35 Facts About Mitch Miller

1.

Mitchell William Miller was an American choral conductor, record producer, record-industry executive, and professional oboist.

2.

Mitch Miller was involved in almost all aspects of the industry, particularly as a conductor and artists and repertoire man.

3.

Mitchell William Miller was born to a Jewish family in Rochester, New York, on July 4,1911.

4.

Mitch Miller's mother was Hinda Miller, a former seamstress, and his father, Abram Calmen Miller, a Russian-Jewish immigrant wrought-iron worker.

5.

Mitch Miller had four siblings, two of whom, Leon and Joseph, survived him.

6.

Mitch Miller took up the oboe at first as a teenager, because it was the only instrument available when he went to audition for his junior high school orchestra.

7.

Mitch Miller worked with Frank Sinatra on the 1946 recording of "The Music of Alec Wilder".

8.

Mitch Miller played the English horn part in the Largo movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony in a 1947 recording conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

9.

Mitch Miller gave the American premiere of Richard Strauss's Oboe Concerto in a 1948 radio broadcast.

10.

Mitch Miller performed Beethoven's Symphony No 5 in C Minor.

11.

Mitch Miller joined Mercury Records as a classical music producer and served as the head of Artists and Repertoire at Mercury in the late 1940s, and then joined Columbia Records in the same capacity in 1950.

12.

Mitch Miller defined the Columbia style through the early 1960s, signing and producing many important pop standards artists for Columbia, including Johnnie Ray, Percy Faith, Ray Conniff, Jimmy Boyd, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, and Guy Mitchell.

13.

Mitch Miller helped direct the careers of artists who were already signed to the label, such as Doris Day, Dinah Shore, and Jo Stafford.

14.

Mitch Miller discovered Aretha Franklin and signed her to the first major recording contract of her career.

15.

Mitch Miller left Columbia after five years, when Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records promised Franklin artistic freedom to create records outside the pop mainstream in a more rhythm-and-blues-driven direction.

16.

Previously, Mitch Miller had offered Presley a contract but balked at the amount Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was asking.

17.

Mitch Miller established the primacy of the producer, proving that even more than the artist, the accompaniment, or the material, it was the responsibility of the man in the recording booth whether a record flew or flopped.

18.

Mitch Miller conceived the idea of the pop record "sound" per se: not so much an arrangement or a tune, but an aural texture that could be created in the studio and then replicated in live performance, instead of the other way around.

19.

Mitch Miller was hardly a rock 'n' roller, yet without these ideas there could never have been rock 'n' roll.

20.

Mitch Miller countered that Sinatra's contract gave him the right to refuse any song.

21.

In 1961, Mitch Miller provided two choral tracks set to Dimitri Tiomkin's title music on the soundtrack to The Guns of Navarone.

22.

In 1987, Mitch Miller conducted the London Symphony Orchestra with pianist David Golub in a well-received recording of Gershwin's An American in Paris, Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue.

23.

Mitch Miller left Columbia Records in 1965 and joined MCA Inc as a consultant, signing the same year with MCA's Decca Records subsidiary.

24.

In later years, Mitch Miller would carry on the sing-along tradition, leading crowds in song in personal appearances.

25.

For several years, Mitch Miller was featured in a popular series of Christmas festivities in New Bedford, Massachusetts, leading large crowds singing carols.

26.

Mitch Miller hosted a 1981 TV reunion of the Sing Along Gang for NBC.

27.

Mitch Miller appeared as host of two PBS television specials, Keep America Singing and Voices In Harmony, featuring champion quartets and choruses of SPEBSQSA and Sweet Adelines International.

28.

Mitch Miller appeared conducting regional orchestras and filled in many times as guest conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra.

29.

At his first rehearsal for television, Mitch Miller took his position in front of the chorus and began conducting in the usual choirmaster manner: arms outstretched with hands gesturing, so the singers could see his signals.

30.

The TV director stopped him, objecting that Mitch Miller's arms were out of the camera's range and could not be seen on the television screen.

31.

Mitch Miller pulled his arms closer to his body, but the director stopped him once more.

32.

Mitch Miller dutifully adopted the jerky, confined style of conducting and kept it for the duration of the series.

33.

The rigid format of Sing Along with Mitch Miller lent itself to parodies.

34.

Mitch Miller was married for 65 years to the former Frances Alexander, who died in 2000.

35.

Mitch Miller lived in New York City for many years, where he died on July 31,2010, after a short illness, nearly four weeks after his 99th birthday.