Columbia 1160
Producer: Mitch Miller
Track listing: That Old Gang of Mine / Down By the Old Mill Stream / By the Light of the Silvery Moon / You Are My Sunshine / Till We Meet Again / Let the Rest of the World Go By / Sweet Violets / I’ve Got Sixpence / I’ve Been Working on the Railroad / That’s Where My Money Goes / She Wore a Yellow Ribbon / Don’t Fence Me In / There Is a Tavern in the Town / Show Me the Way to Go Home / Bell Bottom Trousers / Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends
October 6, 1958
8 weeks (nonconsecutive)
Columbia Records’ head of artist and repertoire Mitch Miller first hit the top of the album chart as producer of Johnny’s Greatest Hits. Yet Miller was more than a producer/A&R man, he was a talent in his own right, having scored a Number One single in 1955 with “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” However, with the arrival of Elvis Presley and rock ‘n’ roll, Miller’s brand of sophisticated and melodic pop music was in danger of extinction, at least until he developed the “sing-along” concept.
The concept took shape one night in Columbia’s New York headquarters. “One of the sales guys came up to my office and said, ‘Why don’t you do an album of World War II songs, you can call it Barracks Ballads,” Miller says. “I played devil’s disciple and asked, ‘Who’s going to buy it?’ Certainly the guys that came back from the service couldn’t give a goddamn about it and the people at home couldn’t relate to it, but the idea of an album that people could sing along to just kept nagging me.”
With that thought in the back of his head, Miller began conducting his own research. “I asked everyone I knew what were the songs that they sung at parties, at camp, at Lion’s and Rotary Club meetings,” he says. Miller kept tabs of the most popular songs and decided to include them on his first album, Sing Along with Mitch.
With the list of classic popular songs complete, Miller assembled a group of backing musicians and a chorus, collectively known as “the Gang,” and entered the Columbia Records 30th Street Studio. “It was very simple,” he says. “I had three pluckers I called my Guitar Mafia, an accordion player, a harmonica player, a bass player, a piano player, and a drummer.” The chorus consisted of 25 men. “I used 25 guys for two reasons,” says Miller. “I wanted that mass sound, and also the base salary per singer from AFTRA was less expensive if you used a large group.”
Although all of the musicians and singers featured on the album were professionals, Miller wanted the album to sound informal, so that the amateur vocalists at home would feel free to sing along. “I wanted it to sound casual, yet that’s the hardest thing in the world to do,” he says. “When you try to make something sound casual, it usually ends up sounding like dreck.”
Thanks to early exposure from WCCO Minneapolis DJ Howard Viken, who was also instrumental in the career of Bob Newhart, Sing Along with Mitch began to take off. At one point a department store in the Minneapolis area sent a telegram to Columbia requesting 50,000 copies.
In its 13th week on the chart, Sing Along With Mitch hit the summit, preventing Elvis Presley’s King Creole from reaching Number One. (Presley was serving in the Army at the time and was unable to promote the album.) It was a victory for Miller, a staunch critic of rock ‘n’ roll, and it signaled that there was still plenty of interest in good old-fashioned music the whole family could sing along with.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of October 6, 1958
1. Sing Along with Mitch, Mitch Miller and the Gang
2. King Creole, Elvis Presley
3. Only the Lonely, Frank Sinatra
4. Gigi, Soundtrack
5. Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1, Van Cliburn