The “Golden Hits Of The 50s” 

Main MenuConcept Refinement The Author..Wayne JancikGolden Age Of The 50sGolden Age Of The 60s1970s and There After

 

FRANK MILLS

“MUSIC BOX DANCER”

(FRANK MILLS)

Polydor 14517

No. 3   May 5, 1979

.

.

.

“Maybe ‘Music Box Dancer’ will be it, but I don’t think so, because I’m not going to quit, “Mills told Music

Scene magazine.   “I would rather think that my ‘Moon River’ isn’t too far around the corner.”

.

Frank Mills was born in 1943 in Toronto and grew up in Verdum, Quebec.  For years, he studied piano,

the­ory, composition, and arranging and when alone, trombone.  After leaving Montreal’s McGill

Conserva­tory of Music in 1965, Mills sold industrial gases and real estate, spent three months with the

Sirocco Singers; eventually joining the BELLS. They recorded a few of his tunes, but by 1970, Frank

wanted to go it alone and do his stuff his way.  A first-off single, “Love Me, Love Me Love” (#46, 1972),

made the United States pop list­ings; follow-ups like a cover of Rick Nelson’s “Poor Lit­tle Fool” charted in

his homeland.  A hard to find debut album, Seven of My Songs (Plus Some Others), was issued in 1971.

.

By 1974, Frank Mills was without a record label.  For a long time, he had been stifling his aspirations to

cre­ate easy-listening mood music for the more sedate, possibly older crowd.  He publicly praised the

MOR orchestral strains of Bert Kaempfert and particularly JAMES LAST, and proposed creating

soothing sounds of this nature.   When all the record labels turned him down, Mills paid out of his pocket

to have an album of these Muzak-like smoothies made.  Years later, someone noticed with a tingle the

pleasing piano puffery of the “Music Box Dancer” album track.   In the midst of the disco phe­nomenon,

Polydor boldly reissued “Music Box Dancer” and that five-year-old album to an enthusiastic response.

.

Frank Mills still plays music for an audience he has described as “the totally forgotten.” Numerous

albums have been issued into the ’90s–notably Christmas With Frank Mills and Friends (1992)–most,

however, are not released in the United States.