GUY MITCHELL The Roving Kind
Original Recordings 1950-1953
A top-ranking entertainer on both sides of the
Atlantic, Guy Mitchell the personable face of
1950s pop secured a place in the annals of
rock-n-roll with his multi-million-selling 1956
‘Singin’The Blues’. His career, however,was
more varied and multifaceted than even his
most ardent fans may realise. Born Albert
Cernick, to immigrant Yugoslav parents in
Detroit, Michigan, on 22 February 1927, as a
child he showed flair for the stage and by
eleven was already earmarked by Warner
Brothers as a possible successor to Mickey
Rooney. More drawn to vocalising, however, by
his teens he was heard regularly on Los
Angeles’ KFKB radio and even after leaving
school, when he took up employment with a
firm of saddlers, he continued to sing
professionally in his spare time. During 1945-
1946 he served in the US Navy and after
demobilisation auditioned successfully in 1947
for the Carmen Cavallaro Orchestra, that same
year making his first recordings, as Al Cernick,
for Decca in Los Angeles.
Owing to temporary illness, Guy was forced
to curtail his activities with Cavallaro, but later,
after moving to New York, he made further
records, for the King record label under the
pseudonym of Al Grant. In New York, he
worked as a song-plugger for various
organisations and in 1948 won first prize on
Arthur Godfrey’s popular radio talent show. A
demo he made was heard by Columbia’s
musical director and A & R man Mitch Miller
(born Mitchell William Miller, 1911), who
signed Guy to a prestigious first contract with
the label in 1950 and recommended Guy use
the full version of his own surname for
professional purposes. Guy, who was to remain
with Columbia for the greater part of his
recording career,went on to cut 22 US Top
Forty hits, including six Golden Discs, with
overall sales by the end of the 1950s alone
already in excess of 44 million.
Although Guy’s first few recorded sides
failed to make their mark, Miller continued to
back him and found him a more congenial
recording niche, commercialised country,
which included numerous contributions by
Bob Merrill (alias Henry Lavan, born 1921).
Among the earliest of Miller’s suggestions were
two items that Frank Sinatra had rejected
which, fortuitously for Guy,were issued backto-
back on the same disc, thus constituting a
virtual double million-seller. The first, the
novelty My Heart Cries For You, an
adaptation by Percy Faith (credited by the
pseudonym of ‘Peter Mars’) of an 18th century
French folk-tune entitled “Chanson de Marie
Antoinette”,was coupled with The Roving
Kind (an arrangement made from the tune of
the Old English sea shanty “The Pirate Ship”, a
trend in folk borrowings he would continue
with Wimmin’, based on the shanty “A-Rovin’’).
My Heart Cries For You and The Roving
Kind made, respectively, US No.2 and US No.4,
in December 1950.
Pre-1954, Guy’s US Top Thirty hit list was
crowned by two more million-sellers:My
Truly, Truly Fair (No.2 in June 1951) and
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (No.4 in March
1952). Significant among the lesser sellers
were: in 1951, Sparrow In The Tree Top (at
No.8), Belle, Belle, My Liberty Belle (at
No.9),You’re Just In Love (Guy duetting
with Rosemary Clooney, at No.24) and a coverversion
of the Hank Williams country classic I
Can’t Help It (at No.28); in 1952, Feet Up
(Pat Him On The Popo) (at No.14) and The
Day Of Jubilo (a No.26 Terry Gilkyson re-hash
of a folksy number earlier popularised by Frank
Crumit) and, in 1953, the ever-popular Guy
Mitchell ‘standard’ She Wears Red Feathers
(at No.19).
By the early 1950s Guy had set his sights
on screen stardom. His vocal contributions
were perceived as a plus by Paramount, but he
achieved only moderate success with leading
roles in two films. The first, Those Redheads
From Seattle (1953 – with Rhonda Fleming,
Gene Barry,Agnes Moorehead and fellow popstar
Teresa Brewer, set in Alaska during the Gold
Rush) was soon followed by a second, Red
Garters (1954 – a creditable if predictably
stylized Western musical spoof by any
standards, co-starring Rosemary Clooney, Cass
Daley, Gene Barry, Jack Carson, Pat Crowley and
Reginald Owen, this proved a more successful
venture, insofar as its art direction, by Hal
Pereira and Roland Atkinson,was nominated for
an Oscar).
By mid-decade, however, Guy’s career as a
personality vocalist had taken off sufficiently to
make further forays into a medium that did not
really suit him superfluous. He could already
boast his own regular show on US TV and
made frequent special appearances in Great
Britain, where he enjoyed an even greater
following than in his own country (the
recipient of five British No.1 awards, he had an
almost open invitation to tour whenever he
liked). Having first appeared in England at the
London Palladium in 1952 (his two-week sellout
run creating a still unbroken box-office
record at that theatre) he returned there,
memorably, two years later for a Royal
Command Performance and was subsequently
co-star (with Gracie Fields) in the first televised
Sunday Night At The London Palladium, in
1955. In 1956 Guy scored his biggest hit – and
first No.1 – with “Singin’The Blues” (one of the
key songs of the 1950s era, this was actually a
cover of a Marty Robbins country hit).
During the 1960s Guy Mitchell made his
name as a straight actor, refocusing his career
towards theatre and TV (his work in that
sphere included the Western series Whispering
Smith, co-starring Audie Murphy, for NBC). He
also appeared in one more movie, The Wild
Westerners (1962, with James Philbrook, Nancy
Kovack and Duane Eddy, this was another
‘Yankees get their gold’ special) and continued
to sing and (from 1962 onwards) to make
recordings, including singles for Joy and
Reprise and the country albums Travelling
Shoes and Singin’ Up A Storm, for Starday
Records. Sales both of Guy Mitchell re-releases
and new recordings on his own GMI label
continued to keep his name alive, although
during the 1970s his stage activities declined
after he took up ranching. In 1979 he made a
successful tour of Australia and played the US
nightclub circuit until 1981, when his profile
was boosted by his guest appearance in a US
TV tribute to Mitch Miller.
In 1984, Guy made a comeback tour of
Great Britain, which included a standing
ovation from a capacity audience at the
London Barbican, and subsequently he
returned annually for further British tours until
the mid-1990s. He also made regular foreign
tours, most notably to Australia. In 1990, for
the BBC in Scotland, Guy filmed the six-part
John Byrne drama series Your Cheatin’ Heart,
and during breaks in the production made
various UK country festival appearances
including, on New Year’s Eve, a ‘live’ ITV show
from the London Palladium. In 1991, following
radio and TV appearances in Australia, he made
a further tour, during the course of which he
was severely injured in a horse-riding accident.
Fortunately, he made a full recovery and in
later years made many appearances for charity,
which teamed him, at select international
venues, with colleagues as varied as Plácido
Domingo, Kathryn Grayson, Buddy Greco, Bob
Hope, Howard Keel,Mickey Rooney and Kay
Starr. Guy Mitchell died in hospital in Las
Vegas, Nevada, on 1 July 1999, aged 72 years.
Peter Dempsey, 2004