 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: clarinet60
Date: 2005-10-18 18:04
I recently acquired a mouthpiece marked Miller Milwaukee and Rod Rubber. It plays quite nicely. Anyone know the history of this maker?
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Author: donald
Date: 2005-10-18 18:52
Brad Behn knows a bit about this- he used to have a little supply of them. You could try emailing him. I used one for a while and really liked the tone but found the pitch to be a bit high. Bridget Miles (assoc principal from Auckland Philharmonia) has a mouthpiece refaced etc by James Pyne that appears to be made from a Miller blank, and has the same "sound characteristics" as my old one without the intonation problems.
donald
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Author: LarryBocaner ★2017
Date: 2005-10-18 19:03
Robert Miller was much loved and respected teacher and mouthpiece maker in Milwaukee until his passing (I'm guessing here) in the late 60's or early 70's. I used to purchase his mouthpieces for my students when he was still active, and they were of very high quality. He worked extensively with Bob Marcellus and Bernie Portnoy, and might well be resposible for the facings that carry their names.
He refaced an old Lelandais bass clarinet mouthpiece for me in the 1950's. This facing, which was much copied by others, served me well for close to 50 years, and the Zinner/Garrett I currently play has almost the identical facing.
Your Miller moputhpiece might be a hidden treasure!
Larry Bocaner
PS. He was co-author of the Rubank Intermediate Method book.
Post Edited (2005-10-18 19:09)
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2005-10-18 22:32
According to Bernard Portnoy, Miller designed and made the prototypes for his mouthpiece. I got one from BP himself at Interlochen in 1962 and played it for several years. The logo is in a rounded script, quite different from the current one.
It's very accommodating and easy to play, with a nice sound that doesn't ring much.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2005-10-18 23:33
Hi ken,
I knew I had heard that name before. Portnoy told me in an email (I wished I had saved it) that he and Miller just sat down and Miller worked on the MP until it was just right. I had asked Portnoy if he was "trying to duplicate the playing characateristics of a Kaspar or..." and his answer (in typical Portnoy style) was "No, I just wanted one that played right for me."
As I have mentioned earlier on this BB, I have a BP02 from the early 70s and love it. The prinicipal in a wind ensemble I play in (she is a former student of Sidney Forrest at Interlochen) plays one as well; she has a tone to die for as well and I love to hear her play. Very reed friendly MP with a great big pleasing sound.
HRL
PS There may be a mention of Miller in Shannon Thompson's dissertation.
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Author: William
Date: 2005-10-19 17:50
Robert Miller shared a music store in Milwaukee, WI on McKinley street with "Mac" MacGibbon, a master clarinet accoustician that many midwestern professional clarinetst visited regularily for bore and tone hole adjustments on their Buffets. He made his own bassoons and was quite a character, always smoking his pipe upside sown while twisting the hand held auger up the bore of your precious clarinet, sawdust falling to the floor. The name of the store was Miller and MacGibbon and Robert was best known by me as a mouthpiece maker and store proprietor. I did own one of his mouthpieces ("Here, take this one--it's the only one you'll ever need") but sadly, traded it to a friend of mine soon after leaving college is the 60's. It really wasn't "right" for me--at the time--and I much preferred my new Chicago Kaspar. Years later, after his store had been closed, he reopened it for me so I could try his many sets of early Buffet clarinets with the wraparound register keys. And he offered to sell me his wifes solid silver flute--custom made by Vern Powell--for $5000. The clarinets were not to my liking, but that flute played so nicely...........however, too much money at the time (dang it). Hope this little bit of Miller history help
(thanks to John S for correcting my earlier street identification error)
Post Edited (2005-10-20 14:13)
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Author: John Scorgie
Date: 2005-10-19 21:51
clarinet60 --
For further information on Miller mouthpieces you might wish to contact Emil Anello in Milwaukee. He studied mpce making with Miller and has a line of clarinet and sax mpces which have received favorable comments. I read somewhere that Anello has worked on mpces for Buddy DeFranco, among others. He has a website -- google on Anello clarinet should bring it right up.
Robert Miller was a theater musician in the silent film days, when the best paid jobs in music were in the house orchestras of the big theaters. He was the resident clarinetist at the Palace Theater at 6th & Wisconsin when the Palace was the top theater in town.
After achieving enough proficiency to make his living for several years playing the clarinet in and around the Milwaukee area, Miller went to New York to study with Gustave Langenus. He was a great admirer of Langenus and used the Langenus methods in his teaching.
Miller had a great number of clarinet students over the years. For many years he also taught class lessons on Saturday mornings for the Milwaukee school system. I may well have been the very last student to have weekly private lessons with Miller, c. 1955-56.
He told me that his favorite violinist was Mischa Elman and that his favorite clarinetist was Joseph Schreurs of the old Chicago Symphony. Miller played and taught the old "smile" embouchure, and judging from his playing during my lessons with him, he must have been a formidable clarinetist in his younger days.
The MacGibbon and Miller shop was not on "Kliborn" (sic) nor on Kilbourn. It was on the second floor of an office building on 6th street between Wisconsin and Michigan, just half a block away from the old Palace Theater. His studio faced on the street so you could look out the window and see the North Shore RR station up at the corner and the Royal Hotel and the Milwaukee Road station further down Michigan. When that office building was scheduled to be razed, M/M moved to quarters in a quieter neighborhood, on McKinley near the corner of 27th Street.
In 1965 while attending a state music educator's conference in Indianapolis I met Bernard Portnoy who was there displaying and selling his reeds and mouthpieces. I bought a box of reeds from him, and mentioned that I had studied with Robert Miller in Milwaukee and that Miller sold a mouthpiece which he called the Portnoy facing. Portnoy then said you realize that this mouthpiece is Miller's design. Portnoy went on to say that he had been to all of the mouthpiece makers in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, but that no one had been able to give him just what he wanted in a clarinet mouthpiece. Then one time when he was out on tour and stopped in Milwaukee for a performance, he remembered that some of the players back in New York had suggested that if he was ever in Milwaukee, he should look up Robert Miller to see if he could help. He made contact and related his problem to Miller, who said come on over and we will see what we can do. When Portnoy appeared at the shop, Miller pulled out some rather simple tools which did not impress Portnoy at all. However, by the end of the afternoon, Portnoy finally had what he wanted in a mouthpiece. He asked Miller to go into production with the mouthpiece, but Miller declined saying he was just too old to take on a project of that magnitude.
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2005-10-20 01:49
John,
So, the comment that Portnoy made to me that I mentioned above was not too far "off the wall." I really love these stories of the old days and miss the great music stores and repair shops that seemed to abound in the pre-technology era.
Great story, thanks!
HRL
PS I love my original BP02. I also asked BP about the ligature and how I could get one and he said "get a Bonade; it is the same." I have two Portnoy ligatures and my $5 Luyben original and a modiefied $7 Gigliotti play better then Bonade and Portnoy ligatures. The Portnoy is not the same as the Bonade at all and does not play near as well.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2005-10-20 11:59
Interesting stories but what's this got to do with Rod Rubber who is an occasional contributor here. I am reminded of having read Miller's Genuine Draft of Rubank Book 1.
Bob Draznik
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Author: clarinet60
Date: 2005-10-20 14:32
Thanks for all of the detailed information. I appreciate it! Just a tidbit about Bernard Portnoy (I studied with him at IU for 4 years). He once showed me a prototype of an inverted ligature that he had designed, which was the "best" ligature I ever played. All of his ligatures were similar to Bonade's except they had four pressure points instead of two rails. It's ashame that this ligature never saw the light of day. I asked him to sell the prototype to me, but of course he declined because it was one of the only ones he had.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2005-10-20 14:50
clarinet60 -
BP in fact sold this ligature for a while. I got one along with the mouthpiece in around 1961. It was metal, screws on top, and had a plate with 4 small raised dots at the 4 corners, each one about twice the size of a pinhead.
I tried it, but soon switched back to an inverted Bonade. The dots dug into the reed badly when you tightened the ligature enough to prevent air leaks, and I liked my sound better with the Bonade.
Ken Shaw
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Author: contragirl
Date: 2005-10-21 06:00
Hey, I know Rod_Rubber personally! I dunno if he drinks Miller though. :P
Maybe the beer company was trying their hand at musical intruments?
Interesting market tactic.
--CG
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Author: clarinet60
Date: 2007-08-16 15:13
Does anyone know whose blanks Miller used. The one I have says Rod Rubber on it?
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