Taking lapses

[captainsblog]

One of memory, one, perhaps, of corporate judgment.

Okay, everybody, follow the bouncing ball!

When the news came yesterday of the death of Mitch Miller- conductor, oboist, record producer but perhaps best known for his early 60s "Sing Along" television show which, yes, I remember with the vaguest of vagaries- my first thought was to mention the "follow the bouncing ball" effect on the supered lyrics that I remembered being a staple of the singalongs on that show. When I toasted him at dinner last night with Eleanor (she, like he, a native Rochesterian), I raised my glass and bounced it along in the air in memory of that famed effect. Many of the Google News headlines about his life and death mentioned it, too.

Just one problem though: it never happened.

Heading back from Rochester today, but listening to an NPR show not aired there but rather here on WBFO, Talk of the Nation commemorated the man and his many roles- including his involvement in the Artists and Repertoire department at Columbia Records that led to (or at least contributed to) their signings of a gamut from Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney to, later on, Aretha Franklin and even Bob Dylan. During the segment (audio on the page here), they played a clip of a not-long-ago interview with Miller, who denied it had ever been a gimmick on the lyrics of his show. "It was Looney Tunes," he said- not his show, but rather the movie theater shorts from the 40s and 50s that used the bouncing-ball motif to emphasize the rhythm of the lyrics. (A listener emailed in to say it was actually Betty Boop cartoons that did that; way before my time, but then, I'm one of the ones who thought Mitch did it.)

Funny how memories can be so moved about among so many people from stuff so far back as to prevent Youtube from corrupting (or improving on) our recollections of it.

----

Rochester also played a nostalgiac part in a story I read on a friend's page last night: an AP piece about the photographer entrusted with the last roll off the last-ever production run of Kodachrome film:

Steve McCurry took aim at the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Terminal and a few human icons, too. Paul Simon, the singer-songwriter synonymous with the fabled film's richly saturated colors, shied away. But Robert De Niro stood in for the world of filmmaking.

Then McCurry headed from his base in New York City to southern Asia, where in 1984 he shot a famous portrait of a green-eyed Afghan refugee girl that made the cover of National Geographic. In India, he snapped a tribe whose nomadic way of life is disappearing — just as Kodachrome is.

I have strong connections to the Big Yellow Box, despite never working there, never having them as a client (I've sued them once or twice in 25 years), and not even having any family in the company (although Eleanor's mom was on the inside many times as a visiting nurse); in my time in and around Rochester, I got to know a lot about the corporate culture, not a lot of it good. You could practically spot the ES&L passbook or the too-neatly-folded copy of the house organ Kodakery in the purses or manbags of the really obsessive customers in front of you at the Wegmans checkout. When they formed their own  businesses (many of which wound up in my graveyard of an office over the years), they exuded a sense of entitlement and One Minute Manager mentality.

Discontinuing Kodachrome was another manifestation of that. Some bean-counter on the 12th floor of Kodak Office probably has a 20-page spreadsheet justifying the move in terms of dollars, but the loss of their best customers, and the penny-pinching sense now passed on to, say, potential photo printer-buyers like me, isn't going to show up in a financial report. Rather, it will appear, and hurt, in the hearts of those who remember their first Brownie or Instamatic with a fondness that's just getting wasted for the sake of an extra penny on the quarterly dividend.

It's a wonder they can think at all.

Comments

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I remember the neat goatee and the turtleneck. We had a couple of his albums when I was a kid. And I could have sworn I saw the bouncing ball on TV.

Ah, foggy and false nostalgia...

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

I had the distinct honor (I was told) of having had Mitch Miller's sister, Mrs. Mindel, as my 6th grade teacher.

I also distinctly remember the bouncing ball as being part of Looney Tunes. My Grandfather watched the Mitch Miller sing-a-long show but I don't really remember it much.

God, those folks were old back then.

[nonspecific.livejournal.com]

Heh, my grandfather retired from Eastman back when it was Eastman Kodak. ;)