Glenn Miller

• Born: March 1, 1904
• Birthplace: Clarinda, Iowa
• Died: December 15, 1944
• Place of death: English Channel

American jazz composer and trombonist

One of the most popular dance bandleaders of the swing era of the 1930’s and 1940’s, Miller established a smooth, lyrical sound that has endured for decades.

The Life

Alton Glenn Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa, on March 1, 1904, the second son of Elmer and Mattie Lou Miller. His family moved to Nebraska, Missouri, and Colorado when Miller was young. During this nomadic existence, he showed a talent for playing the trombone, and he organized bands with his friends. After finishing high school in Fort Morgan, Colorado, he played in Boulder while attending the University of Colorado. He then moved to Los Angeles to become a full-time professional musician. For a time he roomed with clarinetist and future King of Swing Benny Goodman. Miller married Helen Burger on October 6, 1928, and she proved indispensable to his future professional success.

Miller was a competent but not outstanding trombonist. He displayed excellent business skill and the ability to help put bands together during the 1930’s. He was also a talented arranger. His first attempt to assemble a band of his own failed in 1937, but he tried again in 1938. Though Miller admired jazz, he was never an improviser. What he was looking for in his band was a smooth sound that would attract the widest possible audience of dancers and listeners. To achieve that distinctive musical identity, Miller hit upon the idea of a clarinet lead over the four saxophones of his orchestra. His theme song, “Moonlight Serenade,” is an excellent expression of what made the Miller orchestra so popular at that time and in the years that followed.

From 1939 through the middle of 1942, Miller and his band had a series of popular hits, including “Tuxedo Junction,” “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo,” and “In the Mood.” Good examples of the orchestra in its prime can be seen in the two movies that they made: Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942).

Radio broadcasts further added to the appeal of Miller and his organization. As a leader, he was a disciplinarian who demanded professionalism at all times. On occasion, however, he would embark on drinking bouts that suggested professional tensions.

In October, 1942, Miller joined the Army Air Corps to build morale through his expanded and skilled orchestra, made up of the best musicians in military service. Participants in the orchestra later said that it was the best band ever to play the popular music of its time. Gifted musicians such as drummer Ray McKinley and pianist Mel Powell led smaller units spun off from the fifty-member organization. Miller entertained troops in the United States before taking the orchestra to Great Britain during the summer of 1944.

On December 15, 1944, Miller boarded a monoplane for a trip across the English Channel to France. He was never seen again. The most plausible of the many theories about his death is that British bombers returning from a mission dropped unexploded bombs that accidentally hit Miller’s plane below and sent it into the waters of the English Channel. Since the postwar years, various orchestras have carried on the Miller musical legacy under his name. While pleasant to listen to, none has ever attained the unique sound and appeal of the original.

The Music

Entertainment Entreprenuer. Miller’s days as a sideman and instrumentalist on record dates during the 1930’s were a prelude to the rapid rise to popularity of his dance band between 1938 and 1942. A shrewd entertainment entrepreneur who knew just what he wanted from his musicians, Miller captured the middle ground between the sweet and swing bands of that period. His records were designed to appeal to the jukeboxes that had spread across the United States during the 1930’s and defined teen-age tastes. His appearances at dance halls offered an appealing blend of high-energy instrumentals, such as “In the Mood,” along with romantic ballads, such as “At Last.” While his band members often chafed at the repetitive nature of his selections, Miller understood that the customers had come to hear his hits, and he made sure to gratify the audience’s desires.

Wartime. By all accounts, Miller took his music to a more sophisticated and complex level during his wartime service. Records and air-checks from that brief period attest to the high quality of the Miller military orchestra. He had an unerring sense of the musical needs of his audience in that period when the United States moved from peace to war in the early 1940’s. His ballads call up memories for a generation whose lives were shaped by conflict and sacrifice. His up-tempo tunes, such as “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)” convey the poignancy of separation and anxiety at a time when people did not know how the war would end. Miller’s enigmatic and tragic wartime death at a relatively young age leaves the question open of how he and his orchestra would have adapted to the bebop generation in jazz and the arrival of rock with Elvis Presley and others.

Musical Legacy

Continuations of the Miller orchestra in the ghost band format reinforced his popularity over the decades. The motion picture made about his life, The Glenn Miller Story (1955), with Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson, while filled with inaccuracies and misleading information, is still a means for Miller fans and those new to his music to learn about his career and impact. Miller has remained an iconic figure of the swing era, eclipsing the popularity of his contemporaries Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.

Principal Recordings

singles: “In the Mood,” 1939; “Little Brown Jug,” 1939; “Moonlight Serenade,” 1939; “Blueberry Hill,” 1940; “Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread,” 1940; “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” 1940; “Tuxedo Junction,” 1940; “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” 1941; “Elmer’s Tune,” 1941; “Song of the Volga Boatmen,” 1941; “American Patrol,” 1942; “At Last,” 1942; “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me),” 1942; “(I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo,” 1942; “Moonlight Cocktail,” 1942; “A String of Pearls,” 1942; “That Old Black Magic,” 1943.

Bibliography

Butcher, Geoffrey. Next to a Letter From Home: Major Glenn Miller’s Wartime Band. London: Trafalgar Square, 1997. This source examines Miller’s wartime service in the British Isles.

Grudens, Richard. Chattanooga Choo Choo: The Life and Times of the World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra. Stony Brook, N.Y.: Celebrity Profiles, 2004. With a foreword by Kathryn Crosby, the widow of singer Bing Crosby, this book is a thorough chronicle of Miller’s life, including interviews with musicians vocalists, songwriters, and arrangers. Includes more than 150 photographs.

Lees, Gene. “The Glenn Miller Years I-VII.” Jazzletter 24 (June-December. 2007). A series of essays by a distinguished author on popular music and jazz offers an excellent guide to Miller’s life.

Simon, George T. Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988. A comprehensive survey of the band’s career in the United States by a preeminent historian of the swing era.