UH OH!
>>130851789Obsessed
>>130851823There should be a rule that if you find any Mitch miller albums in the wild you have to report it to /mu/.
>>130851899I never really paid any mind to Mitch in the past but recently I can't help but let out a chuckle seeing his face while flipping through my local record store's dollar bin thanks to /mu/.
>>130851789These were Cokelumbia's biggest selling records in the early 60s which shows how bad things were for them then.
>>130851992They had guys like Davis and Monk on their roster yet this crap was the selling point? Grim.
>>130852031>>130851992The late 50s recession took a bite out of record sales in general (Sinatra left Capitol over pay disputes because they were cutting costs due to the recession) but Columbia suffered especially badly due to Miller's retardation and refusal to sign rock acts. They had mostly past-their-prime singers like Doris Day and Kitty Kallen making increasingly bland AC and the only "rock" -coded acts they had were a few token novelty and surf rock groups out at the label's Los Angeles division, where Miller didn't have much influence and where Terry Melcher and his friends were starting to get into music production and were more hep to the jive.
>>130852136as for young upcoming artists they had Barbra Streisand but of course she was a born in le rong generation kid who wished she'd been there to sing in Artie Shaw's band, she wasn't exactly a rocker
>>130851899/mu/ also hates Teresa Brewer or something but i never seen her records at Goodwill
>>130851992>>130852031Pretty sure his TV show helped those sales along. It got good ratings but NBC yanked the plug after only three seasons because the audience was mostly older than 40 and not the young adults they desired.
>>130852136And Steve Lawrence, but you kind of half expected that.
yeah Mitch Miller was a major dumbass and by the start of the 60s his time had definitely passed and he needed to go. Columbia went from being a top record label to struggling and near bankrupt by '62.
>>130852136didn't Tony Bennett tell him to eat shit?
>>130854190Miller had an understanding that he would not interfere with Bennett's LPs, but he did get to produce his singles. As a result, Bennett had several hit singles in the 50s like "Rags To Riches" and "Cold, Cold Heart" that he never performed live and which never appeared on any comps.
>>130852031>They had guys like Davis and Monk on their roster yet this crap was the selling point? Grim.Davis and Monk sold a few thousand discs per album, they were in no way comparable to someone like Patti Page as far as record sales.
>>130852136none of the established A&R guys at the time were fans of rock, they were all middle aged dudes like Dave Dexter whose tastes were rooted in Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald's brand of music. yet still, none of them other than Miller openly and vocally attacked rock and most were willing to sign rock acts if just for money.
>>130854155>yeah Mitch Miller was a major dumbassthe proof of this was in his taste in signing music acts. nearly everyone he signed was a major lolcow.>Guy Mitchell>Mindy Carson>Jill Corey>the Four Lads>Johnnie Ray>Beverly Ross>Joan Weber>an over-the-hill Kitty Kallenmost of these people quickly disappeared once their hitmaking run was over, never did anything important again, and left nearly no artistic legacy behind. Tony Bennett was an exception because he was mostly focused on albums rather than pop singles. Miller also let the Everly Brothers and Connie Francis get away from him because he was an idiot. there were also some other, minor CBS acts like Somethin' Smith and the Redheads and the Four Coins that had a hit or two before quietly vanishing.
>>130854383Uh...Steve & Eydie?
>>130854383he didn't sign Dylan either, that was John Hammond. idk if he signed Aretha Franklin or if that was Hammond as well, although most people don't overly love CBS Aretha compared to her classic Atlantic run.
>>130854411kind of but they were already established stars when they got there, Miller didn't discover or develop them. yes they were obnoxious and very easy to hate, but they did have a cult status of sorts especially in Vegas and ultimately that was far more than Jill Corey or Johnnie Ray ever accomplished which was being the "had a hit or two and disappeared" type of pop singer like Paula Abdul or Ashlee Simpson.
>>130854447Columbia Aretha was not without her charms and it was also her at her youngest and most girlish, although yes those albums are more R&B goes Broadway and not the earthy Atlantic albums.
>>130854383it's true that people like Rosemary Clooney vocally disliked Mitch's novelty slop songs. i mean, he didn't sign her anyway she was there from the previous CBS regime. the singers he did sign like Guy Mitchell owed more to him and were more willing to sing his crap. he tried to develop Mitchell as the new Sinatra and even changed his real name (Al Cernik) to Guy Mitchell, partially named after himself.
>>130854383the first thing you notice is these people were mostly pretty poor singers. Miller didn't have much taste or feel for what made a good vocalist. in his defense you could say he improved Doris Day as a singer since her 50s singing was a lot better than her 40s singing which was pretty flat.
>>130854541>he tried to develop Mitchell as the new Sinatra and even changed his real name (Al Cernik) to Guy Mitchell, partially named after himself.that's hilarious
>>130854541Still, Mitchell, while mostly forgotten in the US, had a big UK/Australia audience, more UK than US hits, and ultimately moved to England and spent his later years mostly touring over there.
>>130854541if you want to simplify things a bit, Miller arrived at CBS in early 1950 when Sinatra and Dinah Shore were the label's two biggest stars, but they were both in their mid-30s and had lost a bit of their youthful luster and he (understandably) decided to build a new roster of young singers for the new decade. Clooney was already there and then he added Mitchell, Carson (who'd already had a few minor hits on RCA), Ray, etc. Not that most of them ended up having much of a long term legacy, but...
>>130854765Johnnie Ray was the FOTM teen heartthrob until Elvis killed him off.
>>130854814first Guy Mitchell was that but Ray replaced him pretty fast. Mitchell was irrelevant in the mid-50s with no charting hits until enjoying a late 50s comeback. In any case, all those early 50s teen idols like Ray and Eddie Fisher got obliterated by Elvis overnight.
>>130851789i don't even see Tijuana brass in the thrift bins that often anymore. i think it actually got meme'd so hard that people buy it now. mitch is the new tijuana brass i guess
>>130854765so right, yeah. Mindy Carson was on RCA originally and had some smaller hits there. she always seemed lazy and just treated music as a casual hobby she was never serious about. not much of a singer and half the time just imitated Day/Page. since her husband owned a music publishing outfit she was probably never that hungry or really needed the money and then just walked away from it all and went back to private life at the end of the 50s. then again maybe she was since she got into singing almost by accident when she'd been working as a candy saleswoman and ended up singing at a club as a lark that led to her getting noticed by RCA in the late 40s.there were other oddities like Eileen Rodgers the bullfrog-voiced lady who was on CBS for a little while in the late 50s but pop music was just a stepping stone for her to get into Broadway which she spent her later career singing for.
>>130851789>$8 for fucking mitch millerrecord stores were a mistake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv5Hyh_vgIEEileen Rodgers was from Pittsburgh originally. She had quite a set of lungs and looked like how she sounded which is shown in this showtune R&B record. But yes her real goal was Broadway and pop music was just a springboard to that end.
>>130855027that should demonstrate that the standards for pop singing are way lower today whereas back then having a big operatic voice was almost expected. even those 80s-90s belters like Whitney, Mariah, Faith Hill etc didn't have anything like the technique they had in the 50s.
>>130854981To be fair it looks to be in excellent condition
>>130855128Church singing and classical/opera were a lot bigger deal back then,
>>130851789rare good thread to read throughso bump
>>130851789$8 ? Seller is on crack
>>130852252Teresa's gimmick was basically being loud and in the early 50s that was seen as a reaction against the 40s and sluggish crooning, and that she was very young only 18 when she started when most pop stars were older. This was seen as endearing when she was young but stopped being cute the older she got and then rock-and-roll basically ended her chart relevance, and she also had a couple of kids who drew away a lot of time and attention. Most of her later post-50s career was just music as a casual hobby and self-indulgent diddling around in stuff like jazz.
>>130855027Rodgers made her Broadway debut just about a year after her last chart hit "Treasure of Your Love."
>>130855135VG+ copy sitting on discogs right now for $4.94 including shipping. Record stores were a mistakehttps://www.discogs.com/sell/release/4758934
>>130858629i don't participate in the record market anymore unless i'm flipping some retarded album that's expensive. complete shit show
>>130857926i told you Google spies on you.>go to Steve Hoffman Forum>see if there's anything mentioned there about Eileen Rodgers>shortly afterwards get rec-ec some search query about Liza Minnelli
>>130858948If you don't already have trackers blocked (and noscript if possible) or use google products, that's on you
>>130858629that is a stupid high price for Mitch Miller available at any thrift store for 99 cents or in the dumpster outside a record store for free
>>130860726Pretty crazy how Mitch albums have survived for this long and are readily available in every bargain bin in the country. They all should've been dumped by '70 or so.
For me? Lawrence Welk.
>>130860806people are still dying with their crap records in the garage or you might be seeing the exact same record for many years in the same store (my local salvation army is mostly bad for records and it happens)
>>130861695Sarah Vaughan was allowed to do whatever with her LPs in exchange for releasing commercial singles, but they were the typical 50s novelty pop goop that she disliked and she cited "Broken Hearted Melody" as a particularly egregious one.
most singers back then were interpreters and didn't write songs. a song could be a cover, standard, or original material the label's in-house songwriters produced, often specifically for the singer. the label would then somewhat arbitrarily decide which cuts went on the A and B side of a record.
>>130857525>>130864291nobody ever disputed that the woman's real artistic muse lay in doing variations on "A Tisket, A Tasket."
>>130855027>0:13I wouldn't call it "rock and roll" though.
>>130855027That doesn't sound very Mitch Miller-like, it feels a lot more like a Capitol record of the period. I'm going to assume he was out of town for the weekend when that one was cut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Mou6SKur4This on the other hand is exactly a Mitch Miller record. Actually, go listen to the original Elsie Carlisle version from 1926, it's way better.
>>130864665Jill Corey was super hot but this is just tacky. Far from the most tasteless CBS record of the period though, there are worse postmodern horrors like Mindy Carson - "Sugaree."
>>130864696>Jill Corey was super hot buther father was an Italian immigrant coal miner from PA. back then you could be from such a humble upbringing and have a shot at making it in music instead of the niece of a Universal executive.
>>130864711>it's the nepobabby meme againmeds
>>130857525>>130866167did she get a sticky when she died? probably not.
>>130868055>died 2007unlikely. 4chinz and /mu/ were barely a thing and still in their infancy.
>>130868071>4chan was barely a thing in 2007holy zoomer
>>130861770I just got her Ellington songbook 1&2 and those are great but more jazz than thrift store core
>>130856585come on, eight bucks now is like three 2019 bucks
>>130873716Mitch Miller albums are still a dollar at any thrift store in the United States
>>130851899kek
yeah man bring on the Andy Williams Christmas album
>>130857525Brewer started out as a child performer on Major Bowes Amateur Hour. My take is she developed a lot of her schtick out of that, by singing kiddie sing-alongs and as an adult she kept doing it because that was what she'd always done, but while it worked for a while in her late teens-early 20s it looked stupid after a certain age and she didn't really know how to do anything else despite attempts at serious adult stuff especially country and jazz.
Merry christmas kids
>>130876481i hadn't thought of it that way tbqh
50s schizos refuse to discuss good 50s music
>>130880366>50s schizos refuse to discuss good 50s musicqrd
>>130880366A-wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom
>>130880529It looks like Steve Allen came back from the dead to complain about Jerry Lee Lewis song lyrics here.
>>130880366most of the good 50s music was album cuts, generally pop singles were not so great and tended to be very cheesy novelty numbers.
>>130854859nana mouskouri's gonna blow up next; if you're smart you'll start picking them off now so you can cash them in later.
>>130880576rock n roll and doo-wop are great, but noooo let’s talk about shitty housewife slop for the billionth time
>>130883071>rock n roll and doo-wop are great, but noooo let’s talk about shitty housewife slop for the billionth time?
>>130885657he's a guy who rants about this imaginary Mitch Miller schizo
>>130876481>>130885907Exactly.
>>130880366That's because they get all their received wisdom from rockist histories that want you to believe 50s music was a barren wasteland and all 'good' music was just holding down the fort until Elvis came along.
>lol every song on the album has the word "baby" in it so funneh right XDThis was Mitch's idea of humor.
>>130886435>That's because they get all their received wisdom from rockist histories that want you to believe 50s music was a barren wasteland and all 'good' music was just holding down the fort until Elvis came along.qrd?
>>130889116that Christgau et al wrote the history to be like "Little Richard kill le doggy in le window song"
