Background
Glenn Miller was born on March 1, 1904, in Clarinda, Iowa. Christened Alton Glenn Miller, he was the second of four children of Lewis Elmer Miller, a building contractor, and Mattie Lou (Cavender) Miller.
(Twenty three classic Glen Miller songs arranged for easy ...)
Twenty three classic Glen Miller songs arranged for easy keyboard. Each song features melody line, vocals, chord displays, suggested registrations and rhythm settings. Includes In the Mood, Wonderful One, American Patrol and I Know Why and So Do You.
https://www.amazon.com/Glenn-Miller-Classic-Keyboard-Library/dp/0571528546?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0571528546
composer bandleader arranger big-band trombonist
Glenn Miller was born on March 1, 1904, in Clarinda, Iowa. Christened Alton Glenn Miller, he was the second of four children of Lewis Elmer Miller, a building contractor, and Mattie Lou (Cavender) Miller.
Never prosperous, the family moved to North Platte, Nebraska, and Grant City, Missouri; by the time Glenn reached high school they had settled in Fort Morgan, Colorado. There he learned to play the trombone well enough to work for a time with a professional band. He then enrolled at the University of Colorado but left after two years for the West Coast to join Max Fisher's band.
In 1925, Miller moved to the dance orchestra of Ben Pollack, a talented group (one of the featured players was a young clarinetist named Benny Goodman) for which Miller wrote many arrangements. Two years later he accepted a job with the popular show orchestra of Paul Ash, which was playing in New York's Paramount Theatre. He settled in New York City, where he studied arranging with Joseph Schillinger. Leaving Ash, Miller worked for a time in radio and recording studios in New York and as trombonist and arranger for Red Nichols and His Five Pennies; with this famed jazz group he also appeared in the pit of two Gershwin musical comedies of 1930, Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy. His growing reputation led two fellow studio musicians, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, to ask Miller to help them organize a band in the spring of 1934. The Dorsey Brothers orchestra, playing a great many Miller arrangements and with Miller in the trombone section, became one of the most sparkling organizations during the days directly preceding the big band era. In 1935, Miller formed an American orchestra for Ray Noble, an English conductor, and wrote some of its arrangements. But Noble was also an arranger, and the two often squabbled about interpretations; late in 1936, Miller decided to organize his own band. His first outfit, formed in March 1937, achieved little success and after ten months was disbanded. With encouragement from Tommy Dorsey, Miller tried again in March 1938. By this time, he had worked out the definite musical style so essential to the success of an orchestra. With a clarinet and a tenor saxophone doubling on the melody line, his five-man reed section produced a clear, liquid, and highly identifiable sound. Their long phrasing was somewhat in the manner of Miller's friend and fellow trombonist Tommy Dorsey, whom he greatly admired. Miller also admired the brass section of Jimmie Lunceford's band, whose "oo-wah" style he adopted, along with some of Lunceford's show manly visual tricks. He also took up the swinging four-beat riff-filled style of the Count Basie band, though Miller's tight, carefully rehearsed arrangements were sometimes criticized for lacking the spontaneity and warmth of jazz. Miller's new style began to impress band bookers, and in March 1939, he received his big break: a summer engagement at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York, with its frequent coast-to-coast radio broadcasts.
Acclaim came almost instantly. For the next three years the band played to enthusiastic crowds in leading hotels, ballrooms, and theatres, appeared on a thrice-weekly radio show, made two motion pictures Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942) and recorded for RCA Victor records such hits as "Moonlight Serenade" (Miller's theme song), "In the Mood, " "Little Brown Jug, " and "Tuxedo Junction. " Vocals by Marion Hutton, Ray Eberle, Tex Beneke, and the "Modernaires" enhanced the band's romantic sound. Less than five years after its formation, the Glenn Miller Orchestra played its last engagement on September 27, 1942. Miller, though his age made him exempt from the draft, felt a moral obligation to serve his country in wartime and joined the Army Air Forces. He was assigned the job of putting together a special Air Force band. Drawing on drafted musicians former members of leading dance orchestras, symphony string players he assembled a band that played for marching cadets, for troop entertainments, and on a radio recruiting program. Miller's wish to perform for America's fighting forces overseas was finally granted, and in June 1944 his large entourage flew to England. After six months there the group was scheduled to fly to Paris. Miller set off from England on December 15 in a small Air Force plane to make advance arrangements, but the weather was bad and the plane disappeared without a trace.
(Twenty three classic Glen Miller songs arranged for easy ...)
Quotations:
"A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality. "
"We didn't come here to set any fashions in music. We merely came to bring a much-needed touch of home to some lads who have been here a couple of years. "
"We can speak our honest minds without compromise and without censorship and to each other and to our people. We can take our message directly to our people. "
"By giving the public a rich and full melody, distinctly arranged and well played, all the time creating new tone colors and patterns, I feel we have a better chance of being successful. I want a kick to my band, but I don't want the rhythm to hog the spotlight. "
"I haven't got a great jazz band and I don't want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat's among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It's all in what you define as 'real jazz. ' It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony. "
"I thought I had swell ideas, and wonderful musicians, but the hell of it, no one else did. "
"Why do you judge me as a musician, John? All I'm interested in is making money. "
"We leaders are criticized for a lot of things. It's always true after a band gets up there and is recognized by the public. "
"I haven't a great Jazz band and I don't want one. "
a member of Red Nichols's orchestra, a member of the Ray Noble Orchestra
With his steel-rimmed glasses and sober, sedate appearance, Glenn Miller looked more like a schoolteacher than a showman. He was, however, a thorough musician and an able administrator who knew what he wanted to achieve and would rehearse endlessly to get it.
Miller married his college sweetheart, Helen Burger, on October 6, 1928.