Saturday, August 07, 2010
  Mitch Miller RIP



Polistra and Happystar are remembering Mitch Miller, the band-leader who died this week at 99.

Miller played an important part in my life, though somewhat indirectly. His 1955 "Yellow Rose of Texas" was the first tune I learned, and still the default selection in my mental juke-box. [The other standard selections, when not overridden by some immediately heard tune: Haydn's Austrian anthem, Bach's Anna Magdalena tune, Jingle Bells, and the Lillibullero March as heard on BBC news, complete with the "Bip Bip Bip Bip Bip ... Beeeep" at the end.]

Then on my 10th birthday, parents gave me a Mitch Miller "Introduction to the Classics" record. I was disappointed because I'd really wanted a crystal radio kit, but the Classics record was a lifetime gift, opening my ears to a whole area of music that I hadn't noticed before. I stuck with Bach and Schütz forever after, even during hippie times when rock-n-roll was culturally mandatory.

Later I realized that the Miller arrangements of the classics were terrible. And according to the obit, Miller himself knew his product was both profitable and awful:
"I wouldn't buy that stuff for myself," he said in 1951. "There's no real artistic satisfaction in this job. I satisfy my musical ego elsewhere."

You rarely get such plain candor from public figures. Far more often we hear either transparently false aw-shucks modesty, or transparently heartfelt Randian superiority.
  6:33 PM


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