414 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
dog. Though artistically negligible, Miller’s novelty records, like Les Paul’s, intro-
duced the idea that a record could deliver a listening experience that could only
be constructed bit by bit in the studio. Records were no longer merely literal
records of musical performances enacted before a microphone, and a “song” was
no longer the notated material that performers bring to life; increasingly, songs
were creations of the recording studio. With this redefi nition came a shift in
artistic control from song writer to record producer that would have far-reaching
consequences for rock music and, later, hip-hop.
In the early 1960s Miller extended his activities into television, a new medium
that gained prominence in the postwar era. In Sing Along with Mitch he conducted
a male chorus—and the audience—in singing old popular songs, reaching as far
back as Stephen Foster. The popularity of the show, which had a wide appeal for
older audiences, is one indication of the continued relevance of earlier popular
styles far into the postwar era.
Standards—songs written as early as the 1920s by Broadway and Tin Pan Alley
tunesmiths—were still being performed and remained fundamental to the pop-
ular song business. At the end of the 1950s Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, among
others, were still making a handsome income from songs they had written in the
past, and the Gershwin, Kern, and Hart estates remained lucrative. One reason
the older tradition endured was that many of its leading song writers were still
on the scene. Another was the presence of experienced singers who had learned
their trade with Swing Era big bands. A third reason was the large adult audi-
ence, people who had grown up with the music and still considered it their own.
A fourth was that jazz musicians had drawn much of their own repertory from
popular song, and listeners were used to hearing their favorite songs in multiple
versions. Finally, there was the high quality of so many of the songs. As early as
1925 Variet y had recognized the uncanny match between words and music that
American songwriters were achieving. As the lyricist Yip Harburg put it: “Words
make you think thoughts; music makes you feel a feeling; and a song makes you
feel a thought.”
In the Swing Era, bandleaders hired singers to add variety to the big bands’
predominantly instrumental offerings. But after the wartime decline of the big
bands, singers emerged as the dominant celebrities in popular music—a process
already underway in the 1930s with the success of crooners such
as Bing Crosby. Now singers were heard on records produced
to highlight their voices over the discreet accompaniment of
anonymous studio orchestras. The most infl uential popular
singer of the postwar era was Frank Sinatra, who had fi rst found
fame as a singer for Tommy Dorsey’s big band.
In the 1940s Sinatra won the adulation of the “bobby-socks
brigade”—females aged twelve to sixteen—who screamed in
adorat ion when he appea red on stage. T h rong s of bobby-soxers
reinforced the idea, fi rst made apparent by Benny Goodman’s
rise to fame in 1935, that teenage listeners could constitute
a profi table market for music tailored to their tastes. By the
mid-1950s Sinatra’s audience had matured, and so had his art-
istry. Between 1953 and 1961 Sinatra recorded no fewer than
sixteen concept albums, LPs in which the individual songs
were selected, arranged, and ordered to create a larger artisticK A&R man, record producer,
and television sing-along host
Mitch Miller (right) in the mid-
1960s, smiling for the camera
with singer Leslie Uggams and
songwriter Irving Berlin, nearly
eighty years old and still in the
business.standards172028_17_412-439_r3_sd.indd 414 23/01/13 10:58 AM