>>126966842To answer anon's query from here. Remember that Day and Stafford were based in LA at CBS's West Coast branch where Mitch Miller really didn't have any influence; he mainly ran the East Coast branch in NYC. Stafford and her husband were mostly in charge of their own music. Yes several singers did eventually go to Reprise in the 60s. Rosemary Clooney's pop relevance ended by 1956 not solely because of Elvis but she also had a bunch of kids in short succession which made it hard to tour or promote records. Tony Bennett oddly stuck it out at CBS all the way until the 70s, even giving into recording Beatles covers which he didn't want to do.
Long and short is that Miller did mastermind a lot of terrible novelty pop with only Bob Thiele's schlock mill at Coral coming close to it. Sinatra and Dinah Shore left CBS early in his run because they couldn't stand the new creative direction. Worse yet he let a bunch of big names especially the Everly Brothers and Connie Francis get away from him because he didn't see any potential there so they went off to make millions for other labels. By the early 60s CBS was a total joke of a label with Miller's own Sing-A-Long albums being their biggest selling records. Revival only came because Terry Melcher was put in charge of rock releases and he was based out in LA where there was more creative freedom. Yet still it wasn't until Miller was fired in 1965 that things turned around and the label brought in a bunch of young new and rock-focused executives.
>>126970663 (OP)Sinatra's career had begun to slide as early as 1948 which was 2 years before MM got to Columbia so I can't say he was exclusively responsible. Further he claimed Sinatra was not "forced" to sing bad songs and his contract had allowed him freedom to choose material.
>Sinatra remained a sore spot for Miller. The two encountered each other again at an industry event in 1958 when Miller approached him and said "Hey, no hard feelings, Mr. S." Sinatra replied "Fuck you, you just keep walking."[2]
It's interesting that Columbia lost many if not most of the big acts that they had due to their mistreatment of the artists, either in not granting them complete artistic control, lack of promotion, or other factors.
Among the artists I am thinking of, they were not necessarily the very biggest sellers of their time (that usually went to more lightweight music), but certainly the most influential artists of their time, and historical giants.
Frank Sinatra
Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong
Bob Dylan
In Dylan's case, Columbia was able to re-sign him with a contract that gave him absolute control and ownership, unheard of at the time. Maybe they knew they had learned from losing Sinatra, Ellington and Armstrong.
>>126971098Sinatra left CBS because his record sales had started tanking in the late 40s. The weepy ballad sound he'd perfected with Axel Stordahl was so normalized in pop by then that he lost his uniqueness. It was time to move on and try something different anyway. He needed to update his sound for a new decade and his legendary Capitol run came almost by accident when Alan Livingston compelled him to work with Nelson Riddle. His contract with Capitol was a discount one because he wasn't exactly a hot commodity in 1953.
don't think artists generally had complete creative control back in the pre-Beatles era. The producer/A&R man was the boss in the studio in those days. Some of the smaller labels had a more artist/music-centric attitude (e.g. Atlantic) that led to artists having more freedom to do what they wanted, but I've never heard of any artist from those days having complete control in their contract. I read an interview with Chris Connor in which she said that nobody at Atlantic ever told her what songs to record or what musicians to work with, but I think that was more due to Ertegun/Wexler's respect for artists than a contractual obligation.
>>126971141huh? he did leave because Mitch Miller kept trying to make him record bullshit songs and he wanted freedom to choose material, arrangers, and how his records were marketed. Capitol was always built on artistic freedom since it had started as an "outlaw" label when Johnny Mercer didn't like labels constantly telling him what to do. Columbia was not that, Columbia was a label where the policy was "Get in front of the mic and don't ask any questions."
Sinatra found his own way at NBC doing "live in studio" recordings
for the radio program "To Be Perfectly Frank" 1953-54. The act of
crafting new arrangements for non-Columbia controlled songs that
put his vocal up front instead treating it like another instrument in
the orchestra freed Sinatra creatively. Then he could explore the
idea of a song being the about the lead vocal instead of about the
orchestral arrangement. The whole thing is about the lead vocal.
The song is you. After "To Be Perfectly Frank" Sinatra had the
tools to explore concept albums at Capitol.
"To Be Perfectly Frank" is the bridge between Columbia and
Capitol, and critical in Sinatra's creative arc. It's an injustice that
no one in charge of his legacy -- not the Sinatras and not even
Granata -- gives a sh!t about the NBC recordings. They've
probably never even listened to them.
>>126971216But that's not unfair because how could an album like The Voices of Frank Sinatra not be about the voices? And to be honest Axl Stordahl's flowery strings suited his ballad style perhaps even more than the later arrangers did. I rather believe the point is that Sinatra completely changed his rhythmic approach and that‘s when things changed.
the weepy ballad style was clearly outdated and he found his way back by developing a new and more punchy sound that fit the postwar cultural environment.
>>126971141>Sinatra left CBS because his record sales had started tanking in the late 40sHe was getting too old to play a teen idol by then, his voice got deeper from age and drinking/smoking and his style had gotten stale once everyone and their dog was copying it. He definitely needed time out to reinvent himself.
>>126971098Mitch Miller didn't even sign Dylan, he was out of town for the weekend and it was John Hammond who picked him up.
