>>130693425
Clive Davis talked about this in his memoirs btw, that Columbia completely dropped the ball for years by snubbing R&R and he tried to turn things around after Mitch Miller's firing in '65, but it was mostly Goddard Lieberson who pretty much pushed him aside and let Davis take over.

I recall that Miller and Steve Allen were asked in the 80s or something how they felt about music today and both said they had not changed their views that rock was all horse dook except some Dylan and Beatles songs.

>>130693546
lol what does it tell you that they liked Faul's granny songs?

>>130693567
Nothing, just that the older crowd could get behind songs with big vocal melodies like Hey Jude or Yellow Submarine, but the Doors, Stones, etc were just not melodic enough.

>>130693546
Nancy Sinatra didn't think Miller was at fault for her father's career collapse in the early 50s. She argued that he had simply fallen behind the times and his sound was outdated, and Miller tried to help him modernize for the new decade but things just didn't work out between them.

>>130693649
i think Frank had pretty different ideas of where to go from there and those probably did not involve "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania" or "Come On A My House."

none of the establishment A&R guys in the 50s-60s liked rock, they were all middle aged dudes who came up on pre-rock sounds. yet none of them aside from MM were openly and vocally attacking it. Dave Dexter and Dave Cavanaugh were certainly guys who liked Sinatra and Peggy Lee, not Little Richard, except insofar as they could exploit rock for money.

>>130693707
The major labels might have white bread acts like Pat Boone or Georgia Gibbs do rock covers, sometimes they signed actual rock acts like Decca with Bill Haley, or putting Buddy Holly on their Coral subsidiary, and of course RCA with Elvis, but mostly they did not. Capitol had Wanda Jackson, but she recorded as many ballad and country sides as she did rock ones.

>>130693760
rock was a strange, difficult sound most of those guys couldn't deal with, and they were also mainly interested in targeting respectable middle class WASP consumers. in their minds they could justify it as elegant (Cole, Stafford), smooth, moody, or brassy (Sinatra, Bennett), driving (Brewer, Clooney, Laine), cute (Day, Gibbs, Como), sultry (Lee, Christy), or jazz or swing. to them country and R&B were for dirty, unwashed blue collar people.

>>130693869
There was a time in the 60s when majors like Decca sold more country than any other genre, playing a part in the Nashville sound. RCA had gotten the ball rolling on country in the 1920s-30s with Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, Columbia had Roy Acuff, etc but country was called hillbilly music back then much as R&B was called race music, proof of how it was viewed as something for a lower class of society.

>>130693869
>and they were also mainly interested in targeting respectable middle class
this is still true today though

>>130693649
Sing and Dance with Frank is a rough listen.

ugh. I guess everyone that sells millions of records is fated to be feted but to me Mitch Miller represents the scraping of the bottom of the barrel. that's like saying Bryan Adams must be good based on his platinum count. considering everything John Hammond contributed compared to Mitch...it's not even a fair comparison.

he sold a lot of records, but none of them are stuff you want to listen to except as an ironic joke. Columbia absolutely did have a lot of classic records during those years, but all stuff he wasn't involved with making. consider all the A&R guys like Art Rupe (sic), Ahmet Ertegun, Hammond, Alfred Lion, Norman Granz, Johnny Mercer.. people who in many cases aspired to a higher calling than "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania" or "Mama Will Bark."

>>130693983
Frank's voice was shit at that point because he was under a lot of stress with both his career and personal life, he was suffering hair loss and sounded like he spent last night in a ditch. SADWF was a redub job because his voice during the sessions was so bad that Miller cut off the mic to salvage the backing band's playing. later he had him redo his vocals and overdub the backing band when he got some rest and his voice was back to normal. they couldn't do tracking per se because of the musicians' union rules.

If you know anything about Rochester (Mitch Miller's home town) you'd know exactly where he was coming from, because Rochester is a town that idolizes lameness and mediocrity. No matter how good you are, the city will always snub you and upboat the corniest acts from the scene.