Guy Mitchell

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-'50s, 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-'50s teen idols crafted by the industry as an alternative to the burgeoning success of rock & 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...