IN: Mitchell William "Mitch" Miller (July 4, 1911 - July 31, 2010) was an American oboist, conductor, recording producer and recording industry executive. He was involved in almost all aspects of the industry, particularly as a conductor, and artist and repertoire (A&R) man. Miller was one of the most influential people in American popular music during the 1950s and early 1960s, both as the head of A&R at Columbia Records and as a best-selling recording artist with an NBC television series, Sing Along with Mitch. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in the early 1930s, Miller began his musical career as an accomplished player of the oboe and English horn, making numerous highly regarded classical and popular recordings, but he is best remembered as a choral conductor on television and as a recordings executive.

As a record producer, Miller gained a reputation for both innovation and gimmickry. Although he oversaw dozens of chart hits, his relentlessly cheery arrangements and his penchant for novelty material -- for example, Come On-a My House (Rosemary Clooney), "Mama Will Bark" (Frank Sinatra and Dagmar) -- has drawn criticism from some admirers of traditional pop music. Music historian Will Friedwald wrote in his book Jazz Singing (Da Capo Press, 1996) that  Miller exemplified the worst in American pop. He first aroused the ire of intelligent listeners by trying to turn -- and darn near succeeding in turning -- great artists like Sinatra, Clooney, and Tony Bennett into hacks. Miller chose the worst songs and put together the worst backings imaginable -- not with the hit-or-miss attitude that bad musicians traditionally used, but with insight, forethought, careful planning, and perverted brilliance.  At the same time, Friedwald acknowledges Miller's great influence on later popular music production:  Miller established the primacy of the producer, proving that even more than the artist, the accompaniment, or the material, it was the responsibility of the man in the recording booth whether a record flew or flopped. Miller also conceived the idea of the pop record "sound" per se: not so much an arrangement or a tune, but an aural texture (usually replete with extramusical gimmicks) that could be created in the studio and then replicated in live performance, instead of the other way around. Miller was hardly a rock 'n' roller, yet without these ideas there could never have been rock 'n' roll. "Mule Train", Miller's first major hit (for Frankie Laine) and the foundation of his career, set the pattern for virtually the entire first decade of rock. The similarities between it and, say, "Leader of the Pack", need hardly be outlined here.  While some of Columbia's performers, including Harry James, Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney, resented Miller's methods, the label maintained a high hit-to-release ratio during the 1950s. Sinatra particularly blamed his temporary fall from popularity while at Columbia on Miller; the crooner felt that he was forced by Miller to record material like "Mama Will Bark" and "The Hucklebuck". Miller countered that Sinatra's contract gave him the right to refuse any song.  In the early 1950s Miller recorded with Columbia's house band as "Mitchell Miller and His Orchestra". He also recorded a string of successful albums and singles, featuring a male chorale and his own distinctive arrangements, under the name "Mitch Miller and the Gang" starting in 1950. The ensemble's hits included "The Children's Marching Song" (more commonly known as "This Old Man"), "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena", and "The Yellow Rose of Texas", which topped the U.S. Billboard chart, sold over one million copies in the United States alone, and reached #2 on the UK Singles Chart. Miller's medley of the two marches from The Bridge on the River Kwai, "The River Kwai March" and "Colonel Bogey March", lasted 29 weeks on the Billboard pop charts in 1958, longer than any other record completely within that year.  In 1957, Miller's orchestra and chorus recorded U.S. Air Force Blue, a United States Air Force recruiting song, in a format that today would be called music video. He and his orchestra also recorded children's music for the Golden Records label. A choral group called The Sandpiper Singers provided the vocals for these recordings, including an album of Mother Goose nursery rhymes.  In 1961, Miller also provided two choral tracks set to Dimitri Tiomkin's title music on the soundtrack to The Guns of Navarone. Followed by the theme of The Longest Day over the end credits in 1962 and the "Major Dundee March", the theme song to Sam Peckinpah's 1965 Major Dundee. Though the film was a box-office bomb, paradoxically the song remained popular for years. In 1987, Miller conducted the London Symphony Orchestra with pianist David Golub in a well-received recording of Gershwin's An American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue, and Concerto in F.

Did he win any awards or hit on any charts or billboards?

OUT: The River Kwai March" and "Colonel Bogey March", lasted 29 weeks on the Billboard pop charts in 1958,

input: Dietz's Indian heritage was first contested in 1916 after former neighbors who settled on the Pacific Coast heard he was posing as an Indian. In December 1918 the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked into his heritage after he fraudulently registered for the draft as a "Non-Citizen Indian" with an allotment. The Bureau found he had taken on the identity of James One Star, an Oglala man of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation 12 years his senior who had disappeared in Cuba in 1894. Dietz also claimed he was the head of an American film company that produced propaganda films for the war.  Dietz divorced De Cora in November 1918, charging her with abandonment. It is not clear how much she knew about his true identity. She died six days after his indictment.  Dietz was tried in Spokane, Washington in June 1919 for the first offense. One Star's sister, Sallie Eaglehorse, testified after seeing him for the first time at the trial that Dietz was definitely not her brother. Still, the judge instructed the jury to determine whether Dietz "believed" he was an Indian, not whether it was true. Despite that others had witnessed his birth in the summer of 1884 or had seen him the following day, Dietz's mother Leanna claimed he was the Indian son of her husband who had been switched a week or more after she had a stillbirth. Dietz's acting ability along with his mother's fallacious testimony (to protect him from prison) resulted in a hung jury, but Dietz was immediately re-indicted. The second trial resulted in a sentence of 30 days in the Spokane County Jail after he pleaded "no contest".

Answer this question "Why was it contested?"
output:
the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked into his heritage after he fraudulently registered for the draft as a "Non-Citizen Indian" with an allotment.