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Miller strongly disagreed with Sinatra's accusations then - and continued to do so decades later. Sinatra, in fact, blamed Miller for the downward spiral of his singing career and in 1953 he left Columbia for Capitol Records. The singer is said to have never forgiven Miller for "Mama Will Bark," and he and Miller argued constantly over material. 21 on the Billboard chart, is often cited as the worst song Sinatra ever recorded. In 1951, he convinced Frank Sinatra to record "Mama Will Bark," a duet with TV's busty blond actress-comedian Dagmar, on which barking and growling noises are heard. "My secret," Miller once said of his flair for producing hits, "was that I was a trained musician I knew whether something was good or a crock." Not every singer in Columbia's stable of artists agreed with Miller's instincts.
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But within weeks of its release, "Come On-a My House" was one of the biggest-selling records in the country and went on to sell more than a million copies.
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He had to threaten to fire Clooney before she would record the gimmicky, fast-paced song, which he insisted she sing with a fake Armenian accent. For Rosemary Clooney's 1951 novelty song for Columbia "Come On-a My House," a quasi-Armenian folk song, Miller used an amplified harpsichord. Miller was well known for producing novelty tunes with sometimes quirky orchestrations (French horns, bagpipes and, most famously, the sound of a snapping whip on Laine's 1949 million-plus seller for Mercury Records, "Mule Train").
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He then supervised the recording sessions. As Columbia's A&R man for popular records, Miller chose which songs would be recorded, how they would be treated musically, and which singers and musicians would perform them. In the previous 18 months, the only two records that had sold 2 million copies were produced by Miller: Johnnie Ray's "Cry" and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," sung by 12-year-old Jimmy Boyd. In a Billboard listing of the 30 most profitable records of 1952, 11 were released by Columbia - compared to five from archrival RCA-Victor, according to the New Yorker profile in June 1953. By mid-1953, Columbia's popular records "artistic czar," as Miller was dubbed in a New Yorker profile, had overseen 51 hits in three years. In the world of pop music during the Truman and Eisenhower eras, Miller was the man song publishers besieged with new material. Within two years of his arrival at Columbia, Miller had moved the fourth-place label to first place in industry revenues. As Columbia's high-profile A&R head responsible for single popular records, Miller produced a string of hits for Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Jo Stafford, Johnnie Ray, Jerry Vale, Johnny Mathis, the Four Lads, Laine, Damone and many other artists. But it was at Columbia Records from 1950 to the early 1960s that Miller became a recording industry legend. He also played on and produced the legendary "Charlie Parker With Strings" sessions and, as a technical innovator in the studio, he was a pioneer of overdubbing in the days before tape, recording from acetate to acetate on a 1949 Page recording of "Money, Marbles and Chalk" on which Page sings to herself. At Mercury, Miller nurtured the careers of such singers as Vic Damone, Patti Page and Frankie Laine. He made a career switch from playing to producing in the late 1940s by becoming A&R (artists and repertoire) director at Mercury Records, a small label that he turned into a major force in the industry. A show business icon with his trademark goatee and baton, Miller is considered one of the most influential producers in the history of recording. A top oboist and English horn player who joined the CBS Symphony Orchestra in the 1930s and later recorded with legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski, Miller wound up his more than seven-decade musical career guest conducting symphony orchestras around the world. Travis beeson cortez co.Miller died Saturday after a short illness at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said his daughter, Margaret Miller Reuther.