[78-L] Mitch Miller Horrifies

[GENE JOSLIN]

Mitch Miller could never be classified as Easy Listening.

How Columbia permitted him to run amok with established,  tremendously popular attractions like Rosemary Clooney, must be an earlier manifestation of the corporate financial greed that haunts the daily news.

Easy Listening was a generic name for increasingly unimaginative arrangements played by uninspired groups whose efforts greased the skids for the decline and fall of popular music as we knew it.

There were some exceptions:  Andre Kostelanetz could never have been described as monotonous.  The elusive and mysterious Allen Roth Orchestra provided transcribed radio music that could get up and wail, or provide lovely transparent sounds that lent new charms to everything they did.

Dating back to Nathaniel Shilkret and the Victor Salon Groups, there was a gradual change toward more and more strings, as the parade of
concert pop orchestras sawed their way through the standards, reaching a new low point with Mantovani.

No wonder we were musically vulnerable to the terror from Tupelo.








--- On Sun, 3/29/09, Bud Black <banjobud at cfl.rr.com> wrote:

> From: Bud Black <banjobud at cfl.rr.com>
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Mitch Miller Horrifies
> To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Date: Sunday, March 29, 2009, 10:20 PM
>  
>  
> -------Original Message-------
>  
> From: David Lennick
> Date: 3/29/2009 10:52:34 PM
> To: 78-L Mail List
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Mitch Miller Horrifies
>  
> Steven C. Barr wrote:
> >
> > "Easy Listening" music...an actual radio format of
> those days...was
> > simply music selected to be as INoffensive as
> possible!! Something
> > like a restaurant run along the same lines..."Oh,
> no...we DON'T
> > serve chili...it's WAY too spicy, and someone might
> object on
> > those grounds! Have a dish of oatmeal instead...?!"
> >
> > ...stevenc
> >
> Actually, well arranged easy listening music is far more
> complex than 99% of
> pop and rock of the last 50 years, even though much of it
> was meant NOT to
> be
> noticed. Muzak, on the other hand, was as bland as possible
> and as limited
> in
> dynamic range as could be accomplished without filtering
> everything entirely
> 
> Has anyone noticed that while the term "elevator music" is
> still universally
> understood, elevators haven't had music in them for years?
> Except in 
> Airplane
> II" of course.
>  
> Dl
> 
> Also in "The Blues Brothers."
> 
> Bud
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