Mitch Miller, Part 3--A Ballad from Vietnam (1965), Hey Massachusetts

This is my second posting (since 2006) of Hey, Massachusetts, a Ted Kennedy campaign song recorded by Mitch Miller "and the Boys." The tune, as you will hear, is Hey, Look Me Over from the 1960 musical Wildcat, starring Lucille Ball.

But this is my first posting of Mitch Miller's premiere single for Decca--1965's A Ballad from Vietnam (The Rain on the Leaves), a folk ballad credited (arrangement-wise?) to Vietnamese songwriter Pham Duy, with English lyrics by Steve Addis of the folk duo Addis and Crofut. This gorgeous, exceptionally distinguished side--as powerful and moving as it is gentle and quiet--is not quite what I expect from "The Gang,"so count me as utterly unprepared for its impact. Listen to the words, savor the melody and the beautiful singing, and if you find yourself weeping slightly, join the club.

Miller, needless to say, opposed the Vietnam war--this I knew, but I had no idea he had articulated his stance with this recording of Pham Duy's haunting ballad. Billboard called this side "powerful" and saw hit potential. They were half-right--it never became a hit.

Now I realize that, with Mitch's passing, the word on the cyber-street is that Miller was some kind of an establishment tool (insinuations of that sort abound) as well as someone who lowered pop standards so far that the Stones had to come and resuscitate the field, but singing for Ted Kennedy and against the Vietnam War were not very establishment things to do--I remember that much from the Sixties. And if Ballad is pop at its worst, all I can say is, give me more of the worst, please. Make it as worst as possible.

A Ballad from Vietnam (1965); Hey Massachusetts

Lee

Mitch Miller, Part 2--Mistreater of Frank and despiser of r&r, and he had a funny-looking beard

Mitch Miller, notorious hater of rock and roll, from 1955:

“There is a steady — and healthy — breaking down of color barriers in the United States; perhaps the rhythm-and-blues rage — I am only theorizing — is another expression of it.”

Frank Sinatra, darling of rock critics and rock fans, from 1958:

"Rock ’n’ roll smells phony and false. It is sung, played, and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiteration, and sly, lewd, in plain fact, dirty lyrics, it manages to be the martial music of every side-burned delinquent on the face of the Earth. It is the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear."

Sinatra's issues with r&r were barely mentioned when he passed away, whereas Mitch's far less extreme stance against rock and roll (musically monotonous, its culture inspiring conformity) is virtually the whole focus of his coverage. That, and the fact he considered Colonel Tom Parker's asking price (for Elvis) too steep--and that, plus his unforgivable track record, as a pop producer, of producing pop records for a pop audience. (The nerve!) And not the right popular audience, either--he focused on older folks instead of their kids. Popular is fine, if it's Zepp and the Beatles; not so fine if it's Doris Day, Frankie Laine, and Ray Conniff. I hope you're taking notes.

However, as is often (i.e., nearly always) the case with media wisdom, there are problems with the notion that Miller never recorded rock and roll--such as, for instance, the fact that he did, in fact, record rock and roll. While Mitch was boss at Columbia and Okeh, those labels featured such folks as The Treniers, The Ravens, Chuck Willis, and Carl Perkins. And there was this amazing 1955 disc by Sid King and the Five Strings, which I ripped from my halfway-worn 78 copy. Meanwhile, Elvis' first RCA discs were a year away....

Let 'Er Roll


BLUE SUEDE SHOES/LET 'ER ROLL--Sid King and the Five Strings, 1955. (Columbia 78)



Lee

Mitch Miller, Part 1--Mercury to Columbia

Mitch Miller, "the genius behind lowest-common-denominator music" (Will Friedwald, writing in the distinguished cultural periodical, The Wall Street Journal), left Mercury for Columbia as A&R man in early 1950. We'll be hearing four late Mercury tracks, including the very Guy-Mitchell-esque Kitty Kallen number, Willya Won'tcha (Kinda Sorta) and a new addition to my favorite-titles list, Shut Up, featuring Doris Drew with the orchestra of William Indelli colleague Lew Douglas.

Then, two 1952 gems from the Columbia label, both in an easy-listening style quite advanced for the year. (Oops--did I say "gems"? I meant, "wastes of shellac by Mr. No Taste.") Just Dreaming was written by future "Sing Along" arranger Jimmy Carroll.

Sorry for the late start on my Mitch tribute--I'm scrambling to get stuff together. That is not, however, how I bruised my foot (which is doing way better, thanks). All of these were ripped from 78s by your blogger.

To the Mitch: Mercury to Columbia

TRACKLIST

MOTHER, MOTHER, MOTHER, PIN A ROSE ON ME--Kitty Kallen, w. Mitch Miller Orch., 1950 (Mercury 78).
WILLA WON'TCHA (KINDA SORTA)--Same.
BEAUTIFUL BROWN EYES--Doris Drew w. Lew Douglas O., 1950 (Mercury 78)
SHUT UP--Same.
WITHOUT MY LOVER--Mitch Miller and His Orch.--Stan Freeman, harpsichord, 1952 (Columbia 78)
JUST DREAMING (J. Carroll)--Same, except Buddy Weed, harpsichord.


Lee

R.I.P., Mitch

I just learned from a post by Splogman at PCL linkdump that Mitch Miller has died at the age of 99. Here is the NYT obit for Mitch. The obit is thorough but there are the inevitable (and annoying) comparisons to rock (does anyone pull the reverse and rate rock in terms of how it measures up to Johnny Mathis or 1950s Tony Bennett?), and an emphasis on Miller's novelty productions, which we clearly are not supposed to like. Well, somebody (besides me) liked them--you don't get big hits by working against public taste, and it's worth noting that Miller had no reason to give a crock about the official 2010 newspaper verdict on his work as a producer. He did his job, did it superbly, and gave us any number of great pop vocal sides, novelty and otherwise.

As a pop vocal (and novelty) junkie, I salute Miller as a rare talent with an incredible ear for same--he can never be praised highly enough for making stars of Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Guy Mitchell, and handing them over to such brilliant arrangers as Percy Faith and Ray Conniff. (He even tried with Merv Griffin, resulting in that singer's best recordings.) Too bad NYT couldn't rise above the cliche of evaluating his considerable contributions in the context of the usual suspects--rock, Dylan, and Sinatra. Rosemary Clooney--who redeemed herself (NPR-style) later in her career by denouncing her Where Will the Dimple Be? past and singing what Terry Gross dubs "jaaaazzzzz"--is on hand to trash Come on-a My House, which remains, despite all fashionable condemnation to the contrary, one of the most memorable novelty sides ever waxed. Bev, who experienced firsthand the arrival of rock 'n' roll, reports that Miller's novelty sides (Come on-a..., Feet Up, The Roving Kind) functioned as an alternative to the more staid adult-pop fare of the early Fifties, essentially bridging the way for Elvis, the Everlys, etc. Being the rebel that I am, I like it all--the straight and novelty pop, and the early pop-chart rock and roll (Crows, Penguins, Elvis, Berry). No rule says we have to play the one-against-the-other game.

The pop-critical status quo--uptight about anything too cheerful or melodic and mired in the macho values of rock and nightclub jazz--has little room for Mitch Miller. I hope he never allowed this to bother him too much.

A tribute to the great pop producer is on its way....

My left foot--the medical verdict

So much for the combined medical expertise of Lee and Bev--today, a professional evaluation from my doc: not a sprain but, rather, a bruised sole. Not a common injury, but they happen. This explains the pain on the bottom of my foot, the swelling off to the side, and the general lack of sprain symptoms.

So, my sprain record still stands at zero. My bruise record stands at 1. My botched self-diagnosis record stands at... wow. A bunch.

So, a few more days of taking it easy on my bruised foot, and I'll be fine.

Just another exciting and compelling tale from Behind the Blog (theme music, fade).

Meanwhile, it's been way too long since I put up any cat photos. Here are some recent shots of Griff, Perry, Rosie, Alphonso and Aim being cats: Cats.


Lee

(Delayed) Sunday morning gospel: The Celebration (1974)

(FAIRLY LONG ESSAY ALERT)

Join me as we depart completely from last week's post (the bluegrass gospel of the Miller Brothers). Today's music is in the "Jesus music" vein, featuring highly accomplished and smooth orchestral and choral arrangements credited to Ronn Huff, father of Dann Huff. Much info about Dann, and some about Ronn, on the Innternnett.

Great, too, is the singing by The Celebration which was apparently made up of students from Marion College in Indiana (now Indiana Wesleyan University). Nearly every title on this LP was extremely popular at the time. Doris Akers' Sweet, Sweet Spirit is probably best known in its version by Elvis (well, in cyberspace, anyway). Pass It On remains popular--it's in the United Methodist Hymnal, for instance. And Amen is the kind of number the Gaithers present on a regular basis (it may even be one of them), and The Celebrations' rendition is not unlike what we'd hear on Christian TV today.

To my ears, this music, even in its softest, most Muzak-y incarnations, is overwhelmingly Southern and black in sound and feel, though unfortunately the history of "Jesus music" has fallen into a familiar scam--that of being treated as a subset of rock history. Hence, Wikipeida traces the music to the "West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s." Simultaneously, the article talks about Jesus-music examples in other parts of the U.S. (California musicians obviously played a significant role in the genre, but not the sole one.)

The form of the W. piece is typical--a central, received idea (Jesus music as a type of Southern California rock) surrounded by data that doesn't always support that theme but which is included with it, anyway. No argument that the West Coast is very important in the history of Jesus music, but I think a little digging will show that the West Coast was as much a recipient of the genre as a developer, if not (as I suspect) more so.

Anyway, what we have here is vintage praise music of the "pop" type that has survived to this decade. My claim collides with two pieces of conventional, but false, wisdom--1) that "pop" is somehow irrelevant to the evolution of pop music, and 2) that loud, riff-laden black gospel is the only type thereof. I'm here to declare both ideas nonsense. But, unfortunately, popular nonsense.

This was a challenge to de-click, because I didn't want to mess up the beautifully clear high frequencies by across-the-board filtering. I think it came out nicely. I should note that I deleted a few bars at the very end of the last track, owing to bad and sudden surface noise. If you don't detect the edit, don't worry--my edits are usually invisible. Just like my modesty.

To the Sunday morning/evening gospel: The Celebration--Pass It On.



PLAYLIST

GOD'S WONDERFUL PEOPLE
PASS IT ON
AMEN
EVERY DAY WITH JESUS
ONE SOLITARY LIFE
A NEW WORLD
SWEET, SWEET SPIRIT
IT WILL BE WORTH IT ALL
GENTLE SHEPHERD
RIGHT NOW




Lee

Ouch!

Says my left foot. I don't know what I did to it, exactly--sprained my ankle? Six hours of ice-pack treatment has gotten the swelling down, but the pain is still there. It's obvious I can't walk on it yet. The swelling is taking place on the right side of my foot (under, not at, the ankle), and there's cramping on the sole. In a word--ouch!

It happened yesterday when I was wearing slip-on shoes without socks--big mistake. They're about half a size too large, leaving too little support for my foot. So, when I stepped on a fairly large stone on the walk, my foot twisted, and I yelled (I think it was) "Ouch!" It hurt for a few minutes but the pain quickly subsided. I went about my day. Then, in the early evening, after some time at my PC, I got up, said "Aaaaa!" or "Ouch" or possibly "Ooooo!", hobbled downstairs, sat down, removed my shoe, and Bev and I observed the swelling.

Not an exciting narrative, I realize. But, remarkably, this is my first time spraining anything, so it's a whole new chapter of my life. I've torn cartilage, gashed my hand, given myself hives, and I had to have an arthroscopy on my knees 15 years ago--but never a sprain. I didn't know what I was missing.

Bev, at 76, has never sprained anything, but she broke a finger not too long ago. So, we're about even in the injury department. Not that there's a competition or anything.

I've been sleeping on the easy chair downstairs, with Savio and Fidel at my feet (right next to the ice-pack). Luckily, they haven't parked ON my left foot, which would be an issue. So... you have the story of my foot. If I hold out until Monday, we'll go to my doc's clinic to have it examined. If it gets worse today (Sunday), it's the emergency room.

My Sunday morning gospel post is only 3/4-finished and will have to wait until next week--my apologies. The text and photo are in place, but I have more work to do on the clicks and pops. That, plus a trip upstairs to my PC (I'm on Bev's downstairs Dell) is not a good idea at the moment.

Meanwhile, away from the ice pack this short while, my foot is starting to protest. Dang it. I hope it can hold out until Monday, when one of the nurses can evaluate it. ("Yes, it's a foot.") I'll keep everyone posted on my foot. (There's a pun begging to happen here, but I just can't put my toe on it.)

Ouch!