Mitch Miller

            On Friday morning I started memorizing the opening lines of “Les Millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. Those lines are not really a verse but more of a live monologue by Zizi Jeanmaire. There’s a good chance I’ll have that and the chorus nailed down tomorrow. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since September 26. 

            During song practice I played my Martin acoustic for the first of two sessions and it only went out of tune once. 

            Around midday I started doing touch ups on my bathroom wall paint job. I filled in the white patch that was left when the paint peeled off with the tape in the upper left part of the west wall. I touched up the white strips where the left side of the eastern wall and the right side of the southern wall meet the ceiling. I also painted over the parts of the east wall where the ceiling paint dribbled down. I still have to finish the tops of the west wall, north, east and south walls and then touch up where the walls meet the shelves. I probably won’t be able to start painting the shelves and the door before Christmas but maybe before the New Year. 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86.95 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal for the first time since Tuesday at 20:09. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “Please Don’t Quit Me Now” and “Ne me quitte pas” from September 12 to 17. On September 12 and 16 I played “Please Don’t Quit Me Now” on my Martin Road Series. On September 12 the recording was corrupted. On September 16 the take at 5:00 in part B was okay but I was hitting a wrong chord. On September 14 I played it on my Gibson Les Paul Studio but the camera battery charge ran out of juice before I could finish. I played “Ne me quitte pas” on September 13, 15, and 17. On September 13 and 17 I played it on my Gibson but on both days the camera battery charge ran out of juice before the song. On September 15 I played it on the Martin and the take at 54:15 was okay but I hit some wrong chords. 

            I had a potato with margarine and a slice of roast pork while watching season 2, episode 5 of Car 54 Where Are You? 

            In four weeks the show Sing Along With Mitch will be presenting its first Municipal Sing Along and so police, fire fighter, and other city singing groups are invited to come to audition. The 53rd Precinct Whippoorwills consisting of Toody, Muldoon, Schnauser, and Wallace come to audition for Mitch. But Toody is horrible and so they are rejected. Mitch tells Captain Block that the other three singers are great and if they can find another bass vocalist within the next two weeks they can have another audition. They discover that the new recruit Officer Lambert has a beautiful bass singing voice and want to replace Toody with him. But no one has the heart to break it to Toody. He thinks he is carrying the group because he comes from a family of famous singers but says he doesn’t want to replace any of them out of loyalty. They practice secretly for their audition but Toody happens to walk in and realizes he’s been rejected because he can’t sing. He goes to see his Uncle Igor Toody who tells him that all the Toodys could only sing after they had their tonsils removed. So Toody has a tonsillectomy but doesn’t come to rehearse or even speak until the day of the rehearsal. Finally he explains to his friends that all the Toody singers have been tenors but that’s Muldoon’s position and he doesn’t want to kick his friend out of the group. Toody demonstrates his new singing voice and everyone including him realizes that he still can’t sing. They decide to stay together and on the day of the audition tap dance instead of sing. 

            Mitch Miller played himself. He was a classically trained oboist who graduated from the Eastman School of Music. He had taken up the oboe by accident in junior high when he showed up for the band and the oboe was the only instrument left. He played with the Syracuse Symphony at 15. He was the oboist in the original Broadway production of Porgy and Bess. In 1948 he became a producer at Mercury Records where he became a recording studio innovator and supervised the successful recordings of Vic Damone, Frankie Lane, Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney, and Patti Page. He helped to pioneer overdubbing so that singers could perform duets with their own voices. He used an echo chamber to create what he called a sonic halo. In 1950 he became the A&R director at Columbia where he made stars out of Tony Bennett and Johnnie Ray. Between 1950 and 1953 he’d supervised 51 hit songs. His arrangement of The Yellow Rose of Texas was a number 1 hit in 1955. His hit series of Singalong albums led to his Singalong With Mitch TV show, which ran for three years and made a star out of singer Leslie Uggams. By 1966 Mitch Miller and the Gang had sold 17 million records. He wrote Off the Record: An Oral History of Pop Music. He said pop songs should be sung quietly. The rock and roll generation hated his style and shopping malls would play his music to keep teenagers from loitering. In turn, Miller was adamantly against rock and roll music and called it a disease. Bob Dylan and The Byrds were only signed to Columbia after he left the company.