Mitchell William Miller (born July 4, 1911) is an American musician, singer, conductor, record producer, A&R man and record company executive. He was one of the most influential figures in American popular music during the 1950s and early 1960s, both as the head of Artists & Repertoire at Columbia Records and as a best-selling recording artist. Miller was born to a Jewish family in Rochester, New York. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Miller is an accomplished oboe and English horn player. He supported himself in the 1930s and 1940s as a session musician, and had known George Gershwin and toured in his orchestra[1]. Among his more celebrated studio dates in the non-classical field were for The Voice of Frank Sinatra and bebop pioneer Charlie Parker?s famous Bird with Strings albums. He was a member of the Alec Wilder octet of the late '30s (his acquaintance with Wilder dating back to Rochester days), and played in the CBS house orchestra for the 1938 Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast. He later recorded Sibelius?s Swan of Tuonela with Leopold Stokowski for RCA, and the Mozart Oboe Concerto for Columbia Records.