Glenn Miller

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Glenn Miller <tr style="text-align: center;"><td colspan="3"> Major Glenn Miller </td></tr>
Background information <tr><td>Birth name</td><td colspan="2">Alton Glenn Miller</td></tr><tr><td>Born</td><td colspan="2">March 1, 1904 Image:Flag of the United States.svg Clarinda, Iowa, USA</td></tr> <tr><td>Died</td><td colspan="2">circa December 15, 1944</td></tr><tr><td>Genre(s)</td><td colspan="2">Jazz, Big band</td></tr><tr><td>Occupation(s)</td><td colspan="2">Bandleader</td></tr><tr><td>Years active</td><td colspan="2">1923–1944</td></tr><tr><td textalign="top" style="padding-right: 1em;">Associated acts</td><td colspan="2">Glenn Miller Orchestra</td></tr>

Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 — presumably December 15, 1944), was an American jazz musician and bandleader in the swing era. He is widely recognized as the genre's best-selling performer from 1939 to 1942 and fronted one of the most well-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 his New York hotel residence) — are still familiar refrains, even to generations born decades after Miller disappeared.

1 Early life and career
- 1.1 Miller's first band
2 Military service, disappearance, and personality
- 2.1 Miller's disappearance, and speculation about why
3 Glenn Miller's Legacy
4 New Sound?
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Early life and career

Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa; 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 horn, which he practiced diligently.

In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado where he joined Sigma Nu Fraternity, 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, who is credited with helping Miller create the "Miller sound" and under whose tutelage he himself composed what became his signature theme, "Moonlight Serenade."

RCA/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." <ref>http://www.bluebirdjazz.com/artists/artist.jsp?id=1489#bio</ref>

Despite this, during the 1930s, Miller earned a living working as a freelance trombonist in several bands. In 1934 he assembled an American orchestra for British bandleader Ray Noble, developing the arrangement of lead clarinet over four saxophones that eventually became the sonic keynote of his own big band.

[edit] Miller's first band

He also compiled several musical arrangements before forming his first band in 1937. Jerry Jerome, Hal McIntyre, Charlie Spivak, Sterling Bose and Irving Fazola were some of the musicians in the band, along with singer Kathleen Lane. 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.'" [Benny Goodman to George Spink][1] "Peg O' My Heart," "Anytime, Any Day, Anywhere," "Moonlight Bay," "I'm Sitting on Top The World," "I Got Rhythm," "Sleepy Time Gal," "Community Swing," "Time On My Hands" and "Silhouetted In The Moonlight" were some of their best recordings.

Image:Glenn Miller 2.jpg

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, while three other saxophones harmonized. 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. It made his new band a nationwide hit. Tex Beneke, Al Klink, Chummy MacGregor, Billy May, Johnny Best, Maurice Purtill, Wilbur Schwartz, Ernie Caceres, Ray Anthony, Clyde Hurley and Hal McIntyre, among others, were some of the musicians in the band. Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton and The Modernaires were the singers.

The new Miller band immediately attracted large audiences to their concerts and records. Beginning in June 1938, Miller dominated the top spot on various popular music charts for more than a year, with "In the Mood" holding the top spot for more than fifteen weeks at the beginning of 1940. "Tuxedo Junction" took over, keeping Miller at number one into the summer. From 1939 to 1942, his band was featured three times a week during a broadcast for Chesterfield cigarettes. On February 10, 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first ever gold record for "Chattanooga Choo Choo".

Many jazz critics of that time felt that Miller's rise shifted popular music away from the "hot" bands of Benny Goodman and Count Basie. Many modern jazz critics still harbor similar antipathy toward Miller. Miller himself emphasized orchestrated arrangements over improvisation, but he did leave a little room for his best musicians to ad lib. This would be best examplified by Beneke, who soloed often ("Sunrise Serenade," "Falling Leaves").

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 as the group's fictitious bassist.

[edit] Military service, disappearance, and personality

In 1942, Miller joined the United States Army Air Forces and was commissioned as a captain as well as being appointed as the branch's band director. 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 resistance from tradition-minded career officers. He instead formed what was first known as the Band of the Training Command, a 24-piece dance band augmented by 21 string players chosen from a number of symphony orchestras. The dance band boasted several members of his civilian orchestra, including chief arranger Jerry Gray as well as stars from other bands such as Ray McKinley, Bobby Nichols, Hank Freeman, Peanuts Hucko and Mel Powell. Johnny Desmond and the Crew Chiefs were the singers, although recordings were also made with guest stars such as Bing Crosby, Irene Manning and Dinah Shore. The Dinah Shore sessions include her version of Stardust and are of special musical interest as they were recorded in high fidelity and were intended as the band's first commercial releases, although they were not made public until the early 1990s.

The orchestra was first based at Yale University. 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.

For many years, the only available recordings of this band were on a five-record set issued by RCA in the mid-1950s. These were recordings of the AAF Band's "I Sustain the Wings" broadcasts and rehearsals. Since the 1990s, however, RCA and various companies have issued high fidelity compact discs of music previously thought lost.

[edit] Miller's disappearance, and speculation about why

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, 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.)

Miller's disappearance has led to many conspiracy theories over the years. Clarence B. Wolfe, I Kept My Word: The Personal Promise Between a World War II Army Private and His Captain about What Really Happened to Glenn Miller, alleges that the author received secret information confirming that Miller was killed by friendly fire. Another theory holds that he landed safely, but died of a heart attack in a bordello in Paris. A third theory has also gained some recent credibility based on observations from his younger brother Herb Miller. Glenn had been a chain-smoker for much of his life and by late 1944 was suffering from severe weight loss and shortness of breath, leading to speculation that he was terminally ill, probably with lung cancer. This theory also holds that he landed safely, but died of his illnesses on December 16th. Both of these latter theories overlook the fact that Miller wasn't alone on the flight; there were two other officers aboard the aircraft when it disappeared. They also have never been found.

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 complained that at many of the concerts where he was leading the Glenn Miller band in the 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!" [Buddy DeFranco to George Simon, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, p.446]

Jazz critic Gary Giddins has said that Miller's bitterness and aloofness with his employees and enlisted men was probably a result of the many years he endured trying to build a successful band. According to Leo Walker in his book The Big Band Almanac, few people knew Miller well. Two people who did were Don Haynes, Miller's manager, and George T. Simon, jazz critic and author of Glenn Miller & His Orchestra. Don Haynes told Walker that Miller was a reserved person, but extremely warm towards those near him. But other musicians who were associated with Miller thought differently. They all respected Miller, but described him as all business, generally cold, perhaps insecure, and a person who had a driving ambition to be successful. But they all agreed that Miller was a musical perfectionist. Close friend and jazz critic George Simon says in his book The Big Bands he "could also spot phonies, whom he truly detested. If you were straight with Glenn, he'd give you at least the time of day. But if you weren't, he wouldn't even give you the time of night."

[edit] Glenn Miller's Legacy

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 The Glenn Miller Story, which portrayed many of his compositions and also took many liberties with his life story. For example, Marion Hutton, Paula Kelly, Tex Beneke and Ray Eberle are not mentioned at all. (Benny Goodman and the Dorsey brothers, to be fair, suffered similar fates when films of their lives were made in the same decade.)

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. Also George Siravo [2] from Miller's first band was a noted arranger who worked for Columbia records in the late 1940s and early 1950s and arranged songs for Doris Day and Sinatra. Wilbur Schwartz, Herman "Trigger" Alpert, Johnny Best, and Ernie Caceres backed up many singers in the 1950s. Ray Anthony led his own extremely popular band during that same time period.

Norman Leyden from the Army Air Force Band was a noted arranger in New York, who composed arrangements for Sarah Vaughan, among other people. [3] 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. [4] Kay Starr 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 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. By 1948, economics dictated that the string section be dropped. 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. "Even after the war, when big bands began to lose their popularity, the Palladium still drew in a record 6,750 eager dancers to the 1947 opening night performance of Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra – an event enthusiastically covered by Life Magazine." [5]

What began as the "Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Tex Beneke" finally became "The Tex Beneke Orchestra". This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did. The post-war Miller/Beneke band was heavily influenced by 1940s jump and R&B as evidenced by hits like "Hey Ba-Ba-Re-bop". 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. By 1950, Beneke and the Miller estate parted ways. The break was acrimonious and Beneke is rarely mentioned by the Miller estate as ever leading the Glenn Miller orchestra.

By the early 1950s, various bands were copying the Miller style of clarinet led reeds and muted trumpets, notably Ralph Flanagan, Jerry Gray and Ray Anthony. This, coupled the success of The Glenn Miller Story, led the Miller estate to ask Ray McKinley to lead a new ghost band. This 1956 band is the original version of the current ghost band that still tours today.

Every year Clarinda, Iowa, Glenn Miller's birthplace, runs a Glenn Miller festival. [6] Virtually the entire output of Chesterfield programs Glenn Miller did between 1939 and 1942 were recorded by the Glenn Miller organization on acetate discs. In the 1950s and afterwards, RCA distributed many of these on long playing albums and compact discs. Also, a sizable representation of the recording output by the band is almost always in circulation by RCA/BMG. Glenn Miller remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of 1935 to 1945.

In April 1992, at his daughter's request, a stone was placed in Memorial Section H, Number 464-A on Wilson Drive in Arlington National Cemetery

[edit] New Sound?

Miller himself may have been pondering a change to his music before his death. Adding a string section to his military band was one hint; other writings have cited Miller himself suggesting he had taken his trademark sound as far as he could take it without becoming completely sterile. In particular the aforementioned Dinah Shore recordings display a very different arranging style with only a slight hint of the famous reed blend. His death left forever unanswered the question of where he might have taken his music after the war, particularly when postwar economics made most bands the size of Miller's nearly impossible to sustain.

On the other hand, a soundtrack album of his two films showed the pre-Army Miller band playing with a more full-blooded attack (abetted by the broad reverberation of the sound stages where they cut the soundtracks, including new and meatier versions of some of their most familiar material) than they were known to do on their original recordings; perhaps Miller might have developed a new sound from that vantage point.