Category: Music

Texasize Me

Denro says my lack of appreciation for Mitch Miller is due to the fact that his recording of The Yellow Rose of Texas was #1 in September, 1955, the week that I was born. Well, it’s true, I would have preferred anything else, even The Ballad of Davy Crockett!

The first video has the original Mitch Miller recording of The Yellow Rose of Texas…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Lakexqqqc

… and the second has Stan Freberg’s parody of Mitch. Both are taken from 78 rpm records posted by fave YouTube member 45s4FR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-By0vBrzDE

The Yellow Rose of Texas was written in 1858, and Texas has certainly changed since then, so let’s update things a bit, with this pair of TV commercials, made by an old friend of mine, for a restaurant chain called Cotton Patch Cafe. The first one has a straight-forward ZZ Top-style boogie…

…and I love the second spot, featuring music of epic proportions to go with the food of epic portions!

Whole lotta wreckin’ goin’ on

Some years back, for one of Denro’s birthdays I got him a book called Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew, about the session musicians who reigned in the Los Angeles recording studios of the 60’s, into the 70’s. Later, I heard about a documentary being made about the Wrecking Crew, but the production was delayed so many times I forgot about it.

Robbie Leff has pointed out that the documentary finally exists, but has not yet been released. Some of the interviews obviously were filmed quite some time ago — and good thing, too. What a shock it is, seeing Dick Clark as he was before his stroke, but I don’t believe he didn’t know about session musicians until the Monkees.

http://www.wreckingcrewfilm.com/

A Mitch in Time

Mitch Miller, the man who seemed to have inspired the formation of countless gay men’s choruses, has died. Miller was a major force in the music industry for many years, and his importance can’t be minimized, but his music wasn’t for me. Twenty years ago, a review I liked of a Mitch Miller Christmas album that had been released on CD was short and to the point — “Welcome to Hell.” Ray Conniff worked with Mitch Miller at Columbia, and I love his album We Wish You A Merry Christmas. I’ve always wondered if that’s Mitch on the cover. (I had a huge crush on the girl when I was a kid, whoever she is.)

I also have an appreciation for the singing of the delightful Lennon Sisters, who were favorites of Lawrence Welk. But there was always something too cloying and mechanically rote for my taste in Mitch Miller’s recordings. His most famous failing was not realizing that the times they were a’changin in the 60’s, when John Hammond brought Bob Dylan to Columbia. But an inability to appreciate talent outside of one’s own taste is something that could be said of many of the old-style A&R (artist and repertoire) men in the music business.

The superb vocalist Jo Stafford worked with Miller. In the persona of the perfectly off-key Darlene Edwards, Jo recorded a dead-on parody of the famous Mitch Miller sound.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/AUG/BabyBumbleBee.mp3]

An Electronic Heart of Glass

A month ago I mentioned it was Debbie Harry’s 65th birthday, and played Hanging on the Telephone. A much more technically advanced recording from Blondie’s album Parallel Lines is Heart of Glass. Here’s an explanation of how it was put together. I don’t know know yet who made this video, but it seems to be from England, and it’s excellent. Thanks go to David Barsalou for pointing it out.