Glenn Miller Biography

Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904–circa December 15, 1944), born in Clarinda, Iowa, was an American jazz musician and bandleader in the swing era. He is widely recognized as the genre's best-selling performer from 1939 to 1942 and fronted one of the most well-known "Big Bands." During World War II, while traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France, his plane disappeared in bad weather. His body was never found.

Miller's signature recordings — including, among others, "In the Mood", "Tuxedo Junction", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Moonlight Serenade", "Sun Valley Jump", "String of Pearls", and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (named for the phone number of his New York hotel residence) — have remained familiar, even to generations born decades after Miller disappeared.

Miller's family moved to North Platte, Nebraska during his boyhood, and he started his musical career when his father brought home a mandolin. As soon as possible, he traded the instrument for an old horn, which he practiced diligently.

In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado where he joined Sigma Nu Fraternity, 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, who is credited with helping Miller create the "Miller sound" and under whose tutelage he himself composed what became his signature theme, "Moonlight Serenade."

RCA/BMG's Glenn Miller website continues:

In 1942, Miller joined the United States Army Air Forces and was commissioned as a captain as well as being appointed as the branch's band director. 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 resistance from tradition-minded career officers. He instead formed what was first known as the Band of the Training Command, a 24-piece dance band augmented by 21 string players chosen from a number of symphony orchestras. The dance band boasted several members of his civilian orchestra, including chief arranger Jerry Gray as well as stars from other bands such as Ray McKinley, Bobby Nichols, Hank Freeman, Peanuts Hucko and Mel Powell. Johnny Desmond and the Crew Chiefs were the singers, although recordings were also made with guest stars such as Bing Crosby, Irene Manning and Dinah Shore. The Dinah Shore sessions include a charming version of Stardust and are of special musical interest as they were recorded in high fidelity and were intended as the band's first commercial releases, although they were not made public until the early 1990s.

The orchestra was first based at Yale University. From mid-1943 to mid-1944 they made hundreds of live appearances, transcriptions, 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. so in mid-1944 he had the group transferred to London, where they were renamed the American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force. While in the United Kingdom the band gave more than 800 performances to an estimated one million Allied servicemen.

For many years, the only available recordings of this band were on a five-record set issued by RCA in the mid-1950s. These were recordings of the AAF Band's "I Sustain the Wings" broadcasts. Since the nineties, however, RCA and various companies have issued high fidelity compact discs of music previously thought lost. [2]

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, Clapham, Bedfordshire, but disappeared over the English Channel and was never found. 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. (Clive Ward's discovery of a Noorduyn Norseman off the coast of Northern France in 1985 was unverifiable and contained no human remains.)

This has led to many conspiracy theories over the years, as told by George T. Simon in Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, 1974, DaCapo. A popular theory holds that, in the foggy weather that bedeviled the Channel on that day, Miller's plane strayed into a "safe drop" zone and was bombed out of the air by Canadian Air Force bombers disposing of bombs that went unused during an aborted bombing run on German positions. Another theory holds that he landed safely, but died of a heart attack in a bordello ín Paris. A third theory has also gained some recent credibility based on observations from both his biographer and his younger brother Herb Miller. Glenn had been a chain-smoker for much of his life and by late 1944 was suffering from severe weight loss and shortness of breath, leading to speculation that he was terminally ill, probably with lung cancer. This theory also holds that he landed safely, but died of his illnesses on December 16th. Both of these latter theories overlook the fact that Miller wasn't alone on the flight; there were two other officers aboard the aircraft when it disappeared. They also have never been found.

Jazz critic Gary Giddins has said that Miller's bitterness and aloofness with employees was probably a result of the many years he endured trying to build a successful band. According to Leo Walker in his book The Big Band Almanac, few people knew Miller well. Two people who did were Don Haynes, Miller's manager, and George T. Simon, jazz critic and author of Glenn Miller & His Orchestra. Don Haynes told Walker that Miller was a reserved person, but extremely warm towards those near him. But other musicians who were associated with Miller thought differently. They all respected Miller, but described him as all business, generally cold, perhaps insecure, and a person who had a driving ambition to be successful. But they all agreed that Miller was a musical perfectionist. Close friend and jazz critic George Simon says in his book The Big Bands he "could also spot phonies, whom he truly detested. If you were straight with Glenn, he'd give you at least the time of day. But if you weren't, he wouldn't even give you the time of night."

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 The Glenn Miller Story, which portrayed many of his compositions and also took many liberties with his life story. For example, Marion Hutton, Paula Kelly, Tex Beneke and Ray Eberle are not mentioned at all. (Benny Goodman and the Dorsey brothers, to be fair, suffered similar fates when films of their lives were made in the same decade.)

Many of the Miller musicians went on to studio careers in Hollywood and New York after World War II. For example, Billy May, who became a much-coveted arranger and studio orchestra leader — and backed up singers like Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O'Day, and Bing Crosby. Also George Siravo [3] from Miller's first band was a noted arranger who worked for Columbia in the late forties and early fifties and arranged songs for Doris Day and Sinatra. Wilbur Schwartz, Herman "Trigger" Alpert, Johnny Best, and Ernie Caceres backed up many singers in the fifties. Ray Anthony led his own extremely popular band during that same time period. Norman Leyden[4] from the Army Air Force Band was a noted arranger in New York, who arranged for Sarah Vaughan, among other people. Johnny Desmond from the Army Air Force Band became a popular singer in the fifties and starred on Broadway in the 1960s in "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand [5]

The Miller estate authorized an official Glenn Miller "ghost band" in 1946. This band was led by Tex Beneke and had a make up similar to the Army Air Force Band: it had a large string section. By 1948, economics dictated that the string section be dropped. 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. "Even after the war, when big bands began to lose their popularity, the Palladium still drew in a record 6,750 eager dancers to the 1947 opening night performance of Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra – an event enthusiastically covered by Life Magazine." [6]

What began as the "Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Tex Beneke" finally became "The Tex Beneke Orchestra". This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did. The post-war Miller/Beneke band was heavily influenced by 1940s jump and R&B as evidenced by hits like "Hey Ba-Ba-Re-bop". Beneke was struggling with how to expand the Miller sound and also how to achieve success under his own name. The Miller estate had to please the ballroom operators and the record producers at RCA Victor. By 1950, Beneke and the Miller estate parted ways. The break was acrimonious and Beneke is rarely mentioned by the Miller estate as ever leading the Glenn Miller orchestra.

By the early 1950s, various bands were copying the Miller style of clarinet led reeds and muted trumpets, notably Ralph Flanagan, Jerry Gray and Ray Anthony. This, coupled the success of The Glenn Miller Story, led the Miller estate to ask Ray McKinley to lead a new ghost band. This 1956 band is the original version of the current ghost band that still tours today.

In April 1992, at his daughter's request, a stone was placed in Memorial Section H, Number 464-A on Wilson Drive in Arlington National Cemetery. Every year Clarinda, Iowa, Glenn Miller's birthplace, runs a Glenn Miller festival. [7] Virtually the entire output of Chesterfield programs Glenn Miller did between 1939 and 1942 were recorded by the Glenn Miller organization on acetate discs. In the 1950s and afterwards, RCA distributed many of these on long playing albums and compact discs. Also, a sizable representation of the recording output by the band is almost always in circulation by RCA/BMG. Glenn Miller remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of 1935 to 1945.

Miller himself may have been pondering a change to his music before his death. Adding a string section to his military band was one hint; other writings have cited Miller himself suggesting he had taken his trademark sound as far as he could take it without becoming completely sterile. In particular the aforementioned Dinah Shore recordings display a very different arranging style with only a slight hint of the famous reed blend. His death left forever unanswered the question of where he might have taken his music after the war, particularly when postwar economics made most bands the size of Miller's nearly impossible to sustain.

On the other hand, a soundtrack album of his two films showed the pre-Army Miller band playing with a more full-blooded attack (abetted by the broad reverberation of the sound stages where they cut the soundtracks, including new and meatier versions of some of their most familiar material) than they were known to do on their original recordings; perhaps Miller might have developed a new sound from that vantage point.