore have only heard the Booker T, pop, version. Thanks for the link.

[ohioWfan]

Kids these days can't believe that life actually was better in the 50's.

Innocent. Clean. Slower. Safer. Patriotic. Family-centered. God-centered.

I never heard a swear word until I was in 7th grade.

I miss those days.

[BluesDuke]

Excellent! Love Green Onions, but heretofore have only heard the Booker T, pop, version. Thanks for the link.

Fair disclosure: Mike Bloomfield was one of the players (B.B. King, the Eric Clapton of Blues Breakers, Albert King, the Peter Green who founded Fleetwood Mac as a blues group, were the others) who prodded me to try to play a guitar seriously in my teenage years. (I still play---in fact, I recently won a Les Paul Studio model Gibson guitar---I've had her altered to resemble the classic Les Pauls, with cream-coloured trim and amber volume and tone knobs---and I've been out playing the blues in Las Vegas the last few months, getting ready to put my own blues group together.) Mike Bloomfield could say more in three notes hovering over two or three bars than anyone else says in three thousand notes crowding three bars.

His was a kind of sad story: he was raised by a successful father (his family is, indeed, the family behind the Bloomfield restaurant utensil/implement/coffee system fortune) who was otherwise a tyrant at home who actually couldn't bear that he had a musically-inclined son, and it soiled Bloomfield to the point where he came to believe success was a prison if it could turn people out like that. His mother was the opposite---she absolutely supported her son's musical bent and, when he died in 1983, insisted her son be buried in her family crypt in California (Bloomfield's adopted home state; the family was rooted and Bloomfield grew up in Chicago), well after she'd divorced his father and remarried. ("Hellhound on his trail? It was hard cash on his trail."---Al Kooper.) To the day he died, Mike Bloomfield's mother insisted the worst mistake she ever made was letting her husband put him in private schools which discouraged his musical ambitions. All he wanted to do was play good blues and explore that music from the ground up. (You should hear his 1970s recordings of traditional and other kinds of blues, including what began as an instructional set, If You Love These Blues, Play 'Em As You Please, a title which didn't always jibe with the audiences who still came out demanding he re-create Super Session . . . )

It was very much like a marriage. You took the good with the bad. And death did us part.---Al Kooper, on his friendship with Mike Bloomfield.

Here's my absolute favourite Mike Bloomfield performance . . . from Super Session . . .

Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, "Really"

[Mila]

I must admit that I am not very knowledgeable on the subject of blues music, but that was a truly beautiful piece, smooth, soulful and haunting. For some reason it made me rather sad. Perhaps it was because of the background on Mike Bloomfield that you were kind enough to fill me in on, and the fact that such a talent died way before his time.

How wonderful for you that you have the talent to play the guitar professionally and that you were lucky enough to win a Les Paul Gibson guitar. It sounds as though your additions to it has made it even more of a treasure. I hope that you are successful in the formation of your group.

I remember seeing a Gibson guitar on Antique Roadshow that dated to the 1950’s. I can’t remember the details, but I know that the appraiser was impressed.

UPDATE: If your interested, here is the site with the details on that show. What would I do without the Internet and Google. LOL!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200706A21.html

[Deo volente]

I’m old enough to remember those days, and I miss them too.

Miller was also an incredible oboe player, and his recording of the Mozart Oboe concerto is a classic!

I’ll never forget the “bouncing ball”.