The Chris Moeller Archives

Come On-a God's House

One New York City evening during the 1970s, as chronicled in Pete Hamill's book "Why Sinatra Matters," Frank Sinatra and group of pallies were gathered at P.J. Clarke's saloon. Present were Hamill, FS, Jilly Rizzo, Clarke's manager Danny Lavezzo, the disc jockey William B. Williams, and sportswriter Jimmy Cannon. The conversation steered towards the topic: worst living Americans. Candidates were drawn, such as Walter O'Malley and Richard Nixon. The group finally settled on fighter Jake LaMotta-- "He dumped the fight to Billy Fox, and never told his father, who bet his life savings on Jake," Hamill reports Sinatra to have argued. "Lower than whale shit."

Every time I come back to the book, and to the idea of that conversation, I think specifically of another name said by Hamill to have been slipped into the conversation that night-- that of Mitch Miller. Who is Mitch Miller, I wondered the first time I read the anecdote a decade ago?

Mitch Miller, to find out, was the musical butcher of Columbia Records in the early 1950s, a champion of novelty songs and of the sort of middle-of-the-road pop music banalities that nearly derailed Sinatra's-- as well as several other-- promising recording careers. Miller did however pave the way for rock and roll music to come plowing through the artistic void. He was no Jake LaMotta. He died Monday morning at the age of 99.

At the lowest ebb of the singer's career, Miller had FS barking like a dog on a recorded duet with curvy actress Dagmar. He had talented young chanteuse Rosemary Clooney laying down vocals on the horrendous "Come On-A My House", and Patti Page had a hit with "How Much is That Doggie in the Window?"-- and those were the hits! If he was still mentally alert on Sunday night, Miller could have seen the TV show "Mad Men" reintroduce "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"-- his 1952 hit with Jimmy Boyd.

Sinatra once fired off a telegram to a member of the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee claiming that the producer had denied him "freedom of selection." Sinatra claimed that the producer had admitted accepting payola from songwriters for songs recorded at Columbia. What we know for fact about Miller is that he now stands as representative of an era in music in which artists were forced to succumb almost entirely to the whims of music executives, and most of the man's music is all but forgotten today. He told Time Magazine in 1951 that he didn't particularly care for the gimmicky songs that were his trademark. "I wouldn't buy that stuff for myself," he said, "There's no real artistic satisfaction in this job. I satisfy my musical ego elsewhere." So it turns out it wasn't only the music that Miller devalued, it was its listeners.

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Mitch Miller did manage to outlive the rock and roll that helped to shepherd him out of the recording industry. The musical genre died July 23rd at the age of 63.

posted by CM @ 8:28 PM