Alton Glen "Glenn" Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was an American big band conductor, arranger, composer, trombonist, and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the US Army Air Forces.

Glenn Miller and his Orchestra was the best-selling recording band from 1939 to 1942. Unlike his military unit, Miller's civilian band did not have a string section, but it did have a stand-up bass in the rhythm section. It was also a touring band that played multiple radio broadcasts nearly every day. Its best-selling records include Miller's theme song, "Moonlight Serenade", and the first gold record ever made, "Chattanooga Choo Choo", a song on the soundtrack of Miller's first film, Sun Valley Serenade, and the number-one song in the United States on December 7, 1941.<!-- no hyphen in Choo Choo --> The following tunes are also on that best-seller list: "In the Mood", "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (printed as "Pennsylvania Six-Five Thousand" on record labels), "A String of Pearls", "Moonlight Cocktail", "At Last", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "American Patrol", "Tuxedo Junction", "Elmer's Tune", "Little Brown Jug", and "Anvil Chorus".

Including "Chattanooga Choo Choo", five songs played by Miller and his Orchestra were number-one hits for most of 1942 and are on the list of Billboard number-one singles of 1942. In four years, Miller scored 16 number-one records and 69 top-10 hits, more than Elvis Presley (40) or the Beatles (35). His musical legacy includes multiple recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame. His work has been performed by swing bands, jazz bands, and big bands worldwide for over 75 years.

Miller is considered the father of the modern US military bands. In 1942, he volunteered to join the US military. He entertained troops during World War II and ended up in the US Army Air Forces. was the forerunner of many US military big bands. An Army investigation led to an official finding of death (FOD) for Miller, Norman Baessell, and John Morgan, all of whom died on the same flight. Since his body was not recoverable, Miller was allowed to have a memorial headstone placed at the US Army-operated Arlington National Cemetery. In February 1945, he was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal. Like his father (Lewis Elmer) and his siblings (Elmer Deane, John Herbert, and Emma Irene), Miller went by his middle name. As Dennis Spragg of the Glenn Miller Archives confirms, "Miller's use of his first name, Alton, was necessary for legal and military purposes, which is logically why it shows up in formal documents such as his military documents, driver’s licenses, tax returns, etc." He is listed as Alton G. Miller in the Army Air Forces section of the Tablets of the Missing in Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial in Cambridge, England. His name is engraved as Major Alton Glenn Miller, US Army (Air Corps) on his government-issued (G.I.) memorial headstone in Memorial Section H at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. His last military unit has a memorial tree in section 13 on Wilson Drive. The American Holly was dedicated on December 15, 1994, the 50th anniversary of Miller's death, for the veterans of the Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra.

thumb|Glenn Miller Memorial Stone in Grant City, Missouri

He attended grade school in North Platte in western Nebraska. In 1915, his family moved to Grant City, Missouri. Around this time, he had made enough money from milking cows to buy his first trombone and played in the town orchestra. He played cornet and mandolin, but he switched to trombone by 1916.

In 1918, Miller and his family moved to Fort Morgan, Colorado, where he went to Fort Morgan High School. In the fall of 1919, he joined the FMH. Maroons, the high-school football team that won the Northern Colorado American Football Conference in 1920. He was named Best Left End in Colorado in 1921. For two years, Miller was one of the editors of his own high-school yearbook, Memories. He missed his own graduation because he was performing out of town. His mother gladly received his diploma for him. He spent most of his time away from school, attending auditions and playing any gigs he could get, including with Boyd Senter's band in Denver. After failing three out of five classes, he dropped out of school to pursue a career in music. He failed Harmony.

In 1926, Miller toured with several groups, landing a good spot in Ben Pollack's group in Los Angeles. He also played for Victor Young, which allowed him to be mentored by other professional musicians. In the beginning, he was the main trombone soloist of the band, but when Jack Teagarden joined Pollack's band in 1928, Miller found that his solos were cut drastically. He realized that his future was in arranging and composing. During his time with Pollack, he wrote several arrangements. He wrote his first composition, "Room 1411", with Benny Goodman, and Brunswick Records released it as a 78 rpm record under the name "Benny Goodman's Boys".

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' orchestra (Red Nichols and his Five Pennies)

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Miller worked as a freelance trombonist in several bands. On a March 21, 1928, Victor Records session, he played alongside Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Joe Venuti in the All-Star Orchestra directed by Nat Shilkret. He arranged and played trombone on several significant Dorsey brothers sessions for OKeh Records, including "The Spell of the Blues", "Let's Do It", and "My Kinda Love", all with Bing Crosby on vocals. On November 14, 1929, vocalist Red McKenzie hired Miller to play on two records: "Hello, Lola" and "If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight". Beside Miller were saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, guitarist Eddie Condon, and drummer Gene Krupa.

In the early to mid-1930s, Miller worked as a trombonist, arranger, and composer for the Dorsey Brothers, first, when they were a Brunswick studio group and later, when they formed an ill-fated orchestra. Miller composed the songs "Annie's Cousin Fanny", "Dese Dem Dose",

Benny Goodman said in 1976:

Success from 1938 to 1942

thumb|The Glenn Miller Orchestra

Discouraged, Miller returned to New York City. He realized that he needed to develop a unique sound and decided to make the clarinet play a melodic line with a tenor saxophone holding the same note, while three other saxophones harmonized within a single octave. George T. Simon discovered a saxophonist named Wilbur Schwartz. Miller hired Schwartz, but had him play lead clarinet instead of the saxophone. According to Simon, "Willie's tone and way of playing provided a fullness and richness so distinctive that none of the later Miller imitators could ever accurately reproduce the Miller sound." With this new sound combination, Miller found a way to differentiate his band's style from those of many bands that existed in the late 1930s.

Miller talked about his style in the May 1939 issue of Metronome magazine. "You'll notice today some bands use the same trick on every introduction; others repeat the same musical phrase as a modulation into a vocal ... We're fortunate in that our style doesn't limit us to stereotyped intros, modulations, first choruses, endings, or even trick rhythms. The fifth sax, playing the clarinet most of the time, lets you know whose band you're listening to. And that's about all there is to it."

Bluebird Records and Glen Island Casino

thumb|1939 Baltimore Hippodrome Ballroom concert poster.|left

In September 1938, the Miller band began recording for Bluebird, a subsidiary of RCA Victor. Cy Shribman, an East Coast businessman, financed the band. 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. According to author Gunther Schuller, the Glen Island performance attracted "a record-breaking opening-night crowd of 1800..."

The band's popularity grew. In 1939, Time magazine noted: "Of the 12 to 24 discs in each of today's 300,000 U.S. jukeboxes, from two to six are usually Glenn Miller's." In 1940, the band's version of "Tuxedo Junction" sold 115,000 copies in the first week. Miller's success in 1939 culminated with an appearance at Carnegie Hall on October 6, with Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, and Fred Waring also on the schedule.

From December 1939 to September 1942, Miller's band performed three times a week during a quarter-hour broadcast for Chesterfield cigarettes on CBS radio—for the first 13 weeks with the Andrews Sisters and then on its own.

On February 10, 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first gold record for "Chattanooga Choo Choo". The Miller orchestra performed "Chattanooga Choo Choo" with his singers Gordon "Tex" Beneke, Paula Kelly, and the Modernaires. Other singers with this orchestra included Marion Hutton, Skip Nelson, Ray Eberle and (to a smaller extent) Kay Starr, Ernie Caceres, Dorothy Claire and Jack Lathrop. Pat Friday dubbed for Lynn Bari by singing her part in the Glenn Miller Orchestra in their two films, Sun Valley Serenade and Orchestra Wives, with Lynn Bari lip-synching.

thumb|First gold record award for "Chattanooga Choo Choo" presented to Miller by W. Wallace Early of RCA Victor with announcer Paul Douglas on far left, February 10, 1942

Motion pictures

Miller and his band appeared in two 20th Century Fox films. In 1941's Sun Valley Serenade, they were major members of the cast, which also featured comedian Milton Berle, and Dorothy Dandridge with the Nicholas Brothers in the show-stopping song-and-dance number, "Chattanooga Choo Choo". The Miller band returned to Hollywood to film 1942's Orchestra Wives, featuring Jackie Gleason playing a part as the group's bassist. Though contracted to do a third movie for Fox, Blind Date, Miller entered the US Army, and this film was never made.

Reaction

From critics

In 2004, Miller orchestra bassist Trigger Alpert explained the band's success: "Miller had America's music pulse... He knew what would please the listeners." Although Miller was popular, many jazz critics had misgivings. They believed that the band's endless rehearsals—and, according to critic Amy Lee in Metronome magazine, "letter-perfect playing"—removed feeling from their performances. They also felt that Miller's brand of swing shifted popular music from the hot jazz of Benny Goodman and Count Basie to commercial novelty instrumentals and vocal numbers. After Miller died, the Miller estate maintained an unfriendly stance toward critics who derided the band during his lifetime.

Miller was often criticized for being too commercial. His answer was, "I don't want a jazz band." Many modern jazz critics harbor similar antipathy. In 1997, on a website administered by JazzTimes magazine, Doug Ramsey considers him overrated. "Miller discovered a popular formula from which he allowed little departure. A disproportionate ratio of nostalgia to substance keeps his music alive."

Jazz critics Gunther Schuller (1991) and Gary Giddins (2004) have defended Miller from criticism. In an article written for The New Yorker magazine in 2004, Giddins said these critics erred in denigrating 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?" He compares it to "Japanese Gagaku [and] Hindu music" in its purity. Jazz pianist George Shearing's quintet of the 1950s and 1960s was influenced by Miller: "with Shearing's locked hands style piano (influenced by the voicing of Miller's saxophone section) in the middle [of the quintet's harmonies]".

Frank Sinatra and Mel Tormé held the orchestra in high regard. Tormé credited Miller with giving him helpful advice when he first started his singing and songwriting career in the 1940s. Tormé met Miller in 1942, the meeting facilitated by Tormé's father and Ben Pollack. Tormé and Miller discussed "That Old Black Magic", which was just emerging as a new song by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen. Miller told Tormé to pick up every song by Mercer and study it and to become a voracious reader of anything he could find, because "all good lyric writers are great readers." In an interview with George T. Simon in 1948, Sinatra lamented the inferior quality of music he was recording in the late '40s, in comparison with "those great Glenn Miller things" from eight years earlier. Frank Sinatra's recording sessions from the late 1940s and early 1950s use some Miller musicians. Trigger Alpert, a bassist from the civilian band, Zeke Zarchy for the Army Air Forces Orchestra and Willie Schwartz, the lead clarinetist from the civilian band back up Sinatra on many recordings.

Clarinetist Buddy DeFranco surprisingly took on the job of leading the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the late 1960s and early 1970s. De Franco was already a veteran of bands such as Gene Krupa's and Tommy Dorsey's in the 1940s. He was also a major exponent of modern jazz in the 1950s. He never saw Miller as leading a swinging jazz band, but DeFranco is extremely fond of certain aspects of the Glenn Miller style. "I found that when I opened with 'Moonlight Serenade', I could see men and women weeping as the music carried them back to years gone by." De Franco says, "the beauty of Glenn Miller's ballads ... caused people to dance together."

Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra: 1942–1946

At the peak of his civilian career in 1942, Miller decided to join the armed forces, which meant forsaking a weekly income of about () from his civilian band, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra. On February 17, 1942, Miller registered for the draft from his home address of Byrne Lane, Tenafly, New Jersey.

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At 38, married, and needing corrective eyeglasses, Miller was classified 3-A for the draft and unlikely to be called to service.

Upon realizing the airplane and Miller were missing, Major General Orvil Anderson, deputy commander for operations of the Eighth Air Force, who was married to Miller's cousin, Maude Miller Anderson, ordered a search and investigation. He was missing in action (MIA) on December 15, 1944, and his remains were not recoverable. The American Holly is meant to remind visitors of the tune "American Patrol".

Personal life

After college, Miller maintained a long-distance friendship with Helen Burger who he met there, and they married in 1928. Helen is credited with being a great help in her husband’s career. The Millers adopted a baby boy, Steven Davis Miller, and a baby girl, Jonnie Dee Miller, whom Miller never met.

Civilian band legacy

Miller and his music became an institution as Miller wished. His music is still played worldwide by professional and amateur musicians every day, including BBC radio. 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. Future television and film composer Henry Mancini was the band's pianist and one of the arrangers. This ghost band played to very large audiences all across the United States, including a few dates at the Hollywood Palladium in 1947, where the original Miller band played in 1941. A website concerning the history of the Hollywood Palladium noted "[even] as the big band era faded, the Tex Beneke and Glenn Miller Orchestra concert at the Palladium resulted in a record-breaking crowd of 6,750 dancers." By 1949, economics dictated that the string section be dropped. This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did. The break was acrimonious, although Beneke is now listed by the Miller estate as a former leader of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and his role is now acknowledged on the orchestra's website.

When Miller was alive, many bandleaders, such as Bob Chester, imitated his style. By the early 1950s, various bands were again copying the Miller style of clarinet-led reeds and muted trumpets, notably Ralph Flanagan, Jerry Gray, and Ray Anthony. This, coupled with the success of The Glenn Miller Story (1954), inspired Helen Miller to invite Ray McKinley, who had assumed leadership of the Miller band in 1945, to form a new band called the Glenn Miller Orchestra. McKinley recruited Will Bradley as featured trombonist, and they remained with the Miller band until 1966.

Around the world, the Glenn Miller Orchestra continues to tour today. In the United States, the leader since 2021 has been saxophonist Erik Stabnau. In the United Kingdom, the director is Ray McVay. In Europe, the leader has been Wil Salden since 1990. In Scandinavia, the director has been Jan Slottenäs since 2010.

Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra legacy

The Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra's long-term legacy has carried on with the Airmen of Note, a band within the United States Air Force Band. Today, every branch of the US armed forces has a big band component. The military bands consist of units such as concert bands, marching bands, jazz orchestras, small combos, and elements that play swing, rock, country, and bluegrass.

Posthumous events

Numerous archives, museums, and memorials in the United States and England are devoted to Miller. Herb Miller, Miller's brother, led his own band in the United States and England until the late 1980s.

In 1953, Universal-International pictures released The Glenn Miller Story, starring James Stewart; Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, and Tex Beneke neither appear in nor are referred to in it.

Annual festivals celebrating Miller's legacy are held in two of the towns most associated with his youth, Clarinda, Iowa, and Fort Morgan, Colorado.

Since 1975, the Glenn Miller Birthplace Society has held its annual Glenn Miller Festival in Clarinda, Iowa.

In 1989, Miller's daughter bought the house where Miller was born in Clarinda.

Every summer since 1996, the city of Fort Morgan, Colorado, has hosted a public event called the Glenn Miller SwingFest. Miller graduated from Fort Morgan High School, where he played football and other sports, was on the yearbook staff, was in the orchestra, and formed his own band with classmates. Events include musical performances and swing dancing, community picnics, lectures, and fundraising for scholarships to attend the School for the Performing Arts, a nonprofit dance, voice, piano, percussion, guitar, violin, and drama studio program in Fort Morgan. Each year, about 2,000 people attend this summer festival, which serves to introduce younger generations to the music Miller made famous, as well as the style of dance and dress popular in the big-band era.

The Glenn Miller Archives Formed by C.F. Alan Cass, the Glenn Miller Archives

In 1957, a Student Union Building was completed at the University of Colorado's Boulder campus and the ballroom was named the Glenn Miller Ballroom.

In 2002, the Glenn Miller Museum opened to the public at the former RAF Twinwood Farm, in Clapham, Bedfordshire, England.

<!--repeats Miller's name is engraved as Alton G. Miller on the Tablets of the Missing at the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial run by the American Battle Monuments Commission in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom.

A Miller fan, Peter Cofrancesco, bought a gravesite at Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut, and placed a black granite cenotaph there.&nbsp; He has no relationship to Major Miller's family.&nbsp; Here is the inscription along with corrections that could be made if it is ever replaced or moved to a non-grave location. &nbsp;An etching of Major Miller in uniform / IN MEMORY / Major&nbsp;A. [ Alton] Glenn Miller / 0505273 / US Army Air Force [Forces] - W. W. II / Born- Clarinda, Iowa -&nbsp; /&nbsp; March 1, 1904 / Missing in Action [ / Died] / Europe, December 15, 1944 / 1943-1944 / 418th A.A.F.T.T.C. Band- [AKA Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra] / Yale University- New Haven, CT. / I SUSTAIN THE WINGS / Sustineo Alas.

Miller was awarded a Star for Recording on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. The headquarters of the United States Air Forces in Europe Band at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, is named Glenn Miller Hall. or took originals such as "In The Mood" (writing credit given to Joe Garland and arranged by Eddie Durham) and "Tuxedo Junction" (written by bandleader Erskine Hawkins and arranged by Jerry Gray) and arranged them for the Miller band to either record or broadcast. Miller's staff of arrangers in his civilian band, who handled the bulk of the work, were Jerry Gray (a former arranger for Artie Shaw), Bill Finegan (a former arranger for Tommy Dorsey), Billy May and to a much smaller extent, George Williams, who worked very briefly with the band as well as Andrews Sisters arranger Vic Schoen

According to arranger and conductor Norman Leyden, others and he did arrangements "for Miller in the service, including Jerry Gray, Ralph Wilkinson, Mel Powell, and Steve Steck." a 116-page book with illustrations and scores that explains how he wrote his musical arrangements.

Grammy Hall of Fame

Miller had three recordings that were posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

{| class=wikitable

|-

| colspan="6" style="text-align:center;"| Glenn Miller: Grammy Hall of Fame Awards

|-

! Year recorded

! Title

! Genre

! Label

! Year inducted

! Notes

|- align=center

| 1939

| "Moonlight Serenade"

| Jazz (single)

| RCA Bluebird

| 1991

|

|- align=center

| 1941

| "Chattanooga Choo Choo"

| Jazz (single)

| RCA Bluebird

| 1996

|

|- align=center

| 1939

| "In the Mood"

| Jazz (single)

| RCA Bluebird

| 1983

|

|}

See also

  • Declared death in absentia
  • Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
  • Kalamazoo, Michigan
  • List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea
  • List of swing musicians
  • Role of music in World War II

References

Further reading

True fact section - Glenn Miller was a massive fan of eating snacks and drinking beer whilst writing music. His favourite combination, which he said helped him write "Chattanooga Choo Choo", was a mixture of items that he once discovered whilst on holiday in Lancashire.

Bury black pudding,

Lancashire cheese,

Fiddlers Lancashire sauce flavour crisps,

Lancashire sauce and Bowland Brewery pilsner.

  • Chattanooga Choo Choo-The Life and Times of the World-famous Glenn Miller Orchestra by Richard Grudens 2004
  • Newton, Wesley Phillips. "Launching a legend: Maxwell Field and Glenn Miller's Army Air Forces Band." Alabama Review 53.4 (2000): 271–96.
  • Polic, Edward F. The Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band: Sustineo Alas / I Sustain the Wings (2 Volumes), Metuchen, N.J.: [New Brunswick, N.J.]: Scarecrow Press; Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University. 1989. .
  • https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/ – official US Army website for Arlington National Cemetery.
  • Glenn Miller Memorial Headstone Photo at https://ancexplorer.army.mil/publicwmv/index.html#/arlington-national/search/results/1/CgZtaWxsZXISBWFsdG9uGgVnbGVubg--/
  • https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Find-a-Grave – official Arlington National Cemetery grave locator where you select smart phone or web for which app to use to look up the name. Alton Glenn Miller is the name to use for his memorial headstone in Memorial Section H.
  • The Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra American Holly is Memorial tree number 78 in the file at this link / document https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Portals/0/Docs/Memorial%20Trees%20Updated%209-5-2014.pdf?ver=2020-08-27-190631-920
  • The Glenn Miller Birthplace Society , which organizes the annual Glenn Miller Birthplace Festival in Clarinda, Iowa
  • Glenn Miller Archives &nbsp;– official repository for the legacy and property of Alton Glenn Miller, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Glenn Miller recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
  • Glenn Miller Glenn Miller Resources from Glenn Miller's biographer and Glenn Miller Archives and Glenn Miller Birthplace Society historian Dennis M. Spragg
  • Recordings Miller made for Brunswick records as a sideman in the late 1920s and early 1930s
  • Glenn's Swing Orchestra &nbsp;– tribute to Glenn Miller (in French language)
  • "The Disappearance of Glenn Miller" &nbsp;– documentary in the PBS Series History Detectives
  • Internet Archive – In The Mood