13 August 2024

Glenn Miller – Phantom Dancer

Greg Poppleton - Phantom Dancer

Glenn Miller, born Alton Glen Miller, was an American trombonist, composer, arranger and band leader. His swing orchestra was the best selling recording band  1939 – 1942 and the continues playing today. His Army-Air Forces band modernised US military music. He’s your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 13 August) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

GLENN

At age 10, Miller earned enough money from milking cows to buy his first trombone and played in the town orchestra. He had played cornet and mandolin before switching to trombone.

He played in his high school orchestra and formed his own dance band in his final high school year. At school, he took classes in harmony, piano, violin, and music appreciation. By the time he graduated he was a professional musician. He missed his own graduation because he was performing out of town. His mother gladly received his diploma for him.

In 1924 he went to New York City and studied the Schillinger system with Joseph Schillinger, under whose tutelage he composed “Miller’s Tune”. It became his signature theme, “Moonlight Serenade”.

In 1926, Miller toured with  Ben Pollack’s Orchestra as lead trombone and played for Victor Young. This allowed him to be mentored by professional musicians. When Jack Teagarden took over the lead chair in Pollack’s band in 1928, Miller found that his solos were cut drastically. He realised his future was in arranging and composing.

During his time with Pollack, he had written several arrangements. He wrote his first composition, “Room 1411”, with Benny Goodman. Brunswick Records released it under the name, “Benny Goodman’s Boys”.

He had a songbook published in Chicago in 1928 entitled ‘125 Jazz Breaks for Trombone’.

Back in New York City in 1930 he joined Red Nichols and his Five Pennies, playing in the pit bands of Broadway shows, ‘Strike Up the Band’ and ‘Girl Crazy’. That band included Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. They are all on this 1930 record of Corrine Corrina – vocals by Wingy Manone…

1930s

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Glenn Miller worked as a freelance trombonist in several bands.

On the 21 March 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 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 14 November 1929, vocalist Red McKenzie hired Miller to play on two records: “Hello, Lola” and “If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight”. With 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”, “Harlem Chapel Chimes”, and “Tomorrow’s Another Day” for the Dorsey Brothers Band in 1934 and 1935.

“Annie’s Cousin Fannie” was recorded on 4 June 1934 in New York and released as Brunswick 6938. The flip side was “Judy”. The song was also released in a second version on a Decca 78 as Decca 117A backed with “Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive”. A third version was also recorded but not released. Glenn Miller wrote “Annie’s Cousin Fannie”, played trombone on the record, and sang some of the verses. Miller sings the closing verse. The record was banned by some radio stations because of the double entendre lyrics…

RAY NOBLE

In 1935, he assembled an American orchestra for British bandleader Ray Noble, developing the arrangement of lead clarinet over four saxophones that became a characteristic of his big band. Members of the Noble band included Claude Thornhill, Bud Freeman, and Charlie Spivak.

Miller made his first movie appearance in The Big Broadcast of 1936 as a member of the Ray Noble Orchestra performing “Why Stars Come Out at Night”. The film included performances by Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers, who would appear with Miller again in two movies in 1941 and 1942.

In 1937, Glenn Miller compiled several arrangements and formed his first band. After failing to distinguish itself from the many bands of the time, it broke up after its last show at the Ritz Ballroom in Bridgeport, Connecticut on 2 January 1938.

Benny Goodman said in 1976: “In late 1937, before his band became popular, we were both playing in Dallas. Glenn was pretty dejected and came to see me. He asked, “What do you do? How do you make it?” I said, “I don’t know, Glenn. You just stay with it.”

SUCCESS

Discouraged, Miller returned to New York. He realised 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 harmonised within a single octave.

George T. Simon discovered 18 year old saxophonist 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.”

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.”

Here’s Glenn Miller’s Orchestra before the famous sound…

THE PEAK

In September 1938, the Miller band began recording for Bluebird, a subsidiary of RCA Victor.

In the spring of 1939, the band’s fortunes improved with a date at the Meadowbrook Ballroom in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, and then at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York. The Glen Island performance attracted a record-breaking opening-night crowd of 1,800.

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.”

His band played at Carnegie Hall, 6 October 1939.

In 1940, the band’s version of “Tuxedo Junction” sold 115,000 copies in the first week.

From December 1939 to September 1942, Miller’s band performed three times a week during a quarter-hour broadcast on CBS.  For the first 13 weeks were with the Andrews Sisters.

On 10 February 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first ever gold record for “Chattanooga Choo Choo”.

Miller Orchestra singers included Gordon “Tex” Beneke, Paula Kelly and the Modernaires, Marion Hutton, Skip Nelson, Ray Eberle and Gail Reese.

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.”

Louis Armstrong thought enough of Miller to carry around his recordings, transferred to seven-inch tape reels when he went on tour. “[Armstrong] liked musicians who prized melody, and his selections ranged from Glenn Miller to Jelly Roll Morton to Tchaikovsky.”

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]”.

Mel 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 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 used 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.

Clarinettist Buddy DeFranco, who lead one of the official postwar Glenn Miller Orchestras said, “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 … the beauty of Glenn Miller’s ballads … caused people to dance together.”

RAY ANTHONY

There is now one surviving original Glenn Miller Orchestra member, trumpeter, Ray Anthony, who is, as of 2024, 102 years old.

He played in Glenn Miller’s band from 1940 to 1941.

The Ray Anthony Orchestra was popular in the early 1950s with “The Bunny Hop”, “Hokey Pokey”, and the theme from the radio/television police detective series Dragnet.

FILLUMS

Miller and his band appeared in two Twentieth Century Fox films.

In Sun Valley Serenade (1941) 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 Orchestra Wives (1942), 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.

ARMY 1942-46

At the peak of his career in 1942, Glenn Miller decided to join the armed forces, which meant forsaking an income of about $20,000 per week, equivalent to $350,000 ($A600,000) per week in 2024.

He first applied for a commission in the US Navy and was turned down. At the time, the Navy was dealing with a scandal concerning celebrity commissions in exchange for draft avoidance. This had nothing to do with Miller, but prevented the Navy from acting on his application.

Miller then applied to the US Army with whom he had privately explored the possibility of enlisting. During a March 1942 visit to Washington, Miller had met with officials of the Army Bureau of Public Relations and Army Air Forces.

On 12 August 1942, Miller posted a three-page letter to General Charles Young of the Army Service Forces, outlining his interest in “streamlining modern military music” and to express his “sincere desire to do a real job for the Army that is not actuated by any personal draft problem.”

General Young forwarded Miller’s letter to Gen. Brehon Somervell, commander of Army Service Forces who approved Miller’s application. The Army notified Miller of his commission on 8 September 1942. He received a one-month delay to settle his business affairs.

Miller made his final commercial broadcast for on 24 September 1942. At the end of the program, he introduced competitor Harry James as his successor on the radio series, a gesture that a grateful Harry James never forgot.

On 26 September, Miller made his final civilian broadcast on the Blue Network Coca Cola Victory parade of Spotlight Bands.

Glenn Miller and his Orchestra gave their final performance at Central Theater in Passaic, New Jersey on 27 September 1942.

On 7 October 1942, Miller reported to the Seventh Service Command at Omaha as a captain in the Army Specialist Corps. Following a one-month ASC training course at Fort Meade, Maryland, he transferred to the Army Air Forces (AAF) on 25 November 1942, by order of General Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold.

Miller was initially assigned to the AAF Southeast Flying Training Command at Maxwell Field, Alabama for orientation as assistant special service officer, traveling to different AAF training bases in the region to learn the mission of the training command. There, he appeared on the nationwide NBC “Army Hour” broadcast, originated from WSFA, Montgomery. He also appeared over WAPI radio Birmingham, performing with the Rhythmaires, a 15-piece base band.

Effective 1 January 1943, Miller was assigned to the headquarters of the AAF Technical Training Command (TTC) at Knollwood Field, Southern Pines, North Carolina. Reporting to Gen. Walter R. Weaver, Miller became director of bands for the AAFTTC.

Miller’s recommendation for an AAFTTC bands program was approved. Detached to the AAF Training Center at Atlantic City, New Jersey, Miller screened personnel for assignment to various AAF base bands across the nation and recruited many for an elite unit that he would direct himself.

The AAF had established its First Radio Production Unit and Orchestra to broadcast from Hollywood, commanded by Maj. Eddie Dunstedter with musical director M/Sgt. Felix Slatkin.

Miller would form and direct the Second AAF Radio Production Unit and Orchestra, broadcasting and recording from New York.

Miller’s unit was authorised on 20 March 1943, and billeted at the AAF Training School at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Its personnel were a talented mix of jazz musicians from major big bands and musicians from leading symphony orchestras. Miller would successfully attempt to fuse jazz, popular music and light classics, including strings, which was an evolutionary step beyond his civilian band.

I SUSTAIN THE WINGS

Broadcasting and recording from New York, the Miller unit broadcast “I Sustain the Wings”. This weekly series was first carried by CBS starting on 5 June 1943, and then by NBC from 18 September 1943 until  10 June  1944.

After Miller died in December 1944, the Miller unit resumed the “I Sustain The Wings” series when they returned from the European Theatre in August 1945.

The Miller unit also recorded V-Discs at RCA Victor studios, and recorded broadcasts for the Office of War Information and Armed Forces Radio Service, including “Music from America” and “Uncle Sam Presents.”

In addition to the full concert orchestra, Miller’s AAF Training Command organisation included a marching band for base activities and a jazz band led by T/Sgt. Ray McKinley, the popular civilian bandleader and drummer.

Miller famously got into a musical argument with Army purists by performing marching arrangements of jazz, including “The Saint Louis Blues” and “Blues in the Night”, as opposed to traditional Sousa military marches.

On 24 May 1944, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a cable to Washington requesting transfer of the Miller AAF unit for the purposes of radio broadcasting and morale. With the impending D-Day invasion of northwest Europe, the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) was establishing a combined allied radio broadcasting service. Eisenhower cited the Miller organisation as the “only organisation capable of performing the mission required.”

The Army Air Forces approved the deployment under the condition that the unit remain under AAF control. Miller and radio producer Sgt. Paul Dudley flew to London on June 19 and the band followed aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth, which was serving as a troopship.

Upon arrival in London, the unit was initially billeted at Sloane Court, Chelsea. This was a temporary assignment because Miller had previously arranged for permanent quarters in Bedford. Because of the V-1 flying bomb assault that was underway, SHAEF determined it better to house the band where the BBC had moved operations during the Blitz of 1940–41.

In Bedford, the Miller unit would use facilities developed for Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony. Prior to the band’s arrival, Miller met with SHAEF and BBC officials to coordinate broadcasting plans, including the BBC Director of the new Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme (AEFP), Maurice Gorham, SHAEF Director of Broadcasting, American Col. Edward Kirby, and deputy director of SHAEF Broadcasting, British Lt. Col. David Niven. They became Miller’s chain of command.

His distinguished orchestra was attached to SHAEF in London, and was quartered at Milton Ernest near Bedford, England. When the band arrived in London, they were quartered in an office at 25 Sloane Court.

Unfortunately, this was in the middle of “Buzz Bomb Alley”, an area of sleepless nights because of the constant barrage of German flying V-1 bombs. Miller arranged for new quarters and transportation to move to Bedford on Sunday, 2 July 1944.

The next morning, a buzz bomb landed in front of their old quarters, destroyed the building, and killed more than 100 people. None were Miller band members.

On 9 July 1944, Miller’s 51-piece orchestra and production personnel started broadcasting a series of musical programs over the AEFP under BBC technical supervision. The programs included: “The American Band of the AEF” (full orchestra), “Swing Shift” (T/Sgt. Ray McKinley dance orchestra), “Uptown Hall” (Sgt. Mel Powell jazz quartet), “Strings with Wings” (Sgt. George Ockner, concertmaster and the string section), “Songs by Sgt. Johnny Desmond” (vocalist with orchestra directed by M/Sgt. Norman Leyden) and “Piano Parade” (piano solos by Pvt. Jack Rusin and Sgt. Mel Powell).

The orchestra also appeared for the Office of War Information’s Voice of America European outlet. The American Broadcasting Station in Europe (ABSIE) broadcast daily to occupied Europe and Germany. One of its German language programs was “Music for the Wehrmacht”, in which Miller made announcements in phonetic German scripts with a German-speaking announcer named “Ilse”.

Ilse was Carol Wagner, a German-speaking American relative of composer Richard Wagner. The Allied broadcast services used the name “Ilse Weinberger” for all woman announcers as a nom de guerre in order to protect any relatives who might be behind German lines

Sgt. Johnny Desmond sang vocals in German on this series recorded at the famous Abbey Road studios in London.

In England, the band kept an extensive schedule of personal appearances at primarily American air bases. Visiting American celebrities Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore appeared on their radio programs. Shore joined Miller for a recording session at Abbey Road Studios, where the orchestra recorded their ABSIE German language programs.

During November 1944, Miller and David Niven sought and received approval to move the unit from England to France. By this time, SHAEF had relocated to Versailles. It was determined that reliable radio broadcasting could be accomplished from Paris and that the Miller orchestra could be seen in person at Paris-area hospitals and by ground troops on leave from the front lines. The move was set for mid-December. As a precaution, the Miller organisation had to prerecord eighty hours of broadcasts prior to moving, in addition to their normal schedule.

Meanwhile, preparations in France were behind schedule. On 11 December 1944, Niven ordered Miller to replace his executive officer, Lt. Donald Haynes, to fly ahead and complete arrangements before the entire group came across.

The AAF band completed their pre-recordings and regular broadcasts on Tuesday, 12 December 1944, and prepared for the anticipated move to France. As per Niven’s order, Miller was booked on a scheduled Air Transport Command passenger flight from London-Bovingdon to Paris-Orly on Thursday, 14 December.

Miller was on standby for an earlier flight on 13 December, but it was canceled due to bad weather in France. His reservation on 14 December was also canceled. Miller was frustrated and impatient, fearing that arrangements would not be made in time to accommodate the movement of his unit to France.

On a telephone call to Haynes, he learned that a mutual acquaintance, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Baessell of the Eighth Air Force Service Command at Milton Ernest, was flying to France on December 15. It was to be aboard a Noorduyn UC-64A Norseman assigned to him and piloted by Flight Officer John Stuart Morgan. Baessell invited Miller to join them.

Miller’s travel orders did not authorise him to board a “casual” flight and he did not report his intentions to his chain of command, so SHAEF was in the dark concerning Miller’s whereabouts.

Although AAF and RAF combat missions flew that day, as well as numerous transport planes, the RAF Training Unit at RAF Twinwood Farm had stood down, but the aerodrome was open. At 13:45 Morgan landed at Twinwood, boarded Baessell and Miller, and took off at 13:55. The UC-64 and its occupants were never seen again. The next morning, the Battle of the Bulge began. The Eighth Air Force and SHAEF did not realise that the UC-64 with Miller aboard was missing until three days later, on Monday, 18 December 1944.

Upon realising 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.

Meanwhile, Miller’s unit had flown safely from England to France aboard three C-47 transports and prepared to begin their broadcasting and concert duties. Since they were scheduled for a Christmas Day broadcast from Paris to England and via shortwave to the United States, news of Miller’s whereabouts would have to be released.

AAF Headquarters in Washington, D.C. notified Miller’s wife, Helen, of his disappearance on 23 December 1944, with an in-person visit to their home by two senior officers and a telephone call from Gen. H. H. Arnold. On 24 December 1944, at 18:00 BST, SHAEF announced Miller’s disappearance to the press, stressing that no members of his unit were with him aboard the missing airplane.

The Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra appeared as scheduled on 25 December 1944, conducted by Jerry Gray. The unit continued to broadcast and appear throughout Europe through V-E Day and until August 1945. It received a Unit Citation from Gen. Eisenhower. Returning home, the unit resumed its “I Sustain the Wings” series over NBC.

On 13 November 1945, the AAF Band appeared at the National Press Club for its final concert, which was attended by President Harry Truman and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King. When the band appeared to the strains of Miller’s theme “Moonlight Serenade”, the president stood and led the audience in a spontaneous round of applause. The band was congratulated for a job “well done” in person by General Eisenhower and General Arnold.

Their last performance was the I Sustain the Wings broadcast at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., on NBC radio on 17 November 1945. Its personnel were gradually discharged, and the unit was disestablished in January 1946. Miller and his music became an institution as Miller wished.

TODAY

His music is still played worldwide by professional and amateur musicians every day.

The Miller estate authorised an official Glenn Miller legacy band in 1946, the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

This band was led by Tex Beneke, former tenor saxophonist and a singer for the civilian band.

It had a makeup similar to the Army Air Forces Band. It included a large string section, and at least initially, about two-thirds of the musicians were alumni of either the civilian or AAF orchestras.

The orchestra’s official public début was at the Capitol Theatre on Broadway for a three-week engagement starting 24 January 1946.

Future television and film composer Henry Mancini was the band’s pianist and one of the arrangers.

This band played to very large audiences all across the United States, including a few dates at the Hollywood Palladium in 1947 to 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. Beneke was struggling with how to expand the Miller sound and also how to achieve success under his own name.

What began as the “Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Tex Beneke” finally became “The Tex Beneke Orchestra”.

By 1950, Beneke and the Miller estate parted ways. The break was acrimonious, although Beneke is now listed by the Miller estate as a former leader of the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

The success of the biopic, “The Glenn Miller Story” (1954), inspired Glenn’s wife, 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.

The late and much loved drummer, Bob Gillespie, with the Greg Poppleton 1920s – 30s band, was drummer with the Miller band touring Australia and New Zealand in the 1990s

Bob Gillespie on drums with the Greg Poppleton band in 2011