Glenn Miller - Biography
BY J Poet
Glenn Miller’s career as a bandleader and composer lasted a mere nine years – from 1935 to 1944 - but he dominated those years as no other performer had ever done. When the album charts were established in 1946, Glenn Miller (1945 Bluebird/RCA) was one of the first #1 hits and sold more 78 rpm albums that year than any other album. Glenn Miller Masterpieces, Vol. 2 (1945 Bluebird/RCA) was also a #1 collection, and his tunes have remained strong sellers throughout the era of LPs, CDs and digital downloads. After Miller’s mysterious death – he disappeared on December 15 on a flight to Paris to make arrangements for his Army Air Force Band to tour Europe – the band reformed and since 1956 has been playing his immortal music for an ever-growing legion of fans.
Glenn Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa on March 1, 1904, but grew up in North Platte, Nebraska in a sod house. When he was 11, the family was living in Grant City, Missouri where he went to grade school, got his first trombone and played in the town band. The family moved again to Fort Morgan, Colorado where Miller was a high school football star; he also started a dance band with a few friends. He didn’t attend his graduation because he had a gig in Laramie, Wyoming.
Before college, Miller played in a Dixieland group called Senter’s Sentapeeds and the Holly Moyer Orchestra in Boulder. He studied music for two years at the University of Colorado in Boulder, dropping out to move to Los Angeles. He joined the Ben Pollack Orchestra and shared his apartment with a young musician from Chicago named Benny Goodman.
In 1928 he followed Pollack to New York City and worked as a trombonist and arranger with Pollack, Red Nichols and Paul Ash. He played on a Red McKenzie hit single – “Hello, Lola” b/w “If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight” – one of the first jazz singles featuring black and white musicians playing together and also did sessions with Bing Crosby and the Dorsey Brothers. When he was 30, he helped to organize a Big Band for The Dorsey Brothers; he also put together an American band for British bandleader and actor Ray Noble. He played trombone in Nobel’s band and wrote one of their early hits “Dese, Dem, Dose.”
In 1937, Miller organized his first band, but it failed. In 1938 he developed his trademark sound – the clarinet playing a melodic line in unison with a tenor saxophone backed by three saxophones playing harmonized chords in support. The new Miller band laded a residency at the Glen Island Casino in Long Island in 1938 with led to another residency at the Meadowbrook Ballroom in New Jersey. Both clubs frequently broadcast their shows on the radio and by the end of the year The Glenn Miller Band was one of the top swing bands in America. Their Bluebird records were big hits and the band headlined Carnegie Hall with Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, and Fred Waring in late 1939.
In the fall of 1939, The Glenn Miller Band began a series of radio broadcasts for Chesterfield cigarettes – three programs a week. Their singles and 78 RPM albums were hits and their tours did turn away business. In the 1939 Downbeat jazz magazine’s reader’s poll Miller won Best Swing Band and Best Sweet (pop) Band, the first crossover success in the magazine’s history. The bands hits that year included: “Moonlight Serenade,” one of Miller’s best known compositions, “Little Brown Jug,” Sunrise Serenade,” “Stairway to the Stars,” a #1 hit, “Oh! You Crazy Moon,” “In the Mood,” and “Indian Summer.”
Miller and his band made two films, Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942). Miller made sure his band was used to forward the plot, but just as a “walk on” gimmick. His live dates continued to do turn away business and the records and album were incredibly successful. Hits in 1940: “Stardust,” “Tuxedo Junction,” “The Nearness of You,” Pennsylvania 6-5000,” and “Anvil Chorus.” In 41 and 42 the hits kept coming, including “Perfidia,” “Chattanooga Choo Choo” which earned the first gold record the next year in 1942, a new promotional pool instituted by RCA, “Elmer’s Tune,” “A String of Pearls,” and “Moonlight Cocktail” in 1941 and “American Patrol,” “(I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo,” “Moonlight Becomes You,” and “Serenade in Blue” in 1942. At their height, the band was pulling in almost 100,000 dollars a week.
In late 1942, Miller broke up the band, feeling he could better help the war effort by starting an Army band that would “put a little more spring into the feet of our marching men and a little more joy into their hearts.” He convinced the Army to draft him, although at 38 he was safely too old to serve, and organized his famous Army Air Corps Band. The band made radio broadcasts, raised over a million dollars with benefit concerts and moved to England to entertain the troops in 1944. In less than one year in 1944 they played 800 concerts on Army bases and made 500 radio broadcasts.
After the successful invasion of France in 1944, Miller decided to move the band to France. On December 15, 1944, Miller took a single engine C-64 Norseman to travel to Paris, France. The plane was never heard from after its take off. The original Glenn Miller Band played their last concert on November 13, 1945 at the National Press Club dinner for President Truman in Washington, D.C. Tex Beneke, former lead sax man and singer for the Miller band led an official Glenn Miller tribute band until 1950, when the Miller Estate withdrew permission to use miller’s name. In 1956, under the direction of Miller’s drummer Ray McKinley, the surviving members of Glenn Miller Orchestra again began playing the old charts, and they continue to do so today. Glenn Miller received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2003.
Miller made almost 300 official RCA/Bluebird recordings with his civilian and military bands. Perhaps a thousand radio broadcasts were recorded, so there has been an almost endless stream of reissues of Miller’s music since he vanished. Good bets are: The Popular Recordings 1938-1942 (1998 RCA 3 CD), The Complete Glenn Miller and his Orchestra 1938-1942 (1991 RCA Bluebird), everything they ever recorded on 13 CDs, The Chesterfield Broadcasts (2003 RCA) selections from CBS radio broadcasts of 1939 and 1940, Secret Broadcasts (1996 RCA), three CDs of transcriptions from Miller’s Army Air Force Band, The Essential Glenn Miller (2005 RCA/Legacy) a succinct collection of hits on two CDs, and The Lost Recordings (1996 RCA) two CDs, selections of radio shows taped in England by the American Broadcasting System in Europe.
