Dan Plonsey

If Mitch Miller were dead, he would roll over in his grave. It turns out one of the recording industry's greatest messiahs of easy listening music directly inspired Dan Plonsey, a Bay Area multi-instrumentalist and composer whose creations would probably make Miller want to wash his ears out with hydrogen peroxide. In contrast to the type of songs adored by the huge audience for the Sing Along With Mitch series in the early '60s,Plonsey's work is not called "hard listening." Labels such as avant-garde, experimental, free-form, free music, or noise music seem to be the preference of critics and fans alike; whatever it's called, this type of music is surely not what Miller had in mind when attempting to inspire young listeners with projects such as a guide to the instruments in a symphony orchestra. It was just such a recording that young Plonsey came across while pawing through his parents' sides in the family's Cleveland homestead. Mixed in with various folk and jazz trends of the day was Mitch Miller's music education series for tots. Conceptually these involved personifications of individual instruments into amusing characters. Needless to say, Max the Saxophone was Plonsey's favorite, but his folks started him on clarinet because at the age of six, saxophones just seemed too big. No saxophone would be too big for one of Plonsey's later musical heroes, Anthony Braxton -- in the '80s he was having the Army fly his contrabass saxophone around because none of the commercial airliners had grand enough luggage holds. But such a detail requires flashing forward to Plonsey's college days, the time in his life when he apparently began thinking seriously about creating music of his own. Research involving lots of listening and reading led to the discovery of inspirations as...