Mitch Miller, oboe player, music exec, host of "Sing Along With Mitch"

Heard of Mitch Miller's passing. Junkers, scouts and collectors know he lives on. His cartoonish visage, on the cover of "Sing Along With Mitch" albums, haunts every thrift store in America where vinyl records can be found. Astute collectors can even find the oboe concerti he recorded with great orchestras. Jazz fans can hear him on the Charlie Parker with strings recordings. Just put a name together with Mitch Miller and there is a story. Mitch Miller/Frank Sinatra. Mitch Miller/Rosemary Clooney. Mitch Miller/Clive Davis. Mitch Miller/Goddard Lieberson. Mitch Miller/Guy Mitchell. Mitch Miller/Columbia Records.
In our store at moneyblows.com, his legacy abounds in many wonderful Columbia Records. Mitch Miller made a huge impression, as artist and repertoire chief at Columbia (later, CBS Records) for most of the 1950s til the mid 1960s. Significantly, his employer invented the long playing record. For 3 years, he had a television show version of "Sing Along With Mitch."
He had a career any oboe player might envy. As I listen to his many contributions to popular music, whether it's the keening banjos behind the male choruses of "Sing Along" or the rocking celeste on Rosemary Clooney's hit, "C'mon A My House," I can imagine the sensitive ear of a double reed player in the agonizing quest to make a difficult instrument into a voice-like utterance.
In what I suspect is a more indirect influence, many Columbia Records of Ray Conniff and Percy Faith explore the blends of instruments and wordless vocals which have come back into fashion among some of  today's big band composers.
In the big picture of things, Mitch Miller demonstrated how popular music was created in the corporate environment. It's illustrated in this story from another corporate musical creature at Columbia, Teo Macero. Teo reported to Mitch Miller while creating jazz classics such as "Take Five."
And, while it is quite difficult to gauge the role of artistry in a monolithic corporate environment, there's no mistaking excellence and quality where it appears.
As a baby boomer, born a month after Rosemary Clooney had her breakout hit with Mitch Miller, I had my formative years and ears under the spell of MOR, easy listening music, rife with smooth strings, sparkling tone colors, beautiful voices, songwriting and composing which optimized the America which was an ethnic "melting pot.". By the time Mitch was cajoling everyone to sing along, I like others in my generation were chomping at the bit. Top 40 radio was playing something else. Top 40 radio was advertising freedom from Mitch Miller, who hated rock 'n roll. We may have been rescued by Pat Boone and Marty Robbins, but at least it wasn't our parents' music.

Cronkite shills for Columbia Records

Walter Cronkite was known as a news reader and reporter, rather than commentator. We also have a record of him flacking for Columbia Records in 1958. It's on an album produced by the Columbia Records Public Relations Department, called "Hear It Now On LP: The Story of the First LP Decade on Columbia Records."

Having invented the Long Playing record, Columbia celebrated its 10th anniversary with this mighty 33 1/3 rpm disc, by making this narrative anthology hosted by another inventor, the "inventor" of the news anchor, Walter Cronkite. The 12-in. record album contains popular and classical excerpts from 1948's Oscar Levant performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (Ormandy and Philadelphia Orchestra), all the way to 1957's Firebird Suite (Stravinsky) conducted by Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic.

This record was likely given out in limited quantities and never issued to the general public. It also includes the popular side of Columbia, from the earliest original cast albums of "Kiss Me, Kate" and "South Pacific" down to 1957 and the then-current stable of artists such as Johnny Mathis, Ray Conniff, Les Elgart and Erroll Garner. Cronkite's classic reading of the continuity script has the familiar ring of history in the making.