NEW YORK — Mitch Miller, the goateed orchestra leader who asked Americans to Sing Along With Mitch on television and records, has died at age 99.
His daughter, Margaret Miller Reuther, said Monday that Miller died Saturday in Lenox Hill Hospital after a short illness.
Miller was a key record executive at Columbia Records in the pre-rock ’n’ roll era, making hits with singers Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett.
Sing Along With Mitch started as a series of records, then became a popular NBC show starting in early 1961. Miller’s stiff-armed conducting style and signature goatee became famous.
As a producer and arranger, Miller had misses along with his hits, famously striking out on projects with Frank Sinatra and a young Aretha Franklin.
The TV show ranked in the top 20 for the 1961-62 season, and soon children everywhere were parodying Miller’s stiff-armed conducting. An all-male chorus sang old standards, joined by a few female singers, most prominently Leslie Uggams. Viewers were invited to join in with lyrics superimposed on the screen and followed with a bouncing ball.
“He is an odd-looking man,” New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in 1962. “His sharp beard, twinkling eyes, wrinkled forehead and mechanical beat make him look like a little puppet as he peers hopefully into the camera. By now most of us are more familiar with his tonsils than with those of our families.” Atkinson went on to say that as a musician, Miller was “first rate.”
An accomplished oboist, Miller played in a number of orchestras early in his career, including one put together in 1934 by George Gershwin.
Miller began in the recording business with Mercury Records in the late ’40s.