RIP Mitch Miller

Pawing through crates of dusty vinyl in all corners of the country, some records show up often, and are always worth passing over-- and Mitch Miller is responsible for most of them. He is always grinning, smiling as if he were In The Know, beckoning all of us to sing along, to sway to strains of melodies familiar and new. He had our grandparents and parents' eyes following the bouncing ball, shouting "Tzena Tzena Tzena," as the off-key notes were soaked up by the serenity and shag carpeting of the last century's living rooms. Upon his passing, the most appropriate tribute to Mitch Miller may be a full karaoke performance of Rod Stewart's 'American Songbook' album: some tedious and vapid participatory exercise for the ears.

But while his own successful brand (including many records and a television show) sold well, his work as Columbia Records' guru producer is what will go down in musical history. Mitch Miller was mostly responsible for a succession of lucrative, safe, 1950s crooners--Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Frankie Laine, and Johnny Mathis among them. As R & B morphed into rock and roll, and people like Bill Haley and Chuck Berry strummed their guitars increasingly faster, Mitch Miller carried on post-war big-band traditions, perhaps steering the course a bit to the mundane (one critic noted his "perverted brilliance"): think of non-rock-oldies from the 1950s, and it's likely Miller was at the helm of the project, conducting string arrangements through the slow pulse of old pop.

Not many people, in the music business or otherwise, could piss off Frank Sinatra and live to tell about it: Miller did, by making him sing sillier things than one would hear in modern nursery rhymes. Miller is probably why Tony Bennett recorded a highbrow jazz-vocalist album in collaboration with Bill Evans: to prove again that Not All Music is Background. The music was always slow and accessible, a less-ethnic version of Lawrence Welk, but with the same empty-headed happiness at heart: big band bemoans another ballad, and we all have something to which we can fall in and out of love, including the romantically-sustaining horns, the waltzy motion of another slow dance shuffle, or the bellowing of a chorus who, perhaps even in the recording studio, was all made to wear the same cardigan sweaters.

If there had been no Mitch Miller, there may have been less singing in the home in the world-- however contrived and unfamilar such an action may seem-- in the last century. And, had there been no "Sing Along With Mitch" vinyl, ever, perhaps blues would have become rock and roll (what Miller called "musical baby food") faster, or differently. In 1957, Paul Anka was singing "Oh, Diana," Buddy Holly was on American Bandstand, and the Quarrymen were playing their first gigs; Miller, charged by Columbia to pick up the tempo, produced the mildly exciting Marty Robbins hit "A White Sportcoat (and a Pink Carnation)." Sing along to that one!

If the mid-1970s musical GREASE, and its lasting popularity ("High School Musical," etc) means anything, perhaps it marks the moment pop music began to fold over upon itself: repetition of 1950s-style 'rock' riffs were more than permissible, they were encouraged, lucrative. In the 1980s, the synth played the same 1-4-5 progressions that Miller despised; by the 1990s, most pop music was as valid and as poignant as the Gilligan's Island theme song, or the schlock "Beauty School Dropout" from GREASE. By the time GREASE emerged as theater, movie and studio album, Miller's career in home entertainment was all but antique-- and the music that had taken his place was beginning to digest itself again. As much as he despised rock, Miller tried to negotiate a contract with Elvis Presley, but balked at what the Colonel wanted. If Sing-Along-With-GREASE would have made Miller money, he would have done it-- but by then the pop song had been relegated to its own slim genre, and Elvis was already a golden oldie. Miller outlived his medium and his message, and then lived for a long time afterward-- through a stint directing the London Symphony Orchestra in the 80s, through the entire life of Kurt Cobain, all the way to the rise of Lady Gaga, and all the neat sounds we pay for today.

Times are a-changing, though, including inside people's ears. New, soothingly vacant arrangements of standards-- Barry Manilow and Rod Stewart among them-- sell, about as well as anything else these days. Nothing resembles Mitch Miller's "sing along to this one with me" ethic, however. Forgiving his being the Rightful Father of Muzak briefly, Miller is responsible for having established through audio recording a weird kind of community: let's gather at my house and sing along to a record... it even came with a lyric sheet. Had rock and roll not taken the helm of pop, Miller may have been able to convince us to pay .99/download, for access to a bouncing-ball video, helping us remember the words to "Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Heart of My Heart."