My father loved to Sing Along With Mitch. So did much of America. It was a very corny TV show — mostly a lot of old guys in sweaters singing songs that we all knew. But it was a lot healthier than Karaoke because unless you lived in an apartment and had real thin walls, nobody else had to listen to your rotten voice.
As a kid, I thought Mitch Miller had the easiest gig in the world. He just waved his hands and everyone else sang. You never heard him warble so much as a note. I wondered: How do you get a job like that? But then I read articles that revealed that he was a lot more qualified than he seemed to be. He was a veteran musician and record producer who'd been responsible for hundreds of albums, many of them big hits. He was into popular music when it was popular for everyone, not just the buyers between the ages of 13 and 30. And his show, though sappy at times, was easy to watch, easy to listen to.
Obits like this one will tell you a lot about what else Mitch Miller did…and they don't even get into his adventures as a producer and backer of theatrical ventures and so many other enterprises. I just liked the guy…even when I didn't know just what it was he did.