With this chapter, we turn to the sweetest and, arguably, the squarest of the Big Band leaders. Also, one of the more polarizing ones:
“Miller discovered a popular formula from which he allowed little departure. A disproportionate ratio of nostalgia to substance keeps his music alive.”
- Doug Ramsey, Jazz Times website (1997; quoted in Wikipedia)
“Can any other record match 'Moonlight Serenade' for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slaver in so many for so long?”
- Gary Giddins, The New Yorker (2004; also Wikipedia)
Alton Glenn Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa, in 1904 to Lewis and Mattie Lou Miller. The family bounced around quite a bit during his youth – they went from Iowa, to Nebraska, to Missouri, to Colorado – but Miller’s love of music was a constant. He started with a mandolin his father brought home (this was probably Nebraska), but traded it for “an old battered horn” in short order, and practiced so much that his mother once said, “It got to where Pop and I used to wonder if he’d ever amount to anything.” They must have worried even more after he dropped out of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1923 after failing three of five classes. Playing in any orchestra that would take him – Boyd Senter’s Denver-based orchestra was the main culprit – kept him from his studies, but Miller had already settled on a career as a professional musician two years earlier. The bug bit and he was beyond help.
After touring with various orchestras for the next couple years, Miller landed a solid gig as a trombonist in Ben Pollack’s orchestra out in LA. His solos dried up shortly after of one of the era’s great trombonists, Jack Teagarden, came on board and that little piece of fate nudged him to focus on arranging and composing. Miller started early, writing his first composition, “Room 1411,” with another aspiring musician, Benny Goodman; Wikipedia had something about him writing his signature song, “Moonlight Serenade,” during this period using the “Schillinger system,” but, as much as it adds up, that’s the only reference I saw to that. He took his newfound craft seriously enough to publish a songbook titled, Glenn Miller’s 125 Jazz Breaks for Trombone in 1928.
Miller knocked around New York City through the late-1920s and up to the mid-1930s, freelancing in orchestras, recording sessions, playing the pit on Broadway musicals (e.g., Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy), along with (again) Goodman and Swing-era drumming stalwart, Gene Krupa. He did well enough to “call for” and marry his high school sweetheart, Helen Burger, and landed steady playing time in some of the city’s major orchestras – e.g., Red Nichols and Nat Shillkret. The latter orchestra introduced him to Tommy Dorsey, who called in Miller when he and his brother, Jimmy, formed their own orchestra. Miller played trombone in their orchestras, and composed some of the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra’s early famous tunes (e.g., “Dese Dem Dose” and “Tomorrow's Another Day”), but he still hoped to form an orchestra of his own.
Miller’s first attempt came in 1935. He got as far as recording under his own name – a 78 rpm record for Brunswick with “Moonlight on the Ganges” and “A Blues Serenade” – but the orchestra went nowhere. He tried with a second orchestra in 1937 and, despite landing a couple longer engagements in New Orleans and Dallas “and many one-nighters,” Miller accepted defeat a second time and returned to New York City, in the words of a site called Glenn Miller's Orchestra, “broke, depressed and having no idea what he was going to do.”
Somewhere amid the dejection and time off, Miller found his signature sound. From Wikipedia:
“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.”
With the backing of Cy Shribman (“a prominent East Coast businessman”; and, apparently, Goodman, at least per a source noted in my bio of Goodman), Miller formed his third and, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, ragingly successful orchestra. His first step to the big time happened when he signed for Bluebird Records. After building momentum in a succession of other venues, Miller’s orchestra had its breakthrough moment in the spring of 1939 at the New Rochelle, New York's, Glen Island Casino, in a performance broadcast live, like and yet unlike so many others. By December of that year, he landed a CBS radio gig (sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes) that aired in 15-minute slots three times a week until the fall of 1942; they paired him with The Andrews Sisters for the first 13 weeks, before the Moonlight Serenade broadcast became all his.
His success was explosive. Miller scored 17 top ten hits in 1939 (e.g., “Stairway to the Stars,” “Moon Love,” and, one borrowed from the movies, “Over the Rainbow"), 31 in 1940 (e.g., “In the Mood,” “Tuxedo Junction” and “Careless”), and 11 more per year in 1941 (e.g., “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “Elmer’s Tune”) and 1942 (e.g., “String of Pearls,” “Moonlight Cocktail,” and “(I Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo”). As early as 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.” When all was said and done, Miller put out more top 10 and number one hits in four years than Elvis Presley or the Beatles managed over their entire careers. And RCA Victor gave Miller the first-ever gold record on February 10, 1942, for “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
The movies came calling as well. Miller had already appeared in one – The Big Broadcast of 1936, and as a member of the American swing band he pulled together for Ray Noble in between his two flops – but he came front and center for 1941’s Sun Valley Serenade and 1942’s Orchestra Wives. The latter has a funny aside to it. They cast a young Jackie Gleason as Miller’s bassist Ben Beck, but it was Gleason’s presence that caused the complication. Miller suffered from a rare ailment “that made laughing extremely painful,” which meant he couldn’t watch Gleason for any length of time.
Like most big band leaders, Miller fronted his orchestras with a number of vocalists. For instance, Gordon “Tex” Beneke, Paula Kelly and the Modernaires sang “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” but he also worked with Marion Hutton, Skip Nelson and Ray Eberle, along with future stars like Kay Starr, though the latter not so much. However much he valued their contribution, Miller credited his signature sound above all else. As he told Metronome magazine in 1939:
“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.”
“Miller discovered a popular formula from which he allowed little departure. A disproportionate ratio of nostalgia to substance keeps his music alive.”
- Doug Ramsey, Jazz Times website (1997; quoted in Wikipedia)
“Can any other record match 'Moonlight Serenade' for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slaver in so many for so long?”
- Gary Giddins, The New Yorker (2004; also Wikipedia)
Alton Glenn Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa, in 1904 to Lewis and Mattie Lou Miller. The family bounced around quite a bit during his youth – they went from Iowa, to Nebraska, to Missouri, to Colorado – but Miller’s love of music was a constant. He started with a mandolin his father brought home (this was probably Nebraska), but traded it for “an old battered horn” in short order, and practiced so much that his mother once said, “It got to where Pop and I used to wonder if he’d ever amount to anything.” They must have worried even more after he dropped out of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1923 after failing three of five classes. Playing in any orchestra that would take him – Boyd Senter’s Denver-based orchestra was the main culprit – kept him from his studies, but Miller had already settled on a career as a professional musician two years earlier. The bug bit and he was beyond help.
After touring with various orchestras for the next couple years, Miller landed a solid gig as a trombonist in Ben Pollack’s orchestra out in LA. His solos dried up shortly after of one of the era’s great trombonists, Jack Teagarden, came on board and that little piece of fate nudged him to focus on arranging and composing. Miller started early, writing his first composition, “Room 1411,” with another aspiring musician, Benny Goodman; Wikipedia had something about him writing his signature song, “Moonlight Serenade,” during this period using the “Schillinger system,” but, as much as it adds up, that’s the only reference I saw to that. He took his newfound craft seriously enough to publish a songbook titled, Glenn Miller’s 125 Jazz Breaks for Trombone in 1928.
Miller knocked around New York City through the late-1920s and up to the mid-1930s, freelancing in orchestras, recording sessions, playing the pit on Broadway musicals (e.g., Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy), along with (again) Goodman and Swing-era drumming stalwart, Gene Krupa. He did well enough to “call for” and marry his high school sweetheart, Helen Burger, and landed steady playing time in some of the city’s major orchestras – e.g., Red Nichols and Nat Shillkret. The latter orchestra introduced him to Tommy Dorsey, who called in Miller when he and his brother, Jimmy, formed their own orchestra. Miller played trombone in their orchestras, and composed some of the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra’s early famous tunes (e.g., “Dese Dem Dose” and “Tomorrow's Another Day”), but he still hoped to form an orchestra of his own.
Miller’s first attempt came in 1935. He got as far as recording under his own name – a 78 rpm record for Brunswick with “Moonlight on the Ganges” and “A Blues Serenade” – but the orchestra went nowhere. He tried with a second orchestra in 1937 and, despite landing a couple longer engagements in New Orleans and Dallas “and many one-nighters,” Miller accepted defeat a second time and returned to New York City, in the words of a site called Glenn Miller's Orchestra, “broke, depressed and having no idea what he was going to do.”
Somewhere amid the dejection and time off, Miller found his signature sound. From Wikipedia:
“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.”
With the backing of Cy Shribman (“a prominent East Coast businessman”; and, apparently, Goodman, at least per a source noted in my bio of Goodman), Miller formed his third and, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, ragingly successful orchestra. His first step to the big time happened when he signed for Bluebird Records. After building momentum in a succession of other venues, Miller’s orchestra had its breakthrough moment in the spring of 1939 at the New Rochelle, New York's, Glen Island Casino, in a performance broadcast live, like and yet unlike so many others. By December of that year, he landed a CBS radio gig (sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes) that aired in 15-minute slots three times a week until the fall of 1942; they paired him with The Andrews Sisters for the first 13 weeks, before the Moonlight Serenade broadcast became all his.
His success was explosive. Miller scored 17 top ten hits in 1939 (e.g., “Stairway to the Stars,” “Moon Love,” and, one borrowed from the movies, “Over the Rainbow"), 31 in 1940 (e.g., “In the Mood,” “Tuxedo Junction” and “Careless”), and 11 more per year in 1941 (e.g., “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “Elmer’s Tune”) and 1942 (e.g., “String of Pearls,” “Moonlight Cocktail,” and “(I Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo”). As early as 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.” When all was said and done, Miller put out more top 10 and number one hits in four years than Elvis Presley or the Beatles managed over their entire careers. And RCA Victor gave Miller the first-ever gold record on February 10, 1942, for “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
The movies came calling as well. Miller had already appeared in one – The Big Broadcast of 1936, and as a member of the American swing band he pulled together for Ray Noble in between his two flops – but he came front and center for 1941’s Sun Valley Serenade and 1942’s Orchestra Wives. The latter has a funny aside to it. They cast a young Jackie Gleason as Miller’s bassist Ben Beck, but it was Gleason’s presence that caused the complication. Miller suffered from a rare ailment “that made laughing extremely painful,” which meant he couldn’t watch Gleason for any length of time.
Like most big band leaders, Miller fronted his orchestras with a number of vocalists. For instance, Gordon “Tex” Beneke, Paula Kelly and the Modernaires sang “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” but he also worked with Marion Hutton, Skip Nelson and Ray Eberle, along with future stars like Kay Starr, though the latter not so much. However much he valued their contribution, Miller credited his signature sound above all else. As he told Metronome magazine in 1939:
“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.”
1942 changed a lot of lives, including Miller’s. With World War II in full swing (and perhaps bereft of available musicians due to the draft), Miller offered his services to the U.S. Armed Forces. He started with the Navy, but they had no use for a 38-year-old bandleader, no matter how popular. Miller next made a pitch to the U.S. Army, telling them that he could improve morale by “modernizing” the Army band with him at the head of it. They took him up on it and inducted him into the service in October 1942. Miller put in the sweat and sacrifice - on multiple levels; he left behind a $15,000-$20,000/week in salary - and a full year passed before Miller got across to England and/or the troops. He hit the ground running in late 1943 and never looked back (Wikipedia has some great details for this period), playing 500 broadcasts to audiences that numbered in the millions and making 300+ live appearances before cumulative audiences of 600,000.
At the tail-end of 1944, a decision was made to send Miller’s orchestra to the somewhat-recently-breached continent for a six-week tour closer to the front – i.e., where they needed a little more morale. He boarded a small single-prop plane to cross the English Channel on December 15 to make preparations for his band’s arrival in Paris...and was never seen nor heard from again. Everyone accepts the UC-64 Norseman carrying Miller plunged into the Channel, but the cause of the crash remained in dispute for years – and included some fabulous theories, including assassination “after Dwight D. Eisenhower sent him on a secret mission to negotiate peace deal with Nazi Germany” or dying of a heart attack in a Paris brothel (a personal, if unlikely, favorite). The first widely-accepted theory was that the Norseman got tagged by "friendly fire" in the form of bombs dropped by higher flying bombers after an aborted raid, but, on the request of Miller’s descendants, a senior consultant named Dennis Spragg researched and debunked that theory. The latest, greatest, best-documented version holds that the fuel lines and associated equipment froze as the plane flew low across the Channel, giving the pilot very little time (less than eight seconds) to prevent the crash. The same research concluded the plane shattered on impact, killing all passengers.
As hinted at up top, Miller had a complicated legacy as a musician. The people who liked him – a list that included Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, and Louis Armstrong, who apparently carried around Miller’s recordings – really liked him. He had his detractors, none more vicious than Artie Shaw (profiled here; Artie’s take on Miller: “All I can say is that Glenn should have lived, and 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' should have died”), but he’d “been noted to have dampened the spirits of his musicians,” and some of his orchestra’s members called him some version of uptight. The critics, especially jazz fans, laid in ungently as well:
“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.”
Against that, you have Miller’s popularity and the nostalgia that goes with it. And sometimes popular means broad and bland one way or the other.
About the Sampler
For years, had you asked me to name my favorite big band leader, I would have answered Glenn Miller. The answer would have been the same had you just asked me to name a big band leader, but, after listening to him and the rest of the heavies for the past month or so, I’ve moved into the critics camp. Miller’s music is saccharine-sweet and, often, fairly dull – especially against the energy of either of the Dorseys – but I compiled a 20-song sampler to let Miller’s work speak for itself.
I’ve linked to about half of it in the above, so, to round out the rest, I included: “Little Brown Jug,” “Juke Box Saturday Night,” “Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “American Patrol,” “Pagan Love Song,” “Glenn Island Special,” “Blue Evening,” “The Rhumba Jumps,” “Doin’ the Jive” (that one's before his signature sound), “Sunrise Serenade,” and “Blue Orchids.”
Miller’s career was short and fast enough that I suspect I’d have to read one of the several book-sized biographies to get further details on any of those songs. As with any artist, I like some more than others, but, if one particular thing that kills Miller’s oeuvre for me, it’s his choice of vocalists. To hang all that on a sharp observation by jazz critic Gunther Schuller and just one singer Miller worked with, “Ray Eberle's 'lumpy, sexless vocalizing dragged down many an otherwise passable performance.’"
At the tail-end of 1944, a decision was made to send Miller’s orchestra to the somewhat-recently-breached continent for a six-week tour closer to the front – i.e., where they needed a little more morale. He boarded a small single-prop plane to cross the English Channel on December 15 to make preparations for his band’s arrival in Paris...and was never seen nor heard from again. Everyone accepts the UC-64 Norseman carrying Miller plunged into the Channel, but the cause of the crash remained in dispute for years – and included some fabulous theories, including assassination “after Dwight D. Eisenhower sent him on a secret mission to negotiate peace deal with Nazi Germany” or dying of a heart attack in a Paris brothel (a personal, if unlikely, favorite). The first widely-accepted theory was that the Norseman got tagged by "friendly fire" in the form of bombs dropped by higher flying bombers after an aborted raid, but, on the request of Miller’s descendants, a senior consultant named Dennis Spragg researched and debunked that theory. The latest, greatest, best-documented version holds that the fuel lines and associated equipment froze as the plane flew low across the Channel, giving the pilot very little time (less than eight seconds) to prevent the crash. The same research concluded the plane shattered on impact, killing all passengers.
As hinted at up top, Miller had a complicated legacy as a musician. The people who liked him – a list that included Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, and Louis Armstrong, who apparently carried around Miller’s recordings – really liked him. He had his detractors, none more vicious than Artie Shaw (profiled here; Artie’s take on Miller: “All I can say is that Glenn should have lived, and 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' should have died”), but he’d “been noted to have dampened the spirits of his musicians,” and some of his orchestra’s members called him some version of uptight. The critics, especially jazz fans, laid in ungently as well:
“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.”
Against that, you have Miller’s popularity and the nostalgia that goes with it. And sometimes popular means broad and bland one way or the other.
About the Sampler
For years, had you asked me to name my favorite big band leader, I would have answered Glenn Miller. The answer would have been the same had you just asked me to name a big band leader, but, after listening to him and the rest of the heavies for the past month or so, I’ve moved into the critics camp. Miller’s music is saccharine-sweet and, often, fairly dull – especially against the energy of either of the Dorseys – but I compiled a 20-song sampler to let Miller’s work speak for itself.
I’ve linked to about half of it in the above, so, to round out the rest, I included: “Little Brown Jug,” “Juke Box Saturday Night,” “Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “American Patrol,” “Pagan Love Song,” “Glenn Island Special,” “Blue Evening,” “The Rhumba Jumps,” “Doin’ the Jive” (that one's before his signature sound), “Sunrise Serenade,” and “Blue Orchids.”
Miller’s career was short and fast enough that I suspect I’d have to read one of the several book-sized biographies to get further details on any of those songs. As with any artist, I like some more than others, but, if one particular thing that kills Miller’s oeuvre for me, it’s his choice of vocalists. To hang all that on a sharp observation by jazz critic Gunther Schuller and just one singer Miller worked with, “Ray Eberle's 'lumpy, sexless vocalizing dragged down many an otherwise passable performance.’"
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