Mitch Miller, pictured here in 1968 in New York City, had a popular television show in the 1960s, Sing Along With Mitch. (Bob Wands/File/Associated Press)

Mitch Miller, the goateed orchestra leader who asked Americans to "Sing Along With Mitch" on television and records, has died at age 99.

His daughter, Margaret Miller Reuther, said Monday that Miller died Saturday in a New York City hospital after a short illness. She did not divulge any more details.

"He was absolutely himself up until the minute he got sick," she said. "He was truly blessed with a long and wonderful life."

Miller was a key record executive at Columbia Records in the pre-rock 'n' roll era, making hits with singers Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett.

"Mitch Miller put me on the map by producing some of my very first million-selling records, and he was a great friend and a magnificent musician," Bennett said in a statement released later Monday.

Sing Along With Mitch started as a series of records, then became a popular NBC show starting in early 1961. Miller's stiff-armed conducting style and signature goatee became famous.

The TV show ranked in the top 20 for the 1961 to 1962 season, and soon children everywhere were parodying Miller's stiff-armed conducting.

An all-male chorus sang old standards, joined by a few female singers, most prominently Leslie Uggams. Viewers were invited to join in with lyrics superimposed on the screen and followed with a bouncing ball.

"He is an odd-looking man," New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in 1962. "His sharp beard, twinkling eyes, wrinkled forehead and mechanical beat make him look like a little puppet as he peers hopefully into the camera."

Atkinson went on to say that as a musician, Miller was "first rate," praising "the clean tone of the singing, the clarity of the lyrics, the aptness of the tempos, the variety and the occasional delicacy of the instrumental accompaniment."

Played with Gershwin

An accomplished oboist, Miller played in a number of orchestras early in his career, including one put together in 1934 by George Gershwin.

"Gershwin was an unassuming guy," Miller told the New York Times in 1989. "I never heard him raise his voice."

Miller began in the recording business with Mercury Records in the late 1940s, first on the classical side, later with popular music. He then went over to Columbia Records as head of its popular records division.

Among the stars whose hits he worked on were Clooney, Page, Bennett, Frankie Laine and Jo Stafford. His decision to have Mathis switch from jazz to lushly romantic ballads launched the singer as a superstar.

Miller became known for his distinctive arrangements, such as the use of a harpsichord on Clooney's megahit version of Come On-a My House. He used dubbing of vocal tracks back when that was considered exotic.

'Take a very small thing and make it big'

"To me, the art of singing a pop song has always been to sing it very quietly," Miller said in the book Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music.

"The whole idea is to take a very small thing and make it big."

Miller and a chorus had a No. 1 hit in 1955 with The Yellow Rose of Texas, and that led to his sing-along records a few years later.

The years of Miller's biggest successes were also the early years of rock 'n' roll, and many fans saw his old-fashioned arrangements of standards and folk favourites as an antidote to the noisy stuff the teens adored. Miller himself, however, wasn't entirely unsympathetic to rock 'n' roll.

In a 1955 essay in The New York Times magazine, he said the popularity of rhythm and blues, as he called it, with white teens was part of young people's "natural desire not to conform, a need to be rebellious."

In recent years, Miller returned to his classical roots, appearing frequently as a guest conductor with symphony orchestras.

In 2000, he won a special Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.

Miller was born in 1911, in Rochester, N.Y., son of a Russian Jewish immigrant wrought-iron worker and a seamstress. He graduated from the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester.

Reuther said there will be a memorial service for her father in the fall.