'Alton Glenn Miller' (
March 1,
1904 —
presumably December 15,
1944), was an
American jazz musician and
bandleader in the
swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best known "
Big Bands." During
World War II, while traveling to entertain U.S. troops in
France, his plane
disappeared in bad weather. His body was never found.
Miller's signature recordings — including, among others, "
In the Mood", "
Tuxedo Junction", "
Chattanooga Choo Choo", "
Moonlight Serenade", "
Sun Valley Jump", "
String of Pearls", "
Little Brown Jug", "
Pennsylvania 6-5000" (named for the phone number of New York's Hotel Pennsylvania, whose ballroom was Miller's primary venue) — are still familiar refrains, even to generations born decades after Miller disappeared.
Early life and career
Glenn Miller was born in
Clarinda, Iowa on
March 1 1904.
[1] Later, his family moved to
North Platte, Nebraska during his childhood, and he started his musical career when his father brought home a
mandolin. As soon as possible, he traded the instrument for an old
trombone, which he practised diligently.
[2]
In 1923, Miller entered the
University of Colorado where he joined
Sigma Nu Fraternity
[3], but spent most of his time away from school, attending auditions and playing any gigs he could get, most notably with
Boyd Senter's band in
Denver. He dropped out of school after failing three out of five classes one semester, and decided to concentrate on making a career as a professional
musician. He later studied the
Schillinger technique with Joseph Schillinger
[4], who is credited with helping Miller create the "Miller sound" and under whose tutelage he himself composed what became his signature theme, "
Moonlight Serenade."
[5]
Sony/BMG's Glenn Miller website continues:
:[In 1926] Miller toured with several groups and landed a good spot in
Ben Pollack's group in
Los Angeles. During his stint with Pollack, Miller had the opportunity to write several musical arrangements of his own. In
1928, when the band arrived in
New York City, he sent for and married his college sweetheart,
Helen Burger. He was a member of
Red Nichols’s orchestra in 1930 and, because of Nichols, played in the pit bands of two
Broadway shows, ''
Strike Up the Band'' and ''
Girl Crazy'', his bandmates included
Benny Goodman and
Gene Krupa. The consensus there was that Miller was no more than an average trombonist.
[6]
Despite this, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Miller managed to earn a living working as a freelance trombonist in several bands.
In November of 1929 [...] an original vocalist named Red McKenzie hired Glenn to play on two records that are now considered to be jazz classics: 'Hello Nola' and 'One Hour'. The session is also historic for its integration of both black and white musicians in the studio. Besides Glenn were clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, guitarist Eddie Condon, drummer Gene Krupa and Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone. Glenn always felt that these two sides with 'The Mound City Blue Blowers' represented his best-recorded trombone work. [Twomey] [7]
In the mid-1930s Miller also worked as a trombonist and arranger in the Dorsey Brothers ill-fated co-led orchestra. "[Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey] were constantly squabbling, and the subject was always music." [Simon 65-6] In 1935 he assembled an American orchestra for British bandleader
Ray Noble [Simon 66], developing the arrangement of lead
clarinet over four
saxophones that eventually became the sonic keynote of his own big band. Members of the Noble band included future bandleader Claude Thornhill, Bud Freeman and Charlie Spivak. [Albertson]
Glenn Miller compiled several
musical arrangements before forming his first band in 1937. The band failed to distinguish itself from the many others of the era and eventually broke up. Benny Goodman said in 1976, "In late 1937, before his band became popular, we were both playing in Dallas. Glenn was pretty dejected and came to see me. He asked, 'What do you do? How do you make it?' I said, 'I don't know, Glenn. You just stay with it.'"
[8]
Success From 1938 to 1942
Discouraged, Miller returned to
New York. He realized that he needed to develop a unique sound, and decided to make the
clarinet play a melodic line with a
tenor saxophone on the same note, with three other saxophones
harmonized within a single octave. With this sound combination, the Miller band that became the most popular was born in 1938. He was not the first to try this style, but he was the most successful at refining it and making it key to almost his entire repertoire. After a shaky start, it made his new band a nationwide hit.
Tex Beneke,
Al Klink,
Chummy MacGregor,
Billy May,
Johnny Best,
Maurice Purtill,
Wilbur Schwartz,
Clyde Hurley,
Ernie Caceres,
Ray Anthony,
Hal McIntyre and
Bobby Hackett, among others, were some of the musicians in the band.
Ray Eberle,
Marion Hutton,
Skip Nelson,
Paula Kelly,
Dorothy Claire and
The Modernaires were the seven singers.
In September 1938, the Miller band began making recordings for the RCA Victor Bluebird subsidiary. [Simon 143] In the spring of 1939, the band's fortunes improved with a date at the Meadowbrook ballroom and more dramatically at the Glen Island Casino in
New Rochelle, New York. With the Glen Island date the band began a huge rise in popularity. [Simon 170] ''
Time'' magazine in 1939 noted: "Of the twelve to 24 discs in each of today's 300,000 U. S. juke boxes, from two to six are usually Glenn Miller's."
[9] "There were record-breaking recordings, as well, such as 'Tuxedo Junction', which sold 115,000 copies in the first week. [www.glennmillerorchestra.com] 1939's huge success culminated with the Miller band in concert at Carnegie Hall on October 6, with Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, and Fred Waring also the main attractions. [Simon 91]
From 1939 to 1942, his band was featured three times a week during a broadcast for
Chesterfield cigarettes. [Simon 197,314] On
February 10,
1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first
gold record for "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". [Glenn Miller: A Legendary Performer] In 2004 Glenn Miller orchestra bassist Herman "Trigger" Alpert exclaimed, "Miller had America's music pulse, he knew what would please the listeners."[Popa]
[10]
Although Miller had massive popularity, many jazz critics of the time had their misgivings, believing that the band's endless rehearsals and "letter-perfect playing" diminished excitement and feeling from performances. [Simon 241] They also felt that Miller's brand of swing shifted popular music away from the "hot" jazz bands of
Benny Goodman and
Count Basie towards commercial novelty instrumentals and vocal numbers. "In fact, Miller was often criticized [...] for being too -- and here comes that dreaded word term -- 'commercial'. His answer, 'I don't want a jazz band.'" [Albertson] Many modern jazz critics still harbor similar antipathy toward Miller. ["Stride and Swing"] Miller himself emphasized orchestrated arrangements over improvisation, but he did leave a little room for his musicians to ad lib. This would be best exemplified by Tex Beneke, who soloed often ("Sunrise Serenade," [Flower 58] "Falling Leaves" [Flower 209]). Gary Giddins feels in an article for the ''New Yorker'', that these early critics erred in denigrating Glenn Miller's music and that the popular opinion of the time should hold greater sway. "Miller exuded little warmth on or off the bandstand, but once the band struck up its theme, audiences were done for: throats clutched, eyes softened. Can any other record match 'Moonlight Serenade' for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slaver in so many for so long?" ["Stride and Swing"]
Miller and his band appeared in two
Hollywood films, ''
Sun Valley Serenade'' (1941) and ''
Orchestra Wives'' (1942), the latter featuring future television legend
Jackie Gleason playing a part as the group's bassist. (Gleason did not actually play bass in the movie; the bass was played on the soundtrack by regular Miller bassist Trigger Alpert.) [Simon 253,295] "A stickler for the truth, [Miller] insisted on a thoroughly believable script before he'd go before Twentieth-Century Fox cameras. And keen businessman that he was, he demanded that the band become an integral part of the story and not just be thrown into some inconsequential scene [...]. He had achieved star status and he was now demanding and getting star treatment." [Simon 253]
The Army Air Force Band 1942-1944
Bust outside the Corn Exchange in
Bedford, where Miller played in World War 2.
In 1942, Miller joined the
United States Army Air Forces ["Stars Wore Stripes"] and was commissioned as a
captain as well as being appointed as the branch's band director. Miller jettisoned most of his civilian band's musical library. "[E]ven the famous Miller sound exemplified in 'Moonlight Serenade' was only heard occasionally from the AEF [Allied Expeditionary Forces] Band." [Butcher 97]
He initially formed a large marching band that was to be the core of a network of service orchestras, but his attempts at modernizing military music were met with some resistance from tradition-minded career officers. An example is the arrangement of "St. Louis Blues March", combining blues and jazz with the traditional military march. This was recorded on
October 29 1943 at the Victor studios in New York City. [The Best of Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band] "Miller's striking innovations and his adaptions [sic] of Sousa marches for the AAF band prompted ''Time'' magazine to claim that he had rankled traditionalists in the field of Army music and had desecrated the march king. The magazine also criticized Miller's injection of casual enjoyment into the disciplined cadences of military music, stating that the Army was 'swinging its hips instead of its feet.'" ["Stripes"] In the end though, the soldiers had a positive reaction to the new music and the Army gave tacit approval to the changes. ["Stripes"]
The orchestra was first based at
Yale University.
[11] From mid-1943 to mid-1944 they made hundreds of live appearances, transcriptions, and "I Sustain the Wings" radio broadcasts for
CBS and
NBC. Miller felt it was important that the band be as close as possible to the fighting troops. In mid-1944 he had the group transferred to
London, where they were renamed the
American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force. While in the
United Kingdom the band gave more than 800 performances to an estimated one million Allied servicemen. After one of the band's performances, General "Jimmy" Doolittle told then Captain Miller, "Next to a letter from home, Captain Miller, your organization is the greatest morale builder in the ETO (European Theater of Operations)."
By February of 1944, the band consisted of thirty musicians. [Butcher 41] The dance band boasted several members of his civilian orchestra, including chief arranger
Jerry Gray [Butcher 18] as well as stars from other bands such as
Ray McKinley,
Peanuts Hucko and
Mel Powell [Butcher 80].
Johnny Desmond and the
Crew Chiefs were the singers [Butcher 41-42], although recordings were also made with guest stars such as
Bing Crosby [Butcher 131-132],
Irene Manning [Butcher 189] and
Dinah Shore [Butcher 152]. The Dinah Shore recording sessions were September 16, 1944 in the HMV studios on Abbey Road and
[12] include her version of
Stardust. They are of special musical interest as they were intended as the band's first commercial releases. [Butcher 152-153]
The British magazine ''Melody Maker'' in their September 23, 1944 issue said:
"[The Dinah Shore recording session] which lasted for over four hours-gave us an opportunity to witness the painstaking thoroughness and terrific attention to detail of American musicians and artistes, and very impressive it was too." [Butcher 152-153] As of 1986 the songs from this session were yet to be issued on any label. [Butcher 156]
On
December 15,
1944, Miller, now a major, was scheduled to fly from the United Kingdom to
Paris to play for the soldiers who had recently
liberated Paris. His plane departed from
RAF Twinwood Farm, [Butcher 203-205]
Clapham, Bedfordshire, but disappeared over the
English Channel and was never found. Miller's disappearance remains a mystery; neither his remains nor the wreckage of his plane (a single-engined
Noorduyn Norseman UC-64, USAAF Tail Number 44-70285) were ever recovered from the water. (
Clive Ward's discovery of a
Noorduyn Norseman off the coast of Northern France in 1985 was unverifiable and contained no human remains.)
[13]
There have been sixty years of theories about what happened to Glenn Miller. Buddy DeFranco, one of the leaders of the post war Glenn Miller orchestra explained to George Simon, that at many of the concerts where he was leading the Glenn Miller band in the nineteen-seventies, more than a few people confided to him what "really" happened to Glenn Miller. "If I were to believe all those stories, there would have been about twelve thousand four hundred and fifty eight people there at the field in England seeing him off on that last flight!" [Simon 446]. It is now thought more than likely that Glenn Miller's plane was accidentally bombed by RAF bombers over The English Channel, after an abortive air raid on Germany and short on fuel dumping four thousand pounds of bombs in a safe drop zone to lighten the load. The logbooks of Royal Air Force pilot Fred Shaw record that a small mono engined plane was seen to spiral out of control and crash into the water.
[14][15]
''The Glenn Miller Story'' (1953) and Some Band Alumni
Glenn Miller's music is familiar to many born long after his death, especially from its use in a number of movies.
James Stewart starred as Miller in
1953's popular ''
The Glenn Miller Story'', which featured many songs from the Glenn Miller songbook, but which also took many liberties with his life story. For example,
Marion Hutton,
Paula Kelly,
Tex Beneke and
Ray Eberle are not mentioned at all.
Many of the Miller musicians went on to studio careers in Hollywood and New York after
World War II. For example, Billy May, who became a much-coveted arranger and studio orchestra leader — and backed up singers like
Frank Sinatra,
Rosemary Clooney,
Anita O'Day, and
Bing Crosby. Wilbur Schwartz
[16],
Herman "Trigger" Alpert[17],
Johnny Best, and Ernie Caceres ["Body and Soul"] backed up many singers in the 1940s and 1950s. Cornetist Bobby Hackett soloed on "A String of Pearls" in 1941 with the Miller orchestra; his reputation only ascended in the years after.
[18] Hackett's "wistful trumpet solos added a unique and essential touch to music by everyone from Glenn Miller to Jackie Gleason to Dizzy Gillespie."
[19]Norman Leyden from the Army Air Force Band was a noted arranger in New York, who later composed arrangements for
Sarah Vaughan, among other people.
[20] [21] Johnny Desmond from the Army Air Force Band became a popular singer in the 1950s and starred on Broadway in the
1960s in "
Funny Girl" with
Barbra Streisand.
[22]
Kay Starr[23] became one of the most popular singers of the post-war period; she got her start with Glenn Miller in 1939 recording two sides, "Baby Me" and "Love With A Capitol 'You'". [The Complete Glenn Miller]
Ghost Bands 1946-2007
The Miller estate authorized an official Glenn Miller "
ghost band" in
1946. This band was led by Tex Beneke and had a make up similar to the Army Air Force Band: it had a large string section. [Simon 437-39] "[T]he orchestra's 'official' public debut was at the Capitol Theater on Broadway where it opened for a three week engagement [on January 24, 1946]." [Butcher 262] "The theater held three or four thousand people, I guess-it was sheer bedlam, an incredibly exciting thing to hear, [said Bob Ripley]" [Butcher 262] Ripley also says, "People would call out from the audience [at the Capitol Theater] 'where's Glenn?' and it was apparent that a lot of people didn't even know he wasn't with us." [Butcher 262]
This ghost band played to very large audiences all across the U.S., including a few dates at the
Hollywood Palladium, where the original Miller band played in 1941 [Simon 258]. Ben Ratliff in the June 6, 2000 edition of ''The New York Times'' noted, "In December 1947, even as the big band era faded, Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra played to a record-breaking crowd of 6,750 dancers at the Hollywood Palladium." By
1949, economics dictated that the string section be dropped. [Butcher 263]
This band recorded for
RCA Victor [Butcher 263], just as the original Miller band did. Beneke was struggling with how to expand the Miller sound and also how to achieve success under his own name. The Miller estate had to please the ballroom operators and the record producers at RCA Victor. What began as the "Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Tex Beneke" finally became "The Tex Beneke Orchestra". By
1950, Beneke and the Miller estate parted ways. [Simon 439] The break was acrimonious and Beneke is not currently listed by the Miller estate as a former leader of the Glenn Miller orchestra.
[24]
When Glenn Miller was alive, various bandleaders like Bob Chester imitated his style.
[25] By the early 1950s, various bands were again copying the Miller style of clarinet led reeds and muted trumpets, notably
Ralph Flanagan[26],
Jerry Gray [27] and
Ray Anthony[28]. This, coupled with the success of ''
The Glenn Miller Story'', led the Miller estate to ask
Ray McKinley to lead a new ghost band. [Butcher 263] This 1956 band is the original version of the current ghost band that still tours the United States today.
[29] The official Glenn Miller orchestra for the United States is currently under the direction of Larry O'Brien.
The officially sanctioned Glenn Miller Orchestra for Europe has toured and recorded with great success since 1990 under the leadership of Wil Salden.
Legacy
Glenn Miller's widow, Helen, died in 1966. [Simon 434] Herb Miller, Glenn Miller's brother, led his own band in the United States and England until the late 1980s.
[30]. Herb's son, John
[31], continues the tradition leading a band playing mainly Glenn Miller style music. In April
1992, at Glenn's daughter's request, a stone was placed in Memorial Section H, Number 464-A on Wilson Drive in
Arlington National Cemetery[32] Every year (in the first weekend of June)
Clarinda, Iowa, Glenn Miller's birthplace, runs a Glenn Miller Days Festival.
[33] Also, every June, the city of
Fort Morgan, Colorado holds a similar festival, for Glenn Miller graduated from high school here.The city of
Duarte, California(east of Pasadena) has a small public park dedicated to him[partly because the park and a nearby elementary school made up most of the property that his house and future recording studio were originally located].
[34]In the United Kingdom, at Twinwood Airfield which is the last place Glenn Miller was seen alive, The International Glenn Miller Festival of Swing, Jazz & Jive is held annually every August bank-holiday; the John Miller band starring.
[35] In 2003, Miller posthumously received the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award[36]. Recently, in July of 2006, the now adult children of Glenn Miller were in the news with a lawsuit they filed against Glenn Miller Productions in the Ninth Circuit Court.
[37]
The entire output of Chesterfield programs Glenn Miller did between 1939 and 1942 were recorded by the Glenn Miller organization on acetate discs. [Simon 200-1] In the
1950s and afterwards, RCA distributed many of these on long playing albums and compact discs. [see ''Moonlight Serenade'' in "Works Cited"] Also, a sizeable representation of the recording output by the band is almost always in circulation by RCA/BMG
[38]and the successor labels to Columbia and Decca. Glenn Miller remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of
1935 to
1945.
Works Cited
Albertson, Chris. Liner notes. ''Major Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band, 1943-1944.'' Bluebird/RCA, 1987.
Flower, John. ''Moonlight Serenade: A Bio-discography.'' New Rochelle, NY., Arlington House. 1972.
"Glenn Miller." n.d. SonyBMG. 27 Dec., 2006. http://www.sonybmg.de/artists2.php?iA=4&artist=6763.
The Glenn Miller Story. Dir. Anthony Mann. Perf. James Stewart, June Allyson. Universal-International Pictures. 1953.
"Hollywood Palladium." n.d. Hollywood Palladium. 2 Jan., 2007. http://www.hollywoodpalladium.com/history.htm.
Miller, Glenn. ''The Best of the Army Air Force Band.'' RCA, 2001.
Miller, Glenn. ''The Complete Glenn Miller'', Vol.1, Bluebird/RCA,
1975.
"Music In The Miller Mood." n.d. George Spink. 27 Dec., 2006. http://www.tuxjunction.net/glennmiller.htm.
"New King" n.d. anon. 2 March, 2007. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762896,00.html
Simon, George.''Glenn Miller and His Orchestra''. New York, DaCapo. 1980.
"Stride and Swing: The Enduring Appeal of Fats Waller and Glenn Miller." 24 May, 2004. Gary Giddins. 27 Dec., 2006. http://www.newyorker.com/critics/music/articles/040531crmu_music.
"The World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra". n.d. Glenn Miller Productions. 30 Dec., 2006. http://www.glennmillerorchestra.com.
Twomey, John. "Who was Glenn Miller?" October, 2003. http://www.jazzsight.com/jazzsightprofiles.html
"World War Two: The Stars Wore Stripes." n.d. Fort George G. Meade Museum. 6 January, 2007. http://www.ftmeade.army.mil/museum/Archive_Stars_Part%201b.htm
See also
★
Swing music
★
Bandleader
★
Big band
★
Glenn Miller Orchestra
★ ''
The Glenn Miller Story'' (1953) with James Stewart and June Allyson
Universal Pictures movie about Glenn Miller
★
World War II
★
Missing in action
★
Death in absentia
★
List of people who have disappeared
★
List of swing/big band musicians
★
Sigma Nu LEADership learning program
External links
★
Glenn Miller Radio Show (9 episodes from 1940)
★
American BigBands Database Plus on Glenn Miller and others
★
Glenn Miller described at "Solid!" an online encyclopedia of big band music and classic jazz
★
Glenn Miller Biography at Vh1.com
★
The Glenn Miller Birthplace Society, organizing annual festivals
★
The Jack Million Band, Belgium, working band with authentic interpretation of Glenn Miller original arrangements,
directed by Jack Coenen
★
The Glenn Miller Orchestra for Europe,
directed by Wil Salden
★
A WWII soldier's insight into the mysterious disappearance of Glenn Miller
★
BBC's Article on Glenn Miller
★
Gary Giddins ''New Yorker'' article comparing Glenn Miller and Fats Waller centennial compilations on RCA
★
The Glenn Miller Orchestra South Africa (also known as the Johnny Cooper orchestra)
★
Pat Friday website British website with an interview with Pat Friday, the woman whose voice was dubbed for Lynn Bari in "Orchestra Wives" and "Sun Valley Serenade".
★
NPR 100 National Public Radio site from 2000, "In The Mood" named one of the twentieth century's top songs.
★
[39] Tuxedo Junction is George Spink's big band web site. His article about Glenn Miller, "Music in the Miller Mood," originally appeared as a four-part series in the Chicago Sun-Times at Christmastime 1984.
Site about the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band
★
"Abbey Road, July, 2006" Website featuring the story behind the Glenn Miller AAF Band and the legendary EMI studios.
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
