Mitch Miller

Broadway previews began February 7, on the musical adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel "East of Eden" retitled "Here's Where I Belong." The opening date of Feb. 20 was postponed for rewrites, rescheduled, to open at the Billy Rose Theatre, March 3, 1968. The musical book adaptation based on the 1952 novel "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck, was by author Terrence McNally (b.1939). The music was by Robert Waldman (b.1936), the lyrics by Alfred Uhry (b.1936), the team would later write a far superior musical "The Robber Bridegroom," and Uhry would win acclaim for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Driving Miss Daisy." Dance music was composed by Arnold Goland (b.1926). Michael Kahn (b.1939) made his Broadway debut as the musical's director. The most important roles were played by talented unknowns (Walter McGinn (at age 32, b.1936-d.1977, age 40) and Heather MacRae (at age 22, b.1946), who was Gordon MacRae's daughter (Gordon MacRae: b.1921-d.1986, 64), and the above-the-title "stars" were non-musical non-stars Paul Rogers (who sang pleasantly and spoke without a trace of his English accent) and Nancy Wickwire. Paul Rogers (at age 51, b.03.22.1917- d.10.06.2013, age 96) performed the role of the father Adam Trask. Nancy Wickwire (at age 43, b.11.20.1925 - d.07.10.1976, age 50, cancer) was a seasoned stage and television actress in the role of Kate. Mitch Miller, (at age 57, b.1911-d.2010, age 99) an influential Mercury and Columbia record producer who became hugely popular recording artist and an unlikely television star in the '60s leading a male choral group in familiar old songs and inviting people to sing along. The "Sing Along With Mitch" album series, which began in 1958, was an immense success, finding an eager audience among older listeners to rock 'n' roll. Mitch Miller departed Columbia records in 1965, had then connected with the musical's creative team acting as a developer-producer raising $500,000, in association with United Artists, producing the disastrous flop. The show opened out-of-town in Philadelphia at the Shubert Theater on January 15, 1968, for 20 performances, where a fire among the stage spotlights proved to be the only moment of excitement on opening preview night. After terrible Philadelphia drama-critical newspaper reviews, choreographer Hanya Holm, just about the only person involved in the show who had any experience with Broadway musicals, was replaced by a television choreographer Tony Mordente, as if Holm's work were the problem with the show. The scenery was designed by Ming Cho Lee, assisted by scenic designers John M. Braden, Don Jensen and Leigh Rand. Costumes were designed by Ruth Motley, with lighting by Jules Fisher (b.1937), musical direction by Theodore Saidenberg. Saidenberg had previously been with Mitch Miller on his TV series "Sing Along With Mitch." The Broadway bound musical, while eliminating major portions of Steinbeck's story, followed the novel and film's story of the Trask family in the Salinas Valley in the early 1900's, in particular brooding son Cal's rivalry with his father 's preferred son, Aron. As in the other versions, Cal finds out that his mother, whom he believed dead, runs a nearby cat-house, and Aron's girl Abra is ineluctably drawn to the "bad" brother. After initial terrible drama critical reviews during the Philadelphia engagement, Producer Mitch Miller brought in script-book-doctor - Gordon Cutler. When book changes went in that were not his own in Philadelphia, Terrence McNally asked to have his name removed from the show's credits. Miller claimed that McNally had not made the changes requested and refused to remove his name, stating that eighty-five percent of the book was still McNally's. Finally, Miller relented, and the Broadway Playbill listed a nom de plume for the novelist 'Alex Gordon,' as the author of the book. In spite of the rewrites, much of McNally's original work remained. Steinbeck, whose "Sweet Thursday" had not succeeded as "Pipe Dream," once again resisted musicalization. Much of the plot hinged on Aron's plans to ship frozen lettuce east and Cal's dabbling in bean futures, material unsuited to song and dance. The lettuce ballet musical material in the show about packing and shipping of lettuce was expectedly terrible, as were all the production numbers. As long as "Here's Where I Belong" concentrated on Cal, Aron, and Abra, motivation was better; a pretty ballad called "Waking Up Sun" and a nice duet for the brothers called "No Time." But the score did not help sufficiently, and Steinbeck's bleak, dullish story proved too dreary for a musical. Five songs were dropped during the Philadelphia engagement. "Here's Where I Belong" opened and closed on the same day - March 3rd, 1968, with only one performance, considered a smashing flop disaster. On opening (closing) night, nineteen members of an association known as the Oriental Actors of America picketed the theatre to protest the presence in the show of James Coco, a McNally favorite, absurdly cast as Lee, the Chinese houseboy who raised Adam Trask's sons, Aron and Cal. The show's Broadway critic's reviews were terrible.

Was portrayed by Eli Rill in Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982).

Miller went to work for Mercury Records in the late '40s, initially as a producer of classical music and then head of artists and repertory in the pop division. In 1950, at the invitation of a former Eastman classmate, Goddard Lieberson, executive vice president of Columbia Records, Miller took the equivalent position there. In the early 1950s he was also musical director of Little Golden Records, which made widely popular recordings for children. After rock came to dominate the record business and the singalong craze ran its course, Mitch Miller left Columbia and ventured into the Broadway theater, with limited success. After departing Columbia Records in 1965. Mitch Miller involved himself with the creative writing and composing team, raising a Broadway production fund, getting United Artists to put up $500,000 to produce a musical version, an adaptation of the 1952 novel by John Steinbeck, "East of Eden," called "Here's Where I Belong," which closed after only one disastrous performance. Playbill credits listed, Book: Alex Gordon (Terrence McNally), Gordon Cotler; Lyrics: Alfred Uhry; Music: Robert Waldman; Dance Music: Arnold Goland; Musical Direction, Dance and Vocal Arrangements: Theodore Saidenberg (who had worked with Miller on his television "Sing Along" show). The musical's out-of-town opening on January 15, 1968 at the Shubert Theatre, Philadelphia, PA., closing after 20 performances, moving to Broadway's Billy Rose Theater. The official opening on Broadway's Billy Rose Theatre was postponed from February 20, 1968 to March 2, 1968, after Broadway previews began performances on February 7, to allow time for rewrites to the book. Terrence McNally wrote the musical's book, but left the production during the out-of-town Philadelphia try out. Terrence McNally asked that his name be removed from the credits prior to opening night, with Alex Gordon as a pseudonym in the Playbill credits. Miller brought in Gordon Cotler to doctor the script-book after McNally departed Philadelphia. Miller was later involved in the production of several other Broadway shows, few of them hits. In the 1980s and '90s he was a frequent guest conductor of symphony orchestras.

A rabid opponent of rock-and-roll, he never signed any rock acts to Columbia Records while he was head of its pop music division. Thus, such performers as The Byrds and Bob Dylan were signed with the company only after Miller left the label in early 1965.

Mitch Miller came up with the idea for his singalong albums in 1958, drawing on a repertory that ordinary people had sung in churches and parlors for decades. By the time he recorded the first "Sing Along With Mitch" album, he had already had success with this approach on the singles chart, scoring a No. 1 hit in 1955 with an arrangement of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Mitch Miller and the Gang eventually recorded more than 20 long-playing discs, many of which made the Top 40. By 1966 they had sold about 17 million copies. In 1960 his singalong concept was given a one-time television test on NBC. The response was favorable that "Sing Along With Mitch" became a mainstay of family television, running -- every other week at first, then weekly -- from 1961 to 1964, then returning in reruns in the summer of 1966. The TV show ranked in the top 20 for the 1961-1962 season, and soon children everywhere were parodying Miller's stiff-armed conducting an all-male chorus, joined by a few female singers, most prominently Leslie Uggams. Viewers were encouraged to sing along and instructed to "follow the bouncing ball" -- a large dot that bounced from word to word as the lyrics were superimposed on the screen. The ratings were good, but the critics were mostly unimpressed. 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. "He is an odd-looking man, his sharp beard, twinkling eyes, wrinkled forehead and mechanical beat make him look like a little puppet, as he peers hopefully into the camera. By now most of us are more familiar with his tonsils than with those of our families. Miller is 'first rate,' praising the clean tone of the singing, the clarity of the lyrics, the aptness of the tempos, the variety and the occasional delicacy of the instrumental accompaniment." Miller said in the book "Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music, "To me, the art of singing a pop song has always been to sing it quietly. The microphone and the amplifier made the popular song what it is - an intimate one-on-one experience through electronics. It's not like opera or classical singing. The whole idea is to take a very small thing and make it big." Even at the singalong's height, many Americans considered them hopelessly corny. That sense only intensified as a younger generation came of age in the 1960s and musical tastes changed. 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. Years later, in 1993, when Daid Koresh and members of his Branch Davidian cult were holed up in their compound in Waco, Texas, F.B.I. agents tried to flush them out by blasting "Sing Along With Mitch" Christmas carols.

In 1956 Miller, then A&R director of Columbia Records, hosted a panel discussion show on CBS-TV on which he brought on two psychiatrists who warned parents about the "negative effects" rock music had on teenagers and gave a list of "signs" to watch out for.

By the time Mitch Miller's television "Sing Along With Mitch" show left the air, his era of popular music had largely ended with the emergence of rock. 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 had also tried to sign Elvis Presley for Columbia before being outbid by RCA. But he turned down an opportunity to sign Buddy Holly, and he was outspoken in his dislike of rock 'n' roll in general. "It's not music," he was quoted as saying, "its a disease." When Bob Dylan, soon to become one of rock's most influential artists, joined the Columbia roster in 1961, it was not Mitch Miller but another label executive, John Hammond, who signed him. Miller told Audio magazine in 1985 that his opposition to rock 'n' roll had been based more on principle than on taste. 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. 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.

In 1950 he was lured by Goddard Lieberson to Columbia Records as that label's A&R director, where he made stars out of Tony Bennett, Johnnie Ray, Guy Mitchell and many others.

Miller himself first shot to prominence in the late 1950s with his "Sing Along" series of albums, which ultimately led to his own series, Sing Along with Mitch (1961).

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and a classically trained oboist, Mitch Miller first entered the pop music scene in 1948 at Mercury Records, where he guided such acts as Vic Damone, Frankie Laine and Patti Page to success.

He played the oboe in the orchestra for George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" when it opened on Broadway in 1935.

Miller's own musical career began with the oboe. The composer Virgil Thomson called Miller "an absolutely first-rate oboist - one of the two or three great ones at that time in the world." Miller took up the oboe almost by chance. Seeking to join the orchestra at Washington Junior High School in Rochester, he showed up late for the tryouts and found it was the only one of the instruments, offered free to students, that had not been claimed. By the age of 15 Mitch Miller was playing with the Syracuse Symphony. After high school he went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, graduating cum laude in 1932. He played with the Rochester Philharmonic and then made his way to New York City, where he played oboe for a season under David Mannes in concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He later got a job with the CBS Symphony, performing with it during the notorious Orson Welles "War of the Worlds' radio broadcast in 1938. He also played in orchestras under Andre Kostelanetz and Percy Faith and performed in another that accompanied George Gershwin on a concert tour as a pianist. When Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway in 1935, Miller was in the pit orchestra. He continued to play the oboe after he became a record producer, most notably on the recordings the great jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker made with a string orchestra.

"What pleased me the most," Mitch said in an interview with The NY Times in 1981, "was a fellow who came up to me after a concert in Chicago and said, 'You know, there's nobody in this whole country who hasn't been touched by your music in some way.' -- That really made me feel good." Mitch Miller is considered one of the most influential producers in the history of recording. Miller's daughter Margaret Miller Reuther said her father died of "just old age. He was absolutely himself up until the minute he got sick. He was truly blessed with a long and wonderful life." Miller lived a full 99 lifetime years in Manhattan, born July 4, 1911, who died after a short illness at Lenox Hill Hospital on July 31, 2010.