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This article is about the jazz musician. For the college basketball coach, see Glen Miller (basketball coach).
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007) |
| 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,Clarinet |
| Years active | 1923–1944 |
| Associated acts | Glenn Miller Orchestra |
Alton Glenn Miller (March 1 1904–presumably December 15 1944), was an American jazz musician and band leader 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". Miller\'s signature recordings include, "In the Mood", "Tuxedo Junction", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Moonlight Serenade", "Little Brown Jug", and "Pennsylvania 6-5000"[1]. While travelling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Miller\'s plane disappeared in bad weather. His body was never found.
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Glenn Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa on March 1 1904.The Free Information Society: Glenn Miller Biography He went to grade school in North Platte, Nebraska. In 1915, Miller\'s family moved to Grant City, Missouri where he continued school and milked cows for spending money. Around this time, Miller was given his first trombone and then played in the town orchestra. In 1918, the Miller family moved again, this time to Fort Morgan, Colorado where Glenn went to high school. During his senior year, Miller became very interested in a new style of music called "dance band music". Miller enjoyed this music so much that he and some classmates decided to start their own band. By the time Miller graduated from high school in 1921, he had decided he wanted to become a professional musician.Glennmiller.org
In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado where he joined Sigma Nu Fraternity,Famous Sigma Nu’s 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,The Schillinger School of Music who is credited with helping Miller create the "Miller sound", and under whose tutelage he himself composed what became his signature theme, "Moonlight Serenade."Who Is Joseph Schillinger?
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."Sony/BMG Glenn Miller Biography 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, Lola" and "If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight". "Not only were [the two songs Miller recorded] considered major musical items, but they also represented one of the major breakthroughs in blacks and whites playing together." [Simon 55] Besides Glenn were clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, guitarist Eddie Condon, drummer Gene Krupa and Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone.John Twomey. Who was Glenn Miller? Jazzsight Profiles.
In the mid-1930s, Miller also worked as a trombonist and arranger in The Dorsey Brothers ill-fated co-led orchestra.Simon, George T., Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, De Capo Press, 1980. ISBN 0-306-80129-9. pages 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, Chris, Major Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band, 1943-1944, Bluebird/RCA, 1987. Liner notes
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."Spink, George. Music in the Miller Mood.
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 new sound combination, the Miller band found success. Miller 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.
In September 1938, the Miller band began making recordings for the RCA Victor Bluebird Records subsidiary.Simon, page 143 In the spring of 1939, the band\'s fortunes improved with a date at the Meadowbrook Ballroom in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, 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, page 170 In 1939, Time magazine noted: "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.""New King", Time Magazine, 1939-11-27. There were record-breaking recordings such as "Tuxedo Junction", which sold 115,000 copies in the first week.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, page 91
From 1939 to 1942, Miller\'s band was featured three times a week during a broadcast for Chesterfield cigarettes.Simon, pages 197, 314 On February 10 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first gold record for "Chattanooga Choo-Choo".Miller, Glenn, A Legendary Performer, RCA, 1939/1991 In 2004, Glenn Miller orchestra bassist Herman "Trigger" Alpert explained the band\'s success: "Miller had America\'s music pulse.[...] He knew what would please the listeners."Big Band Library: Glenn Miller: "A Memorial, 1944-2004"
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, page 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. Miller was often criticized for being too commercial. His answer to the criticism was, "I don\'t want a jazz band". Many modern jazz critics still harbour similar antipathy toward Miller.Giddins, Gary, "Stride and Swing: The Enduring Appeal of Fats Waller and Glenn Miller.", The New Yorker, May 24 2004. Retrieved on September 14 2007 In an article written by Gary Giddins for The New Yorker in 2004, Giddins felt that these early critics erred in denigrating Glenn Miller\'s music, and that the popular opinion of the time should hold greater sway. The article states: "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?"
Miller and his band appeared in two Hollywood films, 1941\'s, Sun Valley Serenade and 1942\'s Orchestra Wives, the latter featuring Jackie Gleason playing a part as the group\'s bassist. Miller insisted on a believable script before he\'d go before Twentieth-Century Fox cameras. Miller also 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, pages 253, 295
Bust outside the Corn Exchange in Bedford, where Miller played in World War II.
In 1942, at the peak of his civilian career, Miller decided he could better serve those in uniform by joining the war effort. At 38 years old, Miller was too old to be drafted, and first volunteered for the Navy but was told that they didn’t need his services. Miller then wrote to the Army’s Brigadier General Charles Young on August 12 1942. Miller 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, Glenn’s civilian band played their last concert in Passaic, New Jersey on September 27 1942.
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.Miller, Glenn, The Best of Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band, RCA, 1987. Miller\'s striking innovations and his adaptations 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.\'"War Two: The Stars Wore Stripes But by the time of Miller\'s death, opinion had changed. General Jimmy Doolittle[2] said, “[...]next to a letter from home, that organization was the greatest morale builder in the European Theater of Operations.”[3]
On December 15, 1944, Miller, now a major, was to fly from the United Kingdom to Paris, France, to play for the soldiers who recently had liberated Paris. His plane departed from RAF Twinwood Farm, in Clapham, Bedfordshire, but disappeared over the English Channel and was never found.Butcher, pages 203-205 Miller\'s disappearance remains a mystery; neither his remains nor the wreckage of his plane (a single-engine Noorduyn Norseman UC-64, USAAF Tail Number 44-70285) was ever recovered from the water. In 1985, British diver Clive Ward discovered a Noorduyn Norseman off the coast of Northern France. His findings were not verified and contained no clues about what happened.The Big Band Broadcast, THEY SAY Miller\'s Plane Went Down In The English Channel
Since Miller\'s disappearance more than sixty years ago, there have been many theories about what happened. Buddy DeFranco, one of the leaders of the post-war Glenn Miller orchestra, told biographer George T. Simon of the many theories of Miller\'s disappearance that were told to him while he was leading the band in the 1970s. DeFranco said "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, page 446
It is now thought that Miller\'s plane was bombed accidentally by Royal Air Force aircraft over the English Channel after an abortive air raid on Germany. One hundred and thirty-eight Lancaster bombers, short on fuel, were jettisoning approximately 100,000 incendiaries in a designated area before landing, per standing orders.The Mysterious Disappearance of Glenn Miller The logbooks of Royal Air Force navigator Fred Shaw record that a small single-engined monoplane was seen spiralling out of control and crashed into the water. If this was indeed Miller\'s plane, then the RAF crews jettisoning ordnance to facilitate safe landing conditions could not have been to blame for Miller\'s plane\'s straying into their designated drop zone.The Glenn Miller StoryRoth, Howard. The Glenn Miller Mystery.
Many of the Miller musicians went on to studio and touring careers in Hollywood and New York after World War II:
The Miller estate authorized an official Glenn Miller "ghost band" in 1946. This band was led by Tex Beneke, former lead saxophonist and singer for the civilian band. It had a make up similar to the Army Air Force Band: it had a large string section.Simon, pages 437-39 The orchestra\'s official public début was at the Capitol Theatre on Broadway where it opened for a three week engagement on January 24, 1946.Butcher, page 262 Henry Mancini was the band\'s pianist and one of the arrangers.[11] 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, page 258 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.[12] By 1949, economics dictated that the string section be dropped.Butcher, page 263
This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did.Butcher, page 263 Beneke was struggling with how to expand the Miller sound and also how to achieve success under his own name. 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, page 439 The break was acrimonious and Beneke is not currently listed by the Miller estate as a former leader of the Glenn Miller orchestra.Glennmillerorchestra.com, Former leaders
When Glenn Miller was alive, various bandleaders like Bob Chester imitated his style.Solid!, Bob Chester biography/filmography By the early 1950s, various bands were again copying the Miller style of clarinet led reeds and muted trumpets, notably Ralph Flanagan,Bigbandlibrary.com, Ralph Flanagan Jerry Gray,Bigbandlibrary.com, Jerry Gray and Ray Anthony.Solid!, Ray Anthony biography/filmography This, coupled with the success of The Glenn Miller Story (1953)[13], led the Miller estate to ask Ray McKinley to lead a new ghost band.Butcher, page 263 This 1956 band is the original version of the current ghost band that still tours the United States today.Glennmillerorchestra.com, Itinerary The official Glenn Miller orchestra for the United States is currently under the direction of Larry O\'Brien.[14] The officially sanctioned Glenn Miller Orchestra for the United Kingdom has toured and recorded with great success under the leadership of Ray McVay[15].The official Glenn Miller Orchestra for Europe has been led by Wil Salden since 1990.[16]
The Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band\'s legacy has carried on with the Airmen of Note, a band within the United States Air Force. This band was created in 1950 from smaller groups within the Bolling Air Force Base in Washington D.C. and continues to play jazz music for the Air Force community and the general public.[17]
In 1953, Anthony Mann directed The Glenn Miller Story for Universal Pictures starring James Stewart and June Allyson[18]. The fictionalized biographical film was a popular success. Miller\'s mother said of the movie that actor James Stewart \'wasn\'t as good looking as my son\'.George Thomas Simon. Glenn Miller and his Orchestra. W.H.Allen/Virgin Books (1974). ISBN 0491015011
Glenn Miller\'s widow, Helen, died in 1966.Simon, page 434 Herb Miller, Glenn Miller\'s brother, led his own band in the United States and England until the late 1980s.Big Bands Database Plus Herb\'s son, John continues the tradition leading a band playing mainly Glenn Miller style music.Johnmillerorchestra.org.uk
In 2003, Miller posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.Grammy.com, Lifetime Achievement Award list
The entire output of cigarette sponsored radio programs Glenn Miller did between 1939 and 1942 were recorded by the Glenn Miller organization on acetate discs.Simon, pages 200-1 In the 1950s and afterwards, RCA-Victor distributed many of these on long playing albums and compact discs. A sizeable representation of the recording output by the band is almost always in circulation by Sony/BMG Music and the Universal Music Group, the successor labels to RCA-Victor, Bluebird, Columbia and Decca. Glenn Miller remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of 1935 to 1945.
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Miller, Glenn |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Miller, Alton Glenn |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Jazz musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 1 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Clarinda, Iowa, U.S |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 15 1944 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
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