The composer Virgil Thomson called him “an absolutely first-rate oboist one of the two or three great ones at that time in the world.” Miller’s own musical career began with the oboe. Mitchell William Miller was born on July 4, 1911, in Rochester, one of five children of Abram Calmen Miller, an immigrant from Russia and a wrought-iron worker, and Hinda Rosenblum Miller, a former seamstress.
Miller is survived by another daughter, Andrea Miller a son, Mitchell two brothers, Leon and Joseph two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His wife of 65 years, the former Frances Alexander, died in 2000. He also complained about “British-accented youths ripping off black American artists and, because they’re white, being accepted by the American audience” although that hardly explained his opposition to rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s, a decade before the advent of the Beatles and other British bands. The so-called payola scandal, in which record companies were found to have paid disc jockeys to play rock ’n’ roll records, had dismayed him, he said. Miller told Audio magazine in 1985 that his opposition to rock ’n’ roll had been based more on principle than on taste. Miller but another label executive, John Hammond, who signed him. “It’s not music,” he was quoted as saying, “it’s a disease.” When Bob Dylan, soon to become one of rock’s most influential artists, joined the Columbia roster in 1961, it was not Mr. But he turned down an opportunity to sign Buddy Holly, and he was outspoken in his dislike of rock ’n’ roll in general. He had also tried to sign Elvis Presley for Columbia before being outbid by RCA. He was sympathetic to blues and folk music and had one of his biggest hits in 1951 with Johnnie Ray’s “Cry,” a histrionic performance often cited as a rock ’n’ roll precursor. Miller’s television show left the air, his era of popular music had largely ended with the emergence of rock. agents tried to flush them out by blasting “Sing Along With Mitch” Christmas carols.īy the time Mr. Years later, in 1993, when David Koresh and members of his Branch Davidian cult were holed up in their compound in Waco, Tex., F.B.I. 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. That sense only intensified as a younger generation came of age in the 1960s and musical tastes changed. 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.Įven at the singalongs’ height, many Americans considered them hopelessly corny. The ratings were good, but the critics were mostly unimpressed. Laine and Jo Stafford and did the same for Mr. He had particular success with Hank Williams’s songs: he transformed “Hey, Good Lookin’ ” into a hit for Mr. One Miller specialty was developing crossovers from country to pop. He 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. Page, whose close-harmony “duets” with herself became her signature. 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 effect he employed it memorably with Ms. Miller himself using a wood block to simulate the snapping of a whip. One of his earliest hits, “Mule Train,” was recorded by the muscular-voiced Frankie Laine with three electric guitars, and Mr.
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 Ms. Miller’s eye and ear for talent and songs had been critical in making Columbia the top-selling record company in the nation. “Nothing happened to me until I met Mitch,” she later said.īy the end of the 1950s Mr.
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