Irving Mills | |
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| Born | Isadore Minsky (1894-01-16)January 16, 1894 Odessa, Russian Empire |
| Died | April 21, 1985(1985-04-21) (aged 91) Palm Springs, California, United States |
| Other names | Goody Goodwin, Joe Primrose |
| Occupations |
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Irving Harold Mills (bornIsadore Minsky; January 18, 1894 Odessa, Ukraine – April 21, 1985) was amusic publisher, musician, lyricist, andjazzpromoter. He often used thepseudonymsGoody Goodwin andJoe Primrose.
Mills was born to aJewish family[1] inOdessa, Russian Empire, although some biographies state that he was born on theLower East Side ofManhattan[2] inNew York City.[a][3] His father, Hyman Minsky, was ahatmaker who immigrated fromOdessa to theUnited States with his wife Sofia. Hyman died in 1905, and Irving and his brother, Jacob (1891–1979) worked odd jobs includingbussing at restaurants, selling wallpaper, and working in the garment industry. By 1910, Mills was a telephone operator.
Mills married Beatrice ("Bessie") Wilensky[4] in 1911, and they subsequently moved toPhiladelphia. By 1918, Mills was working for publisherLeo Feist. His brother,Jack, was working as a manager for McCarthy and Fisher, the music publishing firm of lyricistJoseph McCarthy and songwriterFred Fisher.
He died inPalm Springs, California in 1985 at age 91.
In July 1919 Irving's older brotherJack Mills founded Jack Mills Music;[5][6] mainly motivated to do so out of a desire to publish his own songs. Soon after, he was joined in the enterprise by Irving Mills[7] who served as vice-president of the company with Jack as president, and Samuel Jesse Buzzell as secretary and counselor. The company was renamedMills Music, Inc. in 1928.[3][8][9] Mills Music acquired the bankruptWaterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc. in 1929. Buzzell's son,Loring Buzzell, briefly worked for the company from March 1949 to October 1950.[10][11]
Irving, Jack, and Samuel sold Mills Music on February 25, 1965, to Utilities and Industries Corporation (a utility company based in New York).[12] In 1969, Utilities and Industries Corporation merged Mills Music with Belwin, another music publisher, to formBelwin-Mills.[13] Educational publisherEsquire Inc. announced its acquisition of Belwin-Mills in 1979.[14]Gulf & Western acquired Esquire Inc. in 1983 and sold the Belwin-Mills print business toColumbia Pictures Publications (CPP) in 1985.[15] CPP was later acquired by Filmtrax and Filmtrax was acquired byEMI Music Publishing in 1990.[16] In 1994, Warner Bros. Publications expanded its print music operations by acquiring CPP/Belwin, the print operations of Belwin-Mills.[17] In 2005Alfred Music acquired Warner Bros. Publications (including Belwin-Mills) fromWarner Music Group.[18]
The Mills Music catalog is now managed bySony Music Publishing, which acquired EMI Music Publishing in 2012.[19]
Utilities and Industries Corporation restructured Mills Music asThe Mills Music Trust. At the time of the sale, its top 10 earning compositions were:
By the end of 1963, 114 titles brought in 77 percent of theroyalty income for five years. The total number of compositions, at the time of sale, was estimated to be in excess of 25,000, of which 1,500 were still producing royalties. In 1964, Mills had royalties of $1.3 million (equivalent to $13,494,226 in 2024). The company had 20 music publishing subsidiaries as well as publishing concerns inBritain,Brazil,Canada,France,West Germany,Mexico, theNetherlands, andSpain.[20]
The Mills Music Trust traded in unitsOTC (over-the-counter) under the symbol MMTRS. The trust received payments fromEMI Records based on a formula that changed in 2010, when the trust passed almost all its funds to unit holders.
Mills discovered a number of songwriters, includingZez Confrey,Sammy Fain,Harry Barris,Gene Austin,Hoagy Carmichael,Jimmy McHugh, andDorothy Fields. He advanced or even started the careers ofCab Calloway,Duke Ellington,Ben Pollack,Jack Teagarden,Benny Goodman,Will Hudson,[b] andRaymond Scott.
Mills started the studio recording group Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang withTommy Dorsey,Jimmy Dorsey,Joe Venuti,Eddie Lang, Arnold Brillhardt (clarinet, soprano and alto sax),[c]Arthur Schutt, andMannie Klein. Other variations of his band featuredGlenn Miller,Benny Goodman, andRed Nichols (Mills gave Red Nichols the tag "and his Five Pennies.")
In 1932, Mills founded theRhythmakers recording group as a vehicle to record and promote jazz singerBilly Banks. The group was a racially integrated ensemble at a time when such groups were legally banned from public theatres, and it included several highly regarded jazz musicians, includingRed Allen,Jack Bland,Pee Wee Russell,Fats Waller,Eddie Condon, andJimmy Lord.[21]
One evening circa 1925, Mills went to a small club on West 49th Street between7th Avenue andBroadway called the Club Kentucky, often referred to as the Kentucky Club, formerly the Hollywood Club.[22] The owner had brought in a small band of six musicians fromWashington, D.C., and wanted to know what Mills thought of them. Mills stayed the rest of the evening listening to the band,Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra. Apparently, Mills signed Ellington the next day. They made numerous records together, not only under the name of Duke Ellington, but also using groups that incorporated Duke's sidemen.
Mills managed Ellington from 1926 to 1939. In his contract with Ellington, Mills owned 50% of Duke Ellington Inc. and thus got a credit for tunes that became popular standards: "Mood Indigo", "(In My) Solitude", "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)", "Sophisticated Lady", and others. He also pushed Ellington to record forVictor,Brunswick,Columbia,Banner,Romeo,Perfect,Melotone,Cameo,Lincoln,Hit of the Week Records, and others. Mills sometimes used aghostwriter to complete his lyric ideas and sometimes built on their ideas. He was instrumental in Duke Ellington being hired by theCotton Club.
Mills was one of the first to record black and white musicians together, using twelve white musicians and the Duke Ellington Orchestra on a12-inch 78 rpm record featuring the "St. Louis Blues" on one side and a medley of songs called "Gems from Blackbirds of 1928" on the other, on which Mills sang with the Ellington Orchestra.Victor Records initially hesitated to release the record, but when Mills threatened to take his artists off their roster, he won out.[23]
Mills formed theMills Blue Rhythm Band as a relief band at the Cotton Club. Cab Calloway and his band brought a new song into the Cotton Club that Mills co-wrote withCalloway andClarence Gaskill called "Minnie the Moocher".[24]
One of Mills' most significant innovations was the "band within a band" concept, recording small group sides. He started this in 1928 by arranging for members ofBen Pollack's band to make records under an array of pseudonyms on dime store labels — likeBanner,Oriole,Cameo,Domino, andPerfect — while Pollack had an exclusive contract withVictor. A number of these records are considered jazz classics by collectors. Mills printed "small orchestrations," transcribed off the record, so that non-professional musicians could see how great solos were constructed. This was later done byBenny Goodman,Artie Shaw, and several other bands.
Irving formed the Mills Artists Booking Company. In 1934, he formed an all-female orchestra, headed by Ina Ray. He added Hutton to her name and it became the popularIna Ray Hutton and her Orchestra.
In 1934, Mills Music also began a publishing subsidiary, Exclusive Publications, Inc., specializing in orchestrations by songwriters likeWill Hudson,[b] who co-wrote the song "Mr. Ghost Goes to Town" with Mills andMitchell Parish in 1936.
In late 1936, with involvement byHerbert Yates of theAmerican Record Corporation (ARC), Mills founded the Master and Variety labels, which were distributed by ARC through theirBrunswick andVocalion label sales staff. (Mills was previously involved inA&R forColumbia in 1934–36, after ARC purchased the failing label.) Irving signedHelen Oakley Dance to supervise small group records for the Variety label. From December 1936 through to September 1937, 40 records were issued on Master and 170 on Variety. Master's best-selling artists wereDuke Ellington,Raymond Scott, Hudson-De Lange Orchestra,Casper Reardon, andAdrian Rollini. Variety's roster includedCab Calloway,Red Nichols, the small groups from Ellington's band led byBarney Bigard,Cootie Williams,Rex Stewart, andJohnny Hodges, as well asNoble Sissle,Frankie Newton, The Three Peppers,Chu Berry,Billy Kyle, and other jazz and pop performers around New York.
By late 1937, multiple problems caused the collapse of these labels. TheBrunswick andVocalion sales also had problems with competition fromVictor andDecca. Mills tried to arrange to get his music issued in Europe, but was unsuccessful. After the collapse of the labels, titles that were still selling on Master were reissued on Brunswick and those still selling on Variety were reissued on Vocalion. Mills continued his M-100 recording series after the labels were taken over by ARC, and after cutting back recording to just the better-selling artists, new recordings made from January 1938 by Master were issued on Brunswick (and laterColumbia) and Vocalion (later the revivedOkeh) until May 7, 1940. Beginning March 8, 1939, in anEllingtonsession, the prefix "W" was added tomatrices(e.g., WM-990 and WM-991). This matrix series was then used until WM-1150, the final being a session by theAdrian Rollini Trio performing "The Girl With the Light Blue Hair," Voc/Okeh 5979, May 7, 1940, New York City. There were 1,055 sessions in the series.[25]
Mills became the head of the American Recording Company, which is now Columbia Records. At one point, Mills was singing at six radio stations seven days a week.Jimmy McHugh,Sammy Fain, andGene Austin took turns being his pianist.
He produced one film,Stormy Weather, for20th Century Fox in 1943, which starredLena Horne, Cab Calloway,Zutty Singleton,Fats Waller, and dancers theNicholas Brothers andBill "Bojangles" Robinson. He had a contract to do other movies but found it "too slow," so he continued finding, recording, andplugging music.[citation needed]
Among the artists Mills personally recorded were:
