Stuff About Mitch Miller

Stuff About Mitch Miller

by Nicholas Andrian on Monday, August 2, 2010 at 9:59pm

Mitch Miller died today at 99. Most people remember him as the leader of a men's chorus on the TV show "Sing Along With Mitch," also the name of a successful series of record albums. However, Mitch's real contribution to music, despite as a classical oboist, was as director of Columbia Records in the '50s. I had an on-air program playing oldies on two small North Jersey stations in the late '80s and met people who had known Mitch during his time at Columbia. He had a great ear for what would sell and created a huge number of Number One hits. Unfortunately, some of these hits were cute but not very artistic and the artists often balked at singing them. Rosemary Clooney, an unknown in 1951, at first refused to sing "Com'on-a-My House" and was told by Mitch either to sing it or take a hike. She cut the record and then left for Europe. When she got back she was in a taxi going through Manhattan and at every red light, she heard "Com'on-a My House" blaring from every record shop. It was her first million-seller. Frank Sinatra stood up to Mitch and almost ruined his early career. In late 1950, Mitch had gotten together a bunch of studio musicians to record, along with Frank, a song, "My Heart Cries For You." Frank went through the song and then abruptly stopped and walked out, stating, "I'm not gonna sing this crap!" Realizing that the musicians had to be paid union scale, Mitch frantically searched for an in-house singer to replace Frank and was told that Columbia had just signed a young guy from Detroit. "Get him up here quick!" was Mitch's response. The kid's name was Guy Mitchell, the song sold over two million copies and Guy Mitchell had hit after hit all the way to 1959. Sinatra's career took a nose-dive, mainly over his attitude and over the fact that he had left his nice Jersey City-born Italian wife and three kids for the siren-like Ava Gardner, something that did not sit well with the American public of 1950. It was his role as Maggio in "From Here to Eternity" that revived his career. The very week he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1954, he had the top song in the country, "Young At Heart." And Frank was back on top for the next 40 years...But that's another story...Mitch Miller ruled Columbia with an iron fist; I was told that he often wore a cape and that he would swirl into the offices of Columbia, with his strange face and even stranger - for the 1950s - goatee, earning the nickname for himself of "Mephistopheles." Be that as it may, he created careers for dozens of famous singers of that era...Patti Page, Johnny Mathis, the aforementioned Rosie Clooney and Guy Mitchell, as well as many others. RIP Mitch Miller, gone to his final reward at the age of

The Great American Songbook!

 The Great American Songbook!

by Nicholas Andrian on Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 7:34pm

I took our 14-year-old niece to the Hunterdon Hills Dinner Theater today to see "Great American Songbook," a wonderful production of songs from the turn of the last century right through the rock 'n' roll era. Talented, energetic people (including some very good-looking women, always a plus) - singers and dancers - and top-notch musicians. Our niece, Cristina, is an aspiring singer and she enjoyed the show very much. I love exposing young kids to the great music produced by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, and dozens of other icons of American music. Put the songs together with the legendary singers ...Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Kay Starr, June Christy, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington (just to mention a few of the female greats); Nat Cole, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Frankie Laine, Billy Eckstine, Al Hibbler, Brook Benton, Perry Como (on the distaff side)...and you have sheer joy. The songs tell a story that the average person can relate to, you feel as if you know the singers personally, and the melodies are intricate but recognizable. Listen to Sinatra sing "I've Got You Under My Skin;" Ella "The Lady Is a Tramp;" Billy Eckstine "I Apologize;" Rosemary Clooney "Hey There..." I could go on for days. Check my profile for some of these gems!

A Thanksgiving to be Thankful

It was November 26, 2008, the day before Thanksgiving. School had let out early that day and I left my Jersey City classroom with a melange of trepidation and anticipation. I wound my way through the bumper-to-bumper afternoon traffic across the Pulaski Skyway and up the Garden State Parkway to the Plaza Diner on Route 23 in Pompton Plains, New Jersey. The day was overcast, drizzly, and the neon sign that welcomed me to one of the hundreds of Greek-owned eateries that dot the State of New Jersey gave me a sense of secure familiarity. I was there to meet a special person, a young woman whom I had not seen since she was three, twenty-four years earlier. Hardly a day had passed in all that time that I had not thought of her, prayed for her and for the chance to see her again. And the Lord had answered that prayer when Rosemary and I connected a few months earlier via a well-known social network.  "E-mail me your phone number and a convenient time to call" read the message which had made my heart skip a proverbial beat when I spotted her name. I did so and when she called from California a few days later, we arranged to meet during a pending trip to New Jersey.

     My waitress and I chatted while I sipped my hot tea. I told her a bit of why I was there:  My wife and I, newlyweds at the time, had taken the eighteen-month-old Rosie into our home in Verona. Her mother, a former student in one of my high school French classes whom I had not seen in five years, visited us out of the blue during the summer of 1982, telling us a hair-raising tale of having been recently deprogrammed from a religious cult. She wanted to get her life together, she claimed, and as she had the promise of a job and an apartment in Miami, she needed someone to watch Rosie for about a month. I was very reluctant to take on the responsibility of a restless toddler (she  fussed constantly and even broke a vase during one of their visits), but Alane convinced me to "help the girl out."  It was thus, then, that Alane and I became parents for the next year and a half.

     The door to the diner opened and in strode a slim, lovely young woman who, but for her eyes, would have been all but unrecognizable to me. I stood up as she half ran to where I was and fell into my arms. As we embraced, I could think of only one thing to say as I blurted out the phrase "The prayer of a righteous man availeth much." During this time, my waitress had obviously related to several of her co-workers what all the fuss was about. In response to the scene she was witnessing, one of the woman had tears streaming down her cheeks, which made it all that much harder for me to hold back mine. After a bite to eat, I took Rosie to Verona to show her the apartment building at 810 Bloomfield Avenue where we lived during her time with us. We drove to Verona Park and walked around the lake where Alane and I had taken her rowboating many times. I related to her minute details about her toddlerhood in an attempt to jar whatever memories she may have retained from her early years. She surprised me with her many accurate descriptions of places she had visited and incidents that had taken place before her third birthday, but then I was reminded that the results of a test she took during a court-ordered bonding study back in 1984 showed she had an IQ of 144. The examiner informed us that he had stopped testing her at that point. "She's off the chart," he said.

     Rosie and I discussed many things that fall afternoon, all except how it came to be that she left us so abruptly. That discussion, in all its painful details, would come later.

La Belle Province de Quebec

Quebec

by Nicholas Andrian on Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 10:22 a.m.

As I contemplate zipping up to Montreal for a few days, I'm reminded why I love that city (second only to my love for Paris). When I was in college, it was a poor man's trip to Paris...only 375 miles away where friends and I could put our French to use outside of the college classroom. Before the "quiet revolution" when the Quebeckers asserted themselves and passed laws making French the predominate language in the province, the injustices I perceived were similar to those going on in the South during the Civill Rights era (tho' less harsh, of course). For example, I was in Eaton's department store downtown one day and I approached a salesgirl in French about an item I wanted to buy. She said, "Oh, we don't speak French here." I asked her why not and she responded that to work in that English-owned store, French wasn't required. I said I wondered why the 85% of the population who were Franco-Canadians had to speak the language of the 15 % minority in order to work, but that the opposite did not apply and wasn't there an injustice in that?...Another time, I was in a car with three other French majors and one Quebecois friend looking for some go-go joint; we were lost when I spotted a lady walking a dog. I pulled over, rolled down the window and said, "Excusez-moi, Madame..." Before I could ask for directions, she said, "Why don't you Frenchies learn to speak White?" I assured her I could speak 'White' very well, but that I would find a Quebecois to ask for directions since they were more accommodating. Then the 'Frenchies' passed Law 101 which, among other things, said that all signs, public and private, had to be in French and that all immigrants coming into the province had to send their kids to French-language schools or else move to one of the other nine provinces to educate their kids. There were other regulations, but that law did the trick. Go to Quebec now and you are plunged into a totally francophone environment. Go into a store and everyone speaks French to you, even the Asian immigrants (mainly from Hong Kong) who almost never learned a word of French before. Same for the Greeks. The Quebecois culture is rich in history, literature, music and rivals any other in its depth. They managed to hold on to all of it (mainly thru their large families and the influence of the Catholic Church) during two centuries of the Anglos' attempts to suppress their identity...Read Longfellow's long poem, "Evangeline," about the ethnic cleansing the Anglos imposed upon the Acadians, those French-speakers from the Maritime provinces, who were forcibly removed to Louisiana (before France sold the Louisiana Purchase to the U.S.). That's where the name "Cajuns" comes from, a corruption of the French word "Acadiens," the name given to those Francophones from New Brunswick and Nove Scotia. A real success story, Vive le Quebec!

Attention France Bashers!

Attention France Bashers!

by Nicholas Andrian on Sunday, July 4, 2010 at 8:17am

On this July 4th, the 234th year of our Independence, it is good to remember the role that France played in our Revolution. WE COULD NEVER HAVE DEFEATED BRITAIN WITHOUT FRANCE'S HELP, PERIOD! First of all, France was the first and only country to recognize the United States as an independent nation. This was fitting, since our Founding Fathers and Patriots were greatly influenced by the French philosophers of twenty or thirty years earlier (mid-18th century), Rousseau, Voltaire and especially Montesquieu. Thomas Paine's pamphlet, "Common Sense" quotes almost verbatim from Montesquieu's 'L'Esprit des Lois' ('The Spirit of Laws') which states that the relationship between the government and the governed is one of mutual consent. This whole concept is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, which is what we are supposed to be celebrating today. When Ben Franklin arrived in Paris as our ambassador, he was hailed as a hero by the French, not only for his experiments with electricity but expecially for his invention of the Franklin stove, which heated many French homes at the time. Dressed in his simple Quaker garb, he was an instant hit as he rented an expensive house in what is now the 16th District of Paris (very ritzy to this day), laid in a stock of the best French wine and was tended to by a number of young women 'servants.' However, it wasn't until our victory at Saratoga that Louis XVI and his advisors took note of the possibility of an American defeat of the British. French aid then began to pour into the U.S. in the form of munitions, money and men. When Lafayette (age 19) showed up at Washington's headquarters, the latter thought he was just another spoiled nobleman looking for glory. But after Lafayette was wounded in battle, Washington's opinion of him changed and before long Lafayette was named a general. In the final battle at Yorktown, the French fleet blocked off the southern entrance to the Chesapeake Bay (where the Bay Bridge/Tunnel is today), thereby trapping the British and preventing reinforcements from getting through. On the day of the surrender at Yorktown (Oct. 17, 1781), the French lined up on one side and the rat-tag Americans on the other while the British troops marched between them; they turned their backs on the Americans and faced the French, showing their disdain for the Americans, thus indicating that they were surrendering to the French and not to our troops. Jump two years to the peace negotiations at Paris in 1783; John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were representing our interests against the British. THE FRENCH, WHO HAD SACRIFICED MEN AND TREASURE TO HELP US, WERE CUT OUT OF THE FINAL DEAL IN FAVOR OF THE BRITISH WHOM WE HAD JUST FOUGHT. The aid that the French monarchy had given us bankrupted its treasury and was a direct cause of the French Revolution of 1789 which overthrew that very monarchy!...Let's now jump 160 years to 1940. France lay prostate at the feet of Hitler. The Germans set up a puppet government, headed by Marshall Petain, the aged hero of World War One, with the resort town of Vichy as its capital. A brave general, who refused to accept this defeat, one Charles de Gaulle, who, as a colonel in the French army, had warned the general staff as far back as 1931 that the only way to avoid a German invasion would be to rely on tank warfare - and was ignored - fled to England and was given the services of the BBC by Churchill in order to broadcast inspiring messages to his countrymen. DE GAULLE RIGHTFULLY CLAIMED THAT THE VICHY GOVERNMENT WAS A COLLABORATIONIST ONE THAT REPRESENTED GERMAN AND NOT FRENCH INTERESTS. As a result, DE GAULLE LAID CLAIM TO THE TITLE OF LEADER OF THE TRUE FRENCH GOVERNMENT-IN- EXILE. What did the arrogant, short-sided bureaucrats in our State Department do? THEY U.S. EXTENDED DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION TO THE GERMAN-LED VICHY GOVERNMENT AND IGNORED DE GAULLE. De Gaulle never forgot this and when he later became president of France and saw that the U.S. continued to maintain support for Britain, often to the detriment of France, he decided to go it alone. Thus, he strengthened ties to France's former enemy, Germany, began to develop a nuclear weapons program, pulled France out of NATO and closed American bases in his country. KEEP THIS IN MIND, YOU IGNORANT FRANCE-BASHERS (such as the Neanderthal I saw recently on Route 78 with a bumper sticker on his pick up truck which read "FRANCE SUCKS"). But our ingratitude toward France should come as no surprise, since we show the same lack of appreciation for the efforts of our Founding Fathers and the brave citizen-soldiers who fought for our freedoms so long ago by allowing an out-of-control government to trash our precious Constitution! Keep all this in mind as you enjoy picnics and fireworks on this special day!

Madison, Wisconsin 2011; Paris, France 1789

Madison, Wisconsin 2011; Paris, France 1789

by Nicholas Andrian on Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 8:23pm

The cops' siding with the protesters in Madison, WI. reminds me of a film I showed in my classes on the French Revolution. While the nobles were living high, the poor and middle class were losing their furniture for non-payment of taxes at a time when there was famine in France. In one scene, a housewife and her friends take her confiscated furniture off the sidewalk and begin putting it back in the house. The sheriff orders a soldier "Arrest that woman!" The soldier hesitates and then says, "What for?" Moral:  When the forces of order side with the citizens, all bets are off!

La Douce France - Pt. 1

La Douce France

by Nicholas Andrian on Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 12:36am

Since I expounded earlier upon Quebec, I thought it would be a propos to write about the major role that France and the French language have played in my life. Now I am about as French as one would expect from a grandson of Greek immigrants raised in gritty Newark, which is to say, not at all. However, when I took French as a freshman at Brick Township High School (for the third time, by the way...oui, I was left back twice in a row...however, since Sister Catherine had skipped me from kindergarten to first grade due to the fact that I had learned how to read, I was only one year behind), I fell in love with the language, thanks to a sweetie of a teacher, Miss Virginia Sessa. Miss Sessa had spent two years in France (Bordeaux), had a perfect accent and although she was a new teacher, she had a knack for sharing her love and knowledge of the language. When she would describe the monuments of Paris, for example, you could close your eyes and actually feel the stones of Notre Dame Cathedral. Soon, I sank my teeth into her class and found I had a gift for language. I attribute this partially to the fact that I learned Modern Greek at my maternal grandmother's knee; in fact, I knew very little English until the age of four, when I started to interact with other children in our neighborhood. Whatever the reason, my enthusiasm for French spilled over to my other subjects and by Christmas of my freshman year, I was doing all the "nerdy" things I used to always make fun of other kids for doing, i.e., representing my homeroom in student council, writing a school news column for the Asbury Park Press and actually studying for tests as well as doing my homework. As a result, by the end of French 1, I had already finished the second year book. I later took two years of Spanish and one year of German; I was also selected to take English 5, comparable to AP today, a wonderful course concentrating mainly on Semantics. At the end of it all, I was awarded the Ocean County Freeholders scholarship which covered my tuition at Montclair State University for all four years. I did not even apply to college, so satisfied was I to have gotten through high school. However, during our English 5 class on the last day before Christmas break, my good bud Howard Wagner, having just been accepted to Trenton State (now the College of NJ), suggested I apply to Montclair as they had an excellent language department. I got a pass to the guidance office, they had an application to Montclair on file, I took it home, filled it out, took the entrance exam, got accepted and voila! I sensed then (and I know now) that the good Lord directed my sails in the direction He wanted me to go; He didn't stop there, however; He still nudges me, sometimes kicking and screaming, to bigger and better things. I shall continue this in Part Two.

La Douce France - Part Two

La Douce France - Part Two

by Nicholas Andrian on Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 2:07 a.m.

Well, although I was entranced by the French language from Day One of my freshman year in high school, my studies soon led me to a great appreciation of French history and culture. I was fascinated not only by the mellifluous sounds of the language itself, but also by its structure, which I liken to a mathematical equation. It just seemed so logical to me, unlike English, which is all over the place (and thus, more expressive than French - you can say a lot of things in English that you can't in French) and it appealed to my need for structure at that time in my life. I could make the historical analogy that English is like the rough-and-tumble Elizabethan era,with its laissez-faire attitude and great expressive ness, while French is like the period of Louis XIV, dainty, classic, every member of the community in orbit around the king; English is Beethoven, French is Mozart. (Which is not to say that English has no structure; all languages do, but the structure of English is eminently flexible, allowing its speakers to express the same idea in a wide range of ways. French is more restrictive, but also very precise; it is no coincidence that French was the language of diplomacy for several centurties.) As I learned about the early Gaul, Vercingetorix, and his noble stand against the invading Romans; the first Frankish king, Clovis, and his defense of Christianity in the Fifth Century; Charlemagne, and his great effort to revive the Roman Empire under Christian aegis; the rise of chivalry in the High Middle Ages of its code of honor; the skill of William the Conqueror, who brought French manners, customs and language to England in 1066 (thus giving the Germanic-based English language a veneer of French vocabulary, which to this day comprises the majority of words in English); Joan of Arc, the first famous feminist; the civilized Montaigne, the first great French philosopher of the Renaissance, whose essays are two centuries ahead of their time in their love of liberty and their appreciation of the common man; the early Huguenots, who stood against the corruption of the Church at the risk of their lives; the playwrights of the age of classicism (17th Century), including the philosopher/scientist/mathematician Descartes ("Je pense, donc, je suis") and others of his caliber (Pascal anyone?); and of course the unparalleled Voltaire, Rousseau et Montesquieu whose writings in the mid-18th Century fired up the patriots on this side of the Atlantic to eventually declare our independence from England (Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense' is based almost entirely on their writings); the way France, mainly through Franklin's fame and influence among the French, who were fascinated by this plainly-dressed Quaker, discoverer of electricity and inventor of the Franklin stove, already heating many houses and huts in France, supported the rag-tag Americans against the mightiest army and navy of the day (after the victory at Saratoga became known), to the detriment of the French treasury, which, when bankrupted a decade later, led to the French Revolution; the boldness of Napoleon, the writings of Victor Hugo, whose "Les Miserables" is an allegory of the concept of sin, repentence and redemption as preached by Jesus; the beauty of the Impressionist painters during the fifty years between our Civil War and the beginning of World War One; the poetry of Verlaine and of countless others; the brave sacrifice of the "flower of French youth" at Verdun and in the trenches of World War One; the treatment of the African-American soldiers who fought valiantly under French command in that war and who were decorated by the French when their own country refused to acknowledge their bravery and skills as warriors; the welcome mat extended to many Black-American writers, artists and musicians, including the many soldiers who felt safer in France during the Twenties than they could in their native land where some of them had returned home only to be lynched, a number of them still in uniform(!); the creativity of French composers, from Couperin and Mouret to Bizet and Ravel; the patriotism and boldness of De Gaulle, who refused to accept the Nazi victory and who was called out of retirement a dozen years after World War Two to establish the Fifth Republic and a stable government in France, shedding along the way most of France's colonies; the progress of France in so many areas to this day: Its nuclear arsenal ("force de frappe") dedicated to the safe-guarding of liberty; its high-speed rail system; its innovative art, architecture, literature and poetry; its development of the humane organization Doctors Without Borders ("Medecins Sans Frontieres"); its concern for the oceans (as conceived by Jacques Cousteau) as well as for the environment in general; its well-deserved reputation as a place of refuge for the oppressed of other lands; its ranking by the World Health Organization as having the best health care system for its citizens; and, good Lord, if that weren't enough (and I've only skimmed the surface), Paris, which, although in France, is really a city for the entire world, with a history like no other city's, and which, like the language spoken there, is beautiful in its subtlety and its humanity. So, voila, those are just a few of the reasons France has occupied such a deep place in my heart and why I feel privileged to have taught her language, history and culture to my young fellow citizens these many years.