Jimmy Boyd

Boyd said that although he liked the songs that became hits for him, especially the duets with Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney, and Gayla Peevey, he never wanted to sing many of the novelty songs that Mitch Miller, the head of Artists and Repertoire of Columbia Records, gave him. As the head of A&R at Columbia, Mitch Miller was in charge of all the recording artists there, including Frank Sinatra. When Mitch Miller signed him to Columbia, Boyd's new roots were in country music. Boyd's first hit at Columbia under Miller, "God's Little Candles", was in the country field. At the time, 250,000 records was the mark of a country hit, but "God's Little Candles" nearly reached the million mark. Years later, Kris Kristofferson introduced himself to Boyd and told him he had borrowed the music from the bridge of "God's Little Candles" to write one of his songs. Boyd was a fan of Kristofferson and so overwhelmed that when he had introduced himself, he forgot to ask Kristofferson which song he used it in. Despite this success, Miller moved Boyd into the pop music genre since country music was an isolated field at the time and very small in the overall record-buying fan base. Read Less