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To: happygrl

Mitch Miller was also a successful studio musician. I believe that’s him playing the oboe solo on Frank Sinatra’s “It Was a Very Good Year.”


38 posted on 08/02/2010 12:42:19 PM PDT by Hackle
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To: Hackle
Mitch Miller was also a successful studio musician. I believe that’s him playing the oboe solo on Frank Sinatra’s “It Was a Very Good Year.”
Not likely. Frank Sinatra a) was recording for his own Reprise label at the time, whereby Miller I think was still bound in one or another way to Columbia even if he was no longer the label's A and R boss; and, b) Sinatra despised Mitch Miller and the feeling was quite mutual.

In Sinatra's final days on Columbia Records, when Miller had become the A and R boss, Miller fell into the habit of compelling the pop roster to make rather trite, and almost novelty records, a habit he sustained for quite a few years even after Sinatra left Columbia and signed with Capitol. Sinatra was so sickened by the barking dogs and other gimmicks Miller imposed on some of those records (Sinatra was convinced that the gimmicks wore down some of his credibility, and he was probably right) that he went off on Miller to anyone who'd listen.

Miller, for his part, fired right back at Sinatra's objection to the gimmicks: Let me tell you that the microphone is the greatest gimmick of them all. Take away the microphone and Sinatra and most pop singers would be slicing salami in a delicatessen. (Which makes you wonder what he thought of people such as Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, the Hi-Los, the Four Lads, or Peggy Lee, all of whom put in time on Columbia during Miller's tenure and a few of whom had pronounced jazz influence or background in their singing . . .)

Miller also snorted at Tony Bennett's inclinations when Bennett finally got to make full albums. ("If you were a pop singer," Bennett has said of the earlier days on Columbia, "you did singles.") Every time he has a hit, Miller said with more than a little contempt, he wants to do jazz.

I submit that the longevity of both Frank Sinatra's and Tony Bennett's careers have made Mitch Miller himself resemble a gimmick by comparison. I personally thought the Sing Along with Mitch television series and albums were about two steps removed from dentist's chair music myself. And his abject contempt for Columbia's jazz roster of the time---to the point where he may have obstructed the company from promoting the jazz performers on the label as strongly as he did the pop and classical roster (Duke Ellington once cajoled Charles Mingus back to a trio session with Ellington and Max Roach by showing him the promotion the label was offering their project and saying, "Mingus, my man, if Columbia had done that kind of thing I'd still be on that label")---should be considered deplorable. (Anyone who'd snort when his label is hoisting forth the like of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, Art Blakey, and Billie Holiday, to name a few, should be laughed out of town on a rail.)

But give the devil his due. Perhaps without meaning to, he did open a door for cross-genre meldings. Tony Bennett may have felt a little weird about having a crack at country songs (he remembers asking Miller in amazement, "Why on earth do you want me to sing cowboy songs?"), but his hit on Hank Williams's "Cold, Cold Heart" helped pave the way for country music and pop music to meet on common grounds in later years.

But then Bennett probably had a far longer-sighted view of his music than Miller ever could. To Miller, apparently, music was disposable. To Bennett, it's much as he's quoted as saying in the case notes for the reissues of his vintage albums: I never said I wanted hit singles. I always said I wanted a hit catalogue.

Wrong again, Mitch, God rest your soul . . .

56 posted on 08/02/2010 2:06:30 PM PDT by BluesDuke (Another brief interlude from the small apartment halfway up in the middle of nowhere in particular)
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