Difference between revisions of "Glenn Miller" - New World Encyclopedia
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'''Alton Glenn Miller''' (March 1, 1904 - c. December 15, 1944), was an [[United States|American]] [[jazz]] musician and [[bandleader]] in the [[Swing (genre)|swing]] era. He was one of the world's best selling recording artists from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best known "[[Big band|Big Bands]]." | '''Alton Glenn Miller''' (March 1, 1904 - c. December 15, 1944), was an [[United States|American]] [[jazz]] musician and [[bandleader]] in the [[Swing (genre)|swing]] era. He was one of the world's best selling recording artists from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best known "[[Big band|Big Bands]]." | ||
| − | Miller's best-known recordings include "[[In the Mood]]," "[[Tuxedo Junction]]," "[[Chattanooga Choo Choo]]," "[[Moonlight Serenade (song)|Moonlight Serenade]]," "[[Little Brown Jug (song)|Little Brown Jug]]," and "[[Pennsylvania 6-5000]]." | + | Miller's best-known recordings include "[[In the Mood]]," "[[Tuxedo Junction]]," "[[Chattanooga Choo Choo]]," "[[Moonlight Serenade (song)|Moonlight Serenade]]," "[[Little Brown Jug (song)|Little Brown Jug]]," and "[[Pennsylvania 6-5000]]." "Chattanooga Choo Choo" became the recording industry's first "gold record" when it reached 1.2 million copies sold. |
| − | While traveling to entertain U.S. troops in [[France]] during [[World War II]], Miller's plane [[Missing person|disappeared]] in bad weather. His body was never found. | + | While traveling to entertain U.S. troops in [[France]] during [[World War II]], Miller's plane [[Missing person|disappeared]] in bad weather. His body was never found. Although sometimes criticized by jazz purists for his commericialism, Miller's recordings are still familiar refrains, even to generations born decades after Miller disappeared. |
==Early life and career== | ==Early life and career== | ||
| Line 49: | Line 49: | ||
Miller and his band appeared in two [[Hollywood]] films, [[1941 in film|1941's]], ''[[Sun Valley Serenade]]'' and [[1942 in film|1942's]] ''[[Orchestra Wives]]'', the latter featuring future television legend [[Jackie Gleason]] playing a part as the group's bassist. A stickler for the truth, Miller insisted on a thoroughly believable script before he'd go before [[Twentieth-Century Fox]] cameras. | Miller and his band appeared in two [[Hollywood]] films, [[1941 in film|1941's]], ''[[Sun Valley Serenade]]'' and [[1942 in film|1942's]] ''[[Orchestra Wives]]'', the latter featuring future television legend [[Jackie Gleason]] playing a part as the group's bassist. A stickler for the truth, Miller insisted on a thoroughly believable script before he'd go before [[Twentieth-Century Fox]] cameras. | ||
| − | == | + | == Army Air Force Band 1942-1944== |
[[Image:GlennMillerBustBedford.JPG|right|thumb|180px|[[Bust (sculpture)|Bust]] outside the Corn Exchange in [[Bedford]], where Miller played in World War 2.]] | [[Image:GlennMillerBustBedford.JPG|right|thumb|180px|[[Bust (sculpture)|Bust]] outside the Corn Exchange in [[Bedford]], where Miller played in World War 2.]] | ||
| − | In 1942, at the peak of his civilian career, Miller decided to join the war effort. At 38 years old, he was too old for the draft | + | In 1942, at the peak of his civilian career, Miller decided to join the war effort. At 38 years old, he was too old for the draft and first volunteered for the [[United States Navy|Navy]] only to be told that they did not need his services. Miller then wrote to the Army’s Brigadier General Charles Young and persuaded the [[United States Army|Army]] to accept him so he could, in his own words, "put a little more spring into the feet of our marching men and a little more joy into their hearts and to be placed in charge of a modernized army band." After being accepted in the Army, Miller's civilian band played its last concert in [[Passaic, New Jersey]] on September 27 1942.<ref name=millerhistory /> |
| − | + | Miller initially formed a large [[marching band]] that was to be the core of a network of service [[orchestra]]s. However, Miller's striking innovations and his adaptations of [[John Philip Sousa|Sousa]] marches for the [[Army Air Force Band]] were controversial, prompting ''Time'' magazine to claim that he had rankled traditionalists in the field of Army [[music]] and had desecrated the march king.<ref name=bestof>Miller, Glenn, ''The Best of Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band'', RCA, 1987. An example is his arrangement of "St. Louis Blues March", combining [[blues]] and [[jazz]] with the traditional military march, recorded on October 29 1943 at the Victor studios in New York City.</ref> The soldiers themselves, however, had a positive reaction to the new music and the Army gave tacit approval to the changes. | |
| − | The [[orchestra]] was first based at [[Yale University]]. | + | The new [[orchestra]] was first based at [[Yale University]]. From mid-43 to mid-44 it made hundreds of live appearances 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 it was renamed the "American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force." While in the [[United Kingdom]], the band gave more than 800 performances to an estimated 1 million Allied servicemen. After one of the band's performances, General [["Jimmy" Doolittle]] told a 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 1944, the band consisted of | + | By February 1944, the band consisted of 30 musicians and boasted several members of his civilian orchestra, including chief arranger [[Jerry Gray (arranger)|Jerry Gray]], alongside stars from other bands such as: [[Ray McKinley]], [[Peanuts Hucko]], and [[Mel Powell]]. [[Johnny Desmond]] and The Crew Chiefs were normally the singers, and recordings were made with guest stars such as [[Bing Crosby]], [[Irene Manning]], and [[Dinah Shore]]. The Dinah Shore sessions include her version of [[Stardust (song)|Stardust]]. |
==Disappearance== | ==Disappearance== | ||
Revision as of 20:07, 12 January 2009
| Glenn Miller | |
|---|---|
 Major Glenn Miller
| |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Alton Glenn Miller |
| Born | March 1 1904 Clarinda, Iowa, U.S.
|
| Died | circa December 15 1944 (aged 40) |
| Genre(s) | Swing music Big band Sweet bands |
| Occupation(s) | Bandleader |
| Instrument(s) | Trombone |
| Years active | 1923–1944 |
| Associated acts | Glenn Miller Orchestra |
Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 - c. December 15, 1944), was an American jazz musician and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the world's best selling recording artists from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best known "Big Bands."
Miller's best-known recordings include "In the Mood," "Tuxedo Junction," "Chattanooga Choo Choo," "Moonlight Serenade," "Little Brown Jug," and "Pennsylvania 6-5000." "Chattanooga Choo Choo" became the recording industry's first "gold record" when it reached 1.2 million copies sold.
While traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Miller's plane disappeared in bad weather. His body was never found. Although sometimes criticized by jazz purists for his commericialism, Miller's recordings are still familiar refrains, even to generations born decades after Miller disappeared.
Early life and career
Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa. In 1915, at the age of 11, his family moved to Grant City, Missouri. While completing elementary school, he was given his first trombone which led to his participation in the town band. In 1918, the Miller family moved again, this time to Fort Morgan, Colorado where Glenn attended high school. During his senior year, he became interested in a new musical style called "dance band music." He and several classmates decided to start their own dance band. By the time Miller graduated from high school in 1921, he had decided to become a professional musician.[1]
In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado. However, he spent most of his time away from school, attending auditions and playing any "gigs" he could get. He eventually dropped out of school and decided to concentrate on making a career as a professional musician. He later studied with with Joseph Schillinger, who is credited with helping Miller create the "Miller sound," and under whose tutelage Miller composed what became his signature theme, "Moonlight Serenade."
In 1926, Miller toured with several groups and landed a position in Ben Pollack's band in Los Angeles writing several musical arrangements for the Pollack ensemble. 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 played in the pit bands of two Broadway shows, Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy. His bandmates included Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa.
In the mid-30s, Miller also worked as a trombonist and arranger in The Dorsey Brothers orchestra. In 1935, he assembled an American orchestra for British bandleader Ray Noble, developing the arrangement style using lead clarinet over four saxophones that eventually became the keynote of his own big band. Miller compiled formed his own first band in 1937, although it failed to distinguish itself from the many others of the era and eventually broke up.
Success from 1938 to 1942
Miller realized that he needed to develop a unique sound and decided to emphasize the arranging style he had developed earlier, in which the clarinet and tenor saxophone play the lead melody together, with three other saxophones harmonizing within a single octave. With this sound combination, the Miller band found nationwide success. Musicians included 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 were members of the band. Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, Skip Nelson, Paula Kelly, Dorothy Claire, and The Modernaires were the band's seven singers.
In September 1938, the Miller band began making recordings for the RCA Victor Bluebird Records subsidiary. In the spring of 1939, the band played notable dates at the Meadowbrook Ballroom in Cedar Grove, New Jersey and the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York, began a marked rise in popularity. Time magazine soon remarked: "Of the twelve to 24 discs in each of today's 300,000 U.S. jukeboxes, from two to six are usually Glenn Miller's." Miller's recording of "Tuxedo Junction" sold a record-breaking 115,000 copies in its first week, and the Miller band closed the year in concert in triumph at Carnegie Hall on October 6, with Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, and Fred Waring sharing the bill.
From 1939 to 1942, Miller's band was featured three times a week during a radio broadcast for Chesterfield cigarettes. On February 10 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with history's first gold record commemorating "Chattanooga Choo-Choo"'s 1.2 million sales.
Although Miller had massive popularity, he was often criticized for being too commercial. Jazz critics opined that the band's endless rehearsals and "letter-perfect playing" diminished excitement and that Miller's brand of swing shifted popular music away from the "hot" jazz bands of Benny Goodman and Count Basie towards novelty instrumentals and vocal numbers. Miller intentionally emphasized orchestrated arrangements over improvisation, but he did leave a some room for his musicians to play ad lib.
Miller and his band appeared in two Hollywood films, 1941's, Sun Valley Serenade and 1942's Orchestra Wives, the latter featuring future television legend Jackie Gleason playing a part as the group's bassist. A stickler for the truth, Miller insisted on a thoroughly believable script before he'd go before Twentieth-Century Fox cameras.
Army Air Force Band 1942-1944
In 1942, at the peak of his civilian career, Miller decided to join the war effort. At 38 years old, he was too old for the draft and first volunteered for the Navy only to be told that they did not need his services. Miller then wrote to the Army’s Brigadier General Charles Young and persuaded the Army to accept him so he could, in his own words, "put a little more spring into the feet of our marching men and a little more joy into their hearts and to be placed in charge of a modernized army band." After being accepted in the Army, Miller's civilian band played its last concert in Passaic, New Jersey on September 27 1942.[1]
Miller initially formed a large marching band that was to be the core of a network of service orchestras. However, Miller's striking innovations and his adaptations of Sousa marches for the Army Air Force Band were controversial, prompting Time magazine to claim that he had rankled traditionalists in the field of Army music and had desecrated the march king.[2] The soldiers themselves, however, had a positive reaction to the new music and the Army gave tacit approval to the changes.
The new orchestra was first based at Yale University. From mid-43 to mid-44 it made hundreds of live appearances 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 it was renamed the "American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force." While in the United Kingdom, the band gave more than 800 performances to an estimated 1 million Allied servicemen. After one of the band's performances, General "Jimmy" Doolittle told a 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 1944, the band consisted of 30 musicians and boasted several members of his civilian orchestra, including chief arranger Jerry Gray, alongside stars from other bands such as: Ray McKinley, Peanuts Hucko, and Mel Powell. Johnny Desmond and The Crew Chiefs were normally the singers, and recordings were made with guest stars such as Bing Crosby, Irene Manning, and Dinah Shore. The Dinah Shore sessions include her version of Stardust.
Disappearance
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, in Clapham, Bedfordshire, but disappeared over the English Channel and was never found.[3] 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. In 1985, British diver Clive Ward discovered a Noorduyn Norseman off the coast of Northern France. His findings were unverifiable and contained no clues as to what happened. The disappearance still remains a mystery.[4]
Since the disappearance of Miller over sixty years ago, a number of theories about what happened to bandleader have surfaced. Buddy DeFranco, one of the leaders of the post-war Glenn Miller orchestra, told Glenn Miller biographer George T. Simon of the many supposed truths he was told of Miller's true fate while he was leading the Glenn Miller band in the 1970s. DeFranco stated, "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!"[5].
It is now thought that Glenn Miller's plane was accidentally bombed by RAF bombers over The English Channel after an abortive air raid on Germany. The bombers, which were short on fuel, dumped 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 spiraling out of control, and crashed into the water.[6][7]
The Glenn Miller Story
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 also took many liberties with his life story. For example, Marion Hutton, Paula Kelly, Tex Beneke and Ray Eberle are not mentioned at all.
Legacy
Glenn Miller was in many ways a true patriot and musical inspiration. By utilizing his talent for the sake of his fellow servicemen and women in a time of great national tribulation, he demonstrated a willingness to provide joy and comfort via his musical gifts. Also notable was his inclusion of African-American musicians into his musical circle thereby assisting in the process of using music as a vehicle for social betterment.
In the United Kingdom, at Twinwood Airfield, the last place Glenn Miller was seen alive, The International Glenn Miller Festival of Swing, Jazz & Jive is held annually every August. [8] In 2003, Miller posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award[9]
The entire output of Chesterfield programs Glenn Miller did between 1939 and 1942 were recorded by the Glenn Miller organization on acetate discs.[10] In the 1950s and afterwards, RCA distributed many of these on long playing albums and compact discs. A sizable representation of the recording output by the band is almost always in circulation by RCA/BMG, 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.
The roots of the famous Airmen of Note big band can be traced to its earliest beginnings with the band which Glenn Miller directed for the Army Air Force during World War II.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 http://www.glennmiller.org/history.htm
- ↑ Miller, Glenn, The Best of Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band, RCA, 1987. An example is his arrangement of "St. Louis Blues March", combining blues and jazz with the traditional military march, recorded on October 29 1943 at the Victor studios in New York City.
- ↑ Butcher, pages 203-205
- ↑ http://www.bigbands.org/millercrash.htm
- ↑ Simon, page 446
- ↑ http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/filmnotes/glennmillerstory.html
- ↑ http://www.mboss.force9.co.uk/twinwood/roth/index.htm
- ↑ http://www.glennmillerfestival.com
- ↑ http://www.grammy.com/Recording_Academy/Awards/Lifetime_Awards/
- ↑ Simon, pages 200-1
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 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.
