Blues songs have seldom sounded cheerier than “Singing the Blues,” Guy Mitchell’s No. 1 hit from 1956. Such jaunty numbers were his speciality, though he was adept with ballads, too, establishing a reputation as one of America’s best-loved pop singers of the 1950s. He also enjoyed great popularity in Britain and elsewhere.
The son of Yugoslavian immigrants, Mitchell was born, as Albert Cernick, in Detroit, Michigan, on February 22, 1927. When he was 11, his family moved to Los Angeles, where Warner Bros, signed him as a potential child star. However, apart from some appearances on the studio’s radio station, KFWB, nothing came of this, and the Cernicks moved to San Francisco. There, Cernick became a saddlemaker in the nearby San Joaquin Valley, where he learned to appreciate country music. He also appeared on the radio, singing on the Dude Martin show.
After serving in the U.S. Navy, Cernick sang for Carmen Cavallaro’s orchestra between 1946 and 1947, and won first place on the popular television show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. After recording a few tracks for King Records, he was signed to Columbia in 1950, where he came under the wing of producer Mitch Miller.
Miller changed Cernick’s name to Guy Mitchell (taking the last name from the full spelling of his own first name) and began to produce and arrange his material. The singer’s first Columbia single, “My Heart Cries for You,” became the first of six hits to sell over a million copies. This song, with its dramatically sweeping melody (derived from the traditional French “Chanson de Marie Antoinette”), showed off Mitchell’s vocal prowess, as did some other recordings, notably “A Guy in Love” (1958). However, more typical were the upbeat “Singing the Blues” (written by polio victim Melvin Endsley, and No. 1 in late 1956 and early 1957 for eight weeks) and other perky million-sellers such as “The Roving Kind” (1951), “My Truly, Truly Fair” (1952), “Pittsburg, Pennsylvania” (1952), and the Harland Howard song “Heartaches by the Number” (1959). Mitchell also enjoyed considerable success in the U.K., where “Singing the Blues” provided him with a No. 1 hit.
During the 1950s, in addition to topping the charts, Mitchell sustained a popular film career. His debut screen appearance came in the 3-D musical Those Redheads from Seattle (1953), in which he sang with Teresa Brewer on the Johnny MERCER song “I Guess It Was You All the Time.” Mitchell quickly followed this with the spoof Western, Red Garters (1954).
Despite this success, Mitchell was dropped by Columbia in 1962, when his particular brand of pop music was beginning to go out of fashion. In the following years, he sporadically recorded for Reprise, Joy, Starday, and his own GMI label, but never recaptured the heights he enjoyed in the 1950s. Moreover, his career began to be consistently interrupted by bouts of ill health and alcoholism. Nevertheless, even though his star was waning in the U.S., Mitchell still found a receptive audience farther afield, and continued to perform in the U.K. and Australia for another two decades. In 1990, the singer’s career received a belated and unlikely boost when he appeared in the highly praised British TV drama, Your Gheatin’ Heart.
Guy Mitchell’s work typified his era, a time when even potentially heavy songs about the blues and sadness could be sung with a light heart. Because of this, Mitchell will be remembered as one of the quintessential 1950s pop performers.
Terry Atkinson
SEE ALSO:
COUNTRY MUSIC; POP MUSIC.
Hamm, Charles. Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979).
16 Most Requested Songs; An American Legend; A Garden in the Rain; A Guy in Love; Portrait of a Song Stylist; Sunshine Guitar.