Mitch Miller Dies at Age 99

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

[yarddog]

I too remember the 50s fondly. Some things are better now but overall it was a far better America.

I also remember my parents taking us to the drive-in theater because they charged by the car and they had 5 kids.

I took my Daughter to the drive-in in the mid 1980s in Garden City, KS. We saw “Gremlins”. A few days later it closed. We had a cooler full of cokes and a big bag of popcorn. Probably one of the last ones in the country.

[BluesDuke]

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 consider it a blessing that I can play. Especially after a seven-year layoff while I sorted out some personal problems and fought a battle against clinical depression. I began playing in earnest again last year. So far, I've found a keyboard player/singer who'll be ready to go after she finishes her work preparing for a major blues show come September; I need only a bassist, drummer, and harmonica player, and if they all sing even better because at best I'm good for a guide vocal when I write my songs and that's about it.

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.

Thanks so for that show detail!

Now, here's one to break your heart or have me committed, whichever comes first---Back in 1998, when I bought a Gibson SG Custom (I had to sell it a few years ago when I needed money badly), I also had a) a little money to burn, and b) a chance to buy an original Les Paul---a 1952 model stamped "PROTOTYPE" on the back of the headstock---from a dealer who was asking 1) a mere $3,000 for the guitar itself (which was still very playable and all the electronics still in shape), and 2) a mere $300 to refinish the surface to its original goldtop. (The finish needed reworking badly.)

He took it out of its glass case and let me play it awhile. So help me it played like butter on an English muffin. And I wrenched and wrestled with myself and . . . chickened out.

I've been killing myself over it ever since. It would have been a beautiful instrument living a lot longer than its forty-six years at the time, and it would be worth six figures today if you're into that sort of thing.

Gibson struck a limited edition reproduction of that original Les Paul model, called the Tribute. I've played one. It's a beautiful guitar. But a little too rich for my blood right now.

Mike Bloomfield played "Really" on his 1959 Les Paul Standard. (When he got it, you could only find Les Pauls used or in pawn shops---Gibson stopped making the style in 1960, substituting the SG style as the Les Paul model until Les Paul himself withdrew his name because he disliked the new model---and it was thanks largely to Bloomfield's influence, plus Eric Clapton [using one in John Mayall's group], Peter Green [with Mayall and with Fleetwood Mac], and Jeff Beck using the guitars as well, that public demand finally prodded Gibson to reintroduce the original Les Paul style to stay in 1968.)

He used that guitar from his final Butterfield Blues Band days through the mid-to-late 1970s. He'd gotten it in a trade for $100 and his first Les Paul, a 1954 goldtop that he used to make the Butterfield landmark East-West. Gibson struck a tribute reproduction of that '59 Les Paul by way of hundreds of photographs provided by Bloomfield's brother, since the actual guitar was lost. They reproduced it right down to the mismatched volume and tone knobs (one has a chrome top, two are the top-hat shaped knobs, and the fourth is a top hat encased entirely in acrylic cap) and the crack in the wood behind the tailpiece.

Here's one more Bloomfield vintage for you, played on that same '59 Standard:

Mike Bloomfield and Friends, "Carmelita Skiffle"

This is from Live at Bill Graham's Fillmore West, a 1969 concert set that was remastered and re-released last year . . . by Australia's Raven label. (Bloomfield named the song, a nice, swinging blues jam, after the San Francisco street on which he lived.) The whole set is worth having, particularly for Taj Mahal's guest vocal on "One More Mile" . . . and the lost (it wasn't on the original vinyl release) "Blues from the Westside."

[Dixie Yooper]

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

I can't blame my parents for trying, since we did so good at singing all the Burl Ives songs...

[Dixie Yooper]

I have that album stuffed away somewhere, as well as my turntable. I always played Mary Ann and The Weight over and over.

[caper gal 1]

Bingo.

[BluesDuke]

I have that album stuffed away somewhere, as well as my turntable. I always played Mary Ann and The Weight over and over.

*smiling* I loved "Mary Ann" and "The Weight," but I also fumed because of the too-soon fadeaway on their take of Ray Charles's blues rarity "I Wonder Who." I'm still waiting for a remaster of the set that includes the full version. Even if you know that as a singer Mike Bloomfield was a whale of a guitar player, you'd love to hear the full version because he was right in the pocket playing that one.

I did a little research on Norman Rockwell viz album covers. He never did one for Mitch Miller, nor did Miller ever adapt one of Rockwell's paintings for one, but if you remember the country-rock group Pure Prairie League, they used two Rockwells for two album covers, Pure Prairie League and If the Shoe Fits, both derived from Saturday Evening Post covers.

And Al Hirschfeld, the brilliant caricaturist for The New York Times, was commissioned to do Aerosmith for Draw the Line and also did some brilliant caricatures for BMG/RCA's series of jazz greatest-hits intro samplers, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Cab Calloway, Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton, and Tommy Dorsey.

Here's one more Bloomfield/Kooper cut, a beautiful piece of blues that didn't make it onto the original Super Session but turned up on a CD remaster of the set as a bonus track:

Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, "Blues for Nothing".

[BluesDuke]

I can't blame my parents for trying, since we did so good at singing all the Burl Ives songs...

In which case your parents got off the child abuse hook! ;)

[Dixie Yooper]

Thanks for the link to "Blues for Nothing". Once I was there I also had to listen to "Together, Till the End of Time" and one Al did with a very young Shuggie Ottis called "Bury My Body" off the Kooper Session album. My intro to Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield started 1970 when my older brother quit college after 2 years and enlisted in the Air Force to avoid the draft which was closing in on his draft number. Two of the albums he left at home before being shipped out were Super Session and The Live Adventures. I wore them both out by the time I graduated from high school but was able to find replacements over the next few years. Back then I also picked up Kooper Session, KGB which got horrible reviews, and my favorite, Al Kooper's All Star Wrestling.

Years ago I was watching The History of Rock on PBS and Al was being interviewed about his some audition for Bob Dylan and he was going to try and get the guitar spot. Some guy he didn't know by the name of Mike Bloomfield was right before him. When it was Al's turn, they asked him what he was playing. He said "The organ".

[Americanexpat]

Watched his program when I was a kid, loved it and if I remeber right Leslie Uggums was one of the stars, loved her too.

[BluesDuke]

Thanks for the link to "Blues for Nothing". Once I was there I also had to listen to "Together, Till the End of Time" and one Al did with a very young Shuggie Ottis called "Bury My Body" off the Kooper Session album.

You're welcome. I should have warned even an old fellow fan such as yourself: Once you hit one Bloomfield link once is never enough.

Shuggie Otis was a very underrated guitar player. Not to mention being fifteen years old when Al Kooper invited him to come make Kooper Session.

Two of the albums [my brother] left at home before being shipped out were Super Session and The Live Adventures. I wore them both out by the time I graduated from high school but was able to find replacements over the next few years.

My own introduction to Mike Bloomfield was Super Session; I'd hipped to Al Kooper via Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album and the first Blood, Sweat & Tears album, Child is Father to the Man---I didn't catch onto the Blues Project until after that, though I caught onto Paul Butterfield on hearing Super Session and learning of Bloomfield's past.

Years ago I was watching The History of Rock on PBS and Al was being interviewed about his some audition for Bob Dylan and he was going to try and get the guitar spot. Some guy he didn't know by the name of Mike Bloomfield was right before him. When it was Al's turn, they asked him what he was playing. He said "The organ".

Which he'd never played in his life until that session and the infamous electric Dylan performance at Newport 1965.

Al Kooper is a funny man, too. Read his memoir, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards. He was also funny in the booklet notes for Don't Say That I Ain't Your Man: Essential Blues, 1964-69, Columbia Legacy's splendid Mike Bloomfield intro sampler, especially when he described how he and Bloomfield went off separately after the Dylan works: [T]hen we both played in blues bands (he in the Butterfield Band and me in the Blues Project); then we quit our respective blues bands to form horn bands (he the Electric Flag and me Blood, Sweat & Tears). Now it gets particularly weird: we then both got thrown out of the horn bands that we started, much like the Frankenstein story, with us playing the part of the slain doctor.

Kooper also told a telling story of the night Bloomfield and some friends went to the Apollo Theater for a James Brown show when a brother started hitting on Michael's friend's wife. Bloomfield was outraged---"Hey, man! Cut that out! That is this man's woman, his wife---how dare you be so rude in front of them like that? Go hit on a single woman and get outta here!" And while resembling a little white boat in an ocean of black, he got a standing ovation and the brother apologised!!.

Remove the insomnia and the manic depression which drove him to the drugs he indulged desperately trying to fix them while trying to come to terms with himself, and all indications seem to be that Mike Bloomfield must have been a lovely, sweet man to know. As sweet as the way he played the blues at his best.

[BluesDuke]

Watched his program when I was a kid, loved it and if I remeber right Leslie Uggums was one of the stars, loved her too.

Leslie Uggams caught a break when she got to become a Sing Along With Mitch regular after she'd first attracted attention playing the niece to the Ethel Waters character in Beulah, derived from the mid-1940s radio hit.

She was also one of the guest Hollywood Squares the afternoon the question was whether Roman legend held that God made the people of the world in a large oven and Paul Lynde, ever the charmer, pointed to Uggams and said, "It looks like you were overcooked!"

[Dixie Yooper]

Thanks for all the Kooper/Bloomfield info. Since getting married 14 years ago,then kids I haven't had much time for music. For the last 8 years I have kept the same 6 cds in my car's cd player. My favorite hits by The Band, Edgar Winter's White Trash and 4 Johnny Winter cds, Illustrated Man being my favorite. I can't remember the last time I paid money for any music other than tickets to see Johnny Winter at a big bar in Virgina. The last time I pulled out my case of Lee Oscars I couldn't play a simple scale much less cross harp with my favorite tunes. Thanks again for reminding me of what I used to enjoy!

[happygrl]

Thanks for hijacking my thread;-)

I truly have enjoyed reading your posts, and found them most informative!

[BluesDuke]

Thanks for hijacking my thread;-)

Purely unintentional . . . but deliciously subversive, if you count that Mitch Miller professed to stand for good music and I and my co-conspirators (Norman Rockwell included, since he provoked my inadvertent hijack in the first place!) merely put Mr. Miller's money where his posthumous mouth was. ;)

I truly have enjoyed reading your posts, and found them most informative!

Thank you for the kind words. :) Now go listen to the music. That's what it's really all about.

[Fudd Fan]

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

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

Thanks for the nice memory! I was a little kid but my grandparents watched Mitch every week.

[mcmuffin]

Thanks for hijacking my thread;-)

Nothin' against Mitch Miller. I remember the bouncing ball.

This is the best threadjack I've witnessed in 11 + years on FR!

Thanks BD!

[BluesDuke]

Nothin' against Mitch Miller. I remember the bouncing ball.

At least the bouncing ball proved Mitch Miller was human, after all. He had to have gotten the idea from that vintage series of cartoons that were turning up on television at last, at about the time Miller began his weekly exercises in musical homogenising . . .

This is the best threadjack I've witnessed in 11 + years on FR!

Thanks BD!

Well, isn't it true that often as not the best things in life are the things that happen by accident? ;)

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

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

Thanks for the heads up, Blues Duke. What a grinding, soulful rendition, and yeah, that sure sounds like Carlos on the last guitar solo. Got it saved to my favorites list now.

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

As far as portratis, caricatures, ect of blues and jazz musicians, I like the Robert Crumb 'deck of cards' collection of Blues Legends.

But better than any artist I've seen try a hand at the genre, is This Lady.

Sorry I cannot post an example of her work here. I think all jazz fans will enjoy the link.

[BluesDuke]

Thanks for the heads up, Blues Duke. What a grinding, soulful rendition, and yeah, that sure sounds like Carlos on the last guitar solo. Got it saved to my favorites list now.

Carlos Santana (who idolised Mike Bloomfield and, a decade ago, was asked to write the foreword to Michael Bloomfield: If You Love These Blues--An Oral History) was part of the weekend that produced The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper . . . but "Green Onions" was Bloomfield's show start to finish, from the opening and closing solos to that magnificent comping he did for Al Kooper's organ solo. (Confession: I play with a loosely aggregated Las Vegas blues group Tuesday nights while waiting to form my own blues group, and one of our set highlights is a mashup of "Green Onions" to its near-copy, Sonny Boy Williamson's "Help Me"---and I use a combination of one of the Bloomfield comps and Robert Jr. Lockwood's "Help Me" comping behind the two singers, who usually hand me either the first or the second of three solo spots.)

The lone Santana performance from the weekend to appear on the album (he was one of a few guests who pitched in when Bloomfield's notorious insomnia finally kicked him over and he had to be sedated to sleep at last) was a performance of the obscure Jack Bruce composition, "Sonny Boy Williamson." Following which cut came Bloomfield's former Butterfield Blues Band mate, Elvin Bishop, performing Sonny Boy's "No More Lonely Nights."