He was born Al Cernick
in Detroit in 1927, into a Yugoslavian immigrant family whose members
sang as often as
possible, for their own pleasure. He made his first appearance as a singer
at age
three, at a wedding
reception. The Cernick family moved across the country in search of a place
they liked, before
reaching Los Angeles in 1938. He was spotted by a talent scout and signed
up as
a child performer
at Warner Bros. Studios that same year, and managed to broadcast over a
studio-controlled
radio station.
The family's move
to San Francisco in 1940 ended the boy's relationship with Warner Bros.,
but he
kept taking voice
lessons. A summer job on a ranch in the San Joachin Valley taught him the
basics
of a cowboy's skills,
and by the time he was 17 he was working as an apprentice saddle-maker.
He
kept on singing
in his spare time, and To some listeners, the name Guy Mitchell evokes
contempt--as the
singer whose pop-styled
covers of "Singin' The Blues" and "Knee Deep In The Blues" cut the legs
out
from under Marty
Robbins' country-styled original renditions. To others, Mitchell evokes
the last period
of America's innocence,
the mid-1950's, when he periodically ascended the pop charts in the company
of singers like
Frankie Laine. Mitchell was all of those things and more, in some ways
a trail-blazer--he
was the first major
recording artist whose career was crafted in the studio, by a record company,
and
sold to the public
by way of records and the radio, not concerts. He was the precursor to
the late 1950's
teen idols
crafted by the industry as
an alternative to the burgeoning success of rock 'n roll. In contrast
to some
of the younger male singing
idols of that era, however, Mitchell had a genuinely good voice as
his
starting point in music.
He was born Al Cernick
in Detroit in 1927, into a Yugoslavian immigrant family whose members
sang as often as
possible, for their own pleasure. He made his first appearance as a singer
at age
three, at a wedding
reception. The Cernick family moved across the country in search of a place
they liked, before
reaching Los Angeles in 1938. He was spotted by a talent scout and signed
up as
a child performer
at Warner Bros. Studios that same year, and managed to broadcast over a
studio-controlled
radio station.
The family's move
to San Francisco in 1940 ended the boy's relationship with Warner Bros.,
but he
kept taking voice
lessons. A summer job on a ranch in the San Joachin Valley taught him the
basics
of a cowboy's skills,
and by the time he was 17 he was working as an apprentice saddle-maker.
He
kept on singing
in his spare time, and this led to the offer of a spot on a local radio
show.
He joined the navy
for a two-year hitch in 1944, resuming his radio singing career afterward.
In
1947, he joined
the Carmen Cavallaro orchestra, still billed as Al Cernick, as the featured
vocalist,
but a bout of food-poisoning
caused him to drop out. In 1948, he cut some sides for King Records
as Al Grant, and
won first prize on Arthur Godfrey's Talents Scouts radio program. This
led to his
being hired as
a demo singer by various music publishers (one of the songs he demo'd was
"Rudolph
The Red Nosed Reindeer").
The singer was signed
up by impresario Eddie Joy, who intensified his training and finally introduced
him to Mitch Miller,
the head of Artists and Repertory for Columbia Records. It was Miller who
transformed Al
Cernick into Guy Mitchell, using his own first same for the surname. Mitchell's
first
five singles at
Columbia failed, and his career was only rescued when Frank Sinatra, still
with
Columbia Records,
declined to cut a pair of songs for which Miller had already set recording
sessions and engaged
musicians. Mitchell was brought into the studio, and the resulting recordings
of
"My Heart Cries
For You" and "The Roving Kind" rode the charts for 21 weeks in 1951, selling
nearly two million
copies.
Mitchell's recording
career was made, although his performing career needed work--he'd hardly
had
the chance to develop
a serious stage act or effective persona when he was booked into some of
the
biggest clubs in
New York, and roundly criticized for what some onlookers felt were amateurish
aspects of his
presentation. Additionally, nobody had given thought to a problem that
hadn't afflicted
too many pop stars
before--his performances didn't match the rich, highly produced sound of
his
recordings.
These difficulties
were eventually overcome, and Mitchell became a major draw in concert for
a
time, sustained
by a handful of follow-up hits, including "My Truly, Truly Fair." He became
especially
popular in England,
where his shows were consistent sell-outs.
Meanwhile, his chart
hits stopped coming in the mid-1950's, and even a brief venture into film
acting
in westerns failed
to enhance Mitchell's popularity. He might've disappeared with the coming
of rock
'n roll, had it
not been for the marketing strategies of Mitch Miller at Columbia Records.
In 1956,
Marty Robbins was
tearing up the country charts with "Singin' The Blues," on Columbia, and
Miller
chose Guy Mitchell
to cut a pop-style cover of the song. Robbins' song was a huge hit as was,
and
might've been even
bigger--in those days, songs were regularly crossing over between the
charts--but Mitchell's
version supplanted it on pop music stations, and on the charts, where it
spent
nine weeks at No.
1 and sold well over a million copies. Mitchell had a follow-up hit with
his cover
of another Robbins
song, "Knee Deep In The Blues, and then milked the rock 'n roll bandwagon
one
last time with
"Rock-a-billy." He never connected with audiences or the charts quite so
strongly
again, but he didn't
have to. A television variety show followed, and his concert career in
America
remained viable
until the end of the 1950's, and then he toured England again, to huge
crowds.
Late in 1959, Mitchell
scored one last No. 1 hit with "Heartaches By the Number." By that time,
he
was running into
competition from a brand of teen-pop music more similar to his own music
than to
the rock 'n roll
that it supplanted. Further attempts at acting on television and another
movie failed to
reignite Mitchell's
career. Mitchell left Columbia Records in 1961, but he was unable to crack
the
charts again, either
for his own manager's label (Joy Records) or for Reprise, where he tried
recording in the
mid-1960's. He retired in the mid-1960's, but like any number of 50's singing
stars,
Mitchell later
hit it big on the nostalgia circuit, and re-emerged in this vein in the
1980's--he remained
a top attracting
in England, even at that late date, and also found an audience in the former
Yugoslavia in the
wake of the fall of the Eastern bloc.