Sing Along with Mitch

I'm listening to my 50 Mitch Miller tracks in my digital library for the first time in a couple years. I don't remember but I believe I purchased a collection when digital music was getting started. I was in grade school and high school when the tv series aired and watched the shows with my parents. My digital collection of 70,000+ tracks runs regularly in my home office (79 years old and retired techie), and my favorites are always these old memories of the 40's, 50's, 60's when music was good and you couldn't avoid tapping your foot or fingers and whistling along with the tunes.

Mitch did great music for us all to remember and enjoy.

The love I have for popular music today I credit to Mitch Miller. There's not a year that goes by that I don't think of him as his birthday approaches...he was 95, if I'm not mistaken, on the 4th of July. As a child, Sing Along With Mitch was the only show I was allowed to stay up to watch. My father had a reel to reel tape recorder and we would tape the shows for future listening (including the Ballantine commercials). It even got to the point where I donned mustache and beard and portrayed Mitch on Coney Island night at my church.

As the popular singers of our day revisit the songs of decades past, which lyrically and musically deserve rediscovery, I am grateful for the exposure I received with the aid of a bouncing ball.

I'd love to see these shows again, brought to life by modern technology. Even so, I will always give thanks for the memories.

Bill Bordonaro

Before Karaoke, before MTV and music videos, there was Sing Along with Mitch and his bouncing ball. (The bouncing ball was also used in the cartoon sing-alongs).

Mitch Miller was (and still is) a gifted musician and great human being. He was ahead of his time in giving artists equal opportunity. For example, the south had threatened to pull the show off the air if Leslie Uggams was not removed from the show. Yet Mitch Miller adamantly said, 'no Leslie, no show.'

How unfortunate that there are no variety shows on television anymore.

Oh, yes. This one's got DVD potential.

I always enjoyed watching "Sing Along With Mitch" - and I was ten years old when the show started. I had a wonderful time watching with my family and sometimes with other relatives. There was something magic about this show.

Part of the appeal was the magnetic Mitch Miller, all smiles with his goatee and balding hairline. He played the oboe, not the most common instrument, and made it sound really good. He had a chorus of about 40 men, with a richer sound than a barbershop quartet. There was an orchestra, and often a banjo or harmonica, but the emphasis was on the singing.

The main part of the show was Mitch leading the chorus in old songs, from (I'm guessing)the 1840s through about the 1920s. Mitch conducted the audience with his famous up-and-down motion as "the bouncing ball" illustrated the words being sung. Was this the inspiration for Karaoke? These were mostly traditional songs, but he made them sound brand new. Some of the songs included "When You're Smiling," "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts," "Casey Would Dance with the Strawberry Blonde," "The Yellow Rose of Texas," and of course the rousing "Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends!"

"Sing Along with Mitch was way better than "The Lawrence Welk Show." It moved at a much faster pace and was much more original.

They also did some skits, usually working in some music. One that I remember had Mitch with his oboe joining a four-man band looking for work during the hard times of the 1930s. A theater called up and asked them to play a sample. Of course Mitch's oboe stood out in the number, but the caller said "OK, I'll hire four." Naturally, the four mediocre guys ran off to take the gig without Mitch. Leslie Uggams performed some musical numbers. I didn't realize at the time that having an African-American person on TV was still considered controversial, but she was a wonderful singer.

Mitch became a national phenomenon, as well known at he time as the Ed Sullivan Show or the Jackie Gleason Show. Even my dear old MAD Magazine had a parody called "Sing Along With MAD" with a goateed Alfred E. Newman leading you in song. In fact, Mitch Miller and the Gang made the theme song for "The Longest Day," one of the best World War Two films ever.

Mitch and the gang made a number of albums, AND I have even seen some available today on CD. His Holiday Album will put you in the mood for Christmas and Santa. Even today, it isn't Christmas until we play `Must be Santa' - on vinyl. Even my son and daughter when they were a bit younger liked that album, although modern grade-schoolers like rock and roll. I got them away from The New Kids on the Block and Vanilla Ice long enough to get in the Christmas Spirit.

I started liking Rock and Roll when I was fourteen, and I stopped watching Mitch. Sorry. Well, the Beatles were something new, and they cheered us up after we lost John F. Kennedy. But through all the years of Jefferson Airplane, the Moody Blues, Aerosmith and other rockers, the magic of "Sing Along with Mitch" still lives on. I haven't seen reruns lately, but I had seen it as an adult in the 1980s and I still loved it. I wish some cable channel would bring it back.

Mitch Miller is still alive, about 90. A classically trained serious musician, he has conducted the Boston Pops and other Orchestras. God bless you, Mitch! You brought smiles to many people!!