Glenn Miller

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It had been, if nothing else, a learning experience. Jazz has never been the most popular form of music in the United States, and the one thing Glenn liked even more than jazz was success. He had no pretensions of being too artistic to be popular. If he were to start another band, Miller vowed, it would not be for the fans, not the musicians. Too many of his players had been ‘prima donnas,’ he felt, who were interested in satisfying their musical souls by blowing far-out riffs whether or not the kids were following them. No, his new band, when it came, would have showmanship and a commercial sweetness. It would have a’sound.’

His instincts didn’t fail him. The distinctive Miller sound–a clarinet lead supported by four saxophones–had come to him while he was still with the Noble orchestra, but he had not really put it to the test with his first band. Now it would become his signature.

By March 1938 the second Glenn Miller Orchestra was in place. Miller had made some crucial additions–especially vocalists. The mainstays of the band were ‘girl singer’ Marion Hutton, ‘boy singer’ Ray Eberle, Gorden ‘Tex’ Beneke, and a male quartet known as the Modernaires.

Hutton, the sister of actress/singer Betty Hutton, was only seventeen when she joined the group. She was not, by her own admission, the greatest of vocalists (saxophonist Al Klink used to joke that ‘the mike is out of tune tonight’), but she had enormous warmth and appeal.

Eberle, whose older brother, Bob Eberly with a ‘y,’ sang for Jimmy Dorsey, was, like Hutton, a performer whose looks surpassed his vocal ability. At first a favorite of Glenn’s, he and Miller had a falling out that lead to his leaving the band in 1942. Hired for the band as a tenor saxophonist, Beneke quickly proved himself a valuable singer, ideal for some of the jazzier numbers and novelty tunes. He lent his voice on such songs as ‘I Got a Gal in Kalamazoo’ and ‘Chatanooga Choo Choo.’

*[ 1 ] Younger brother Herb eventually took up the trumpet; he became a professional musician and bandleader, too, although a much less successful one.

The Modernaires joined Miller in 1941. One of them, Chuck Goldstein, developed a way of singing a harmony high above the others, giving the group an unmistakable sound. ‘Some people,’ he once remarked, ‘thought we had a girl with us.’

Glenn drove his band with a perfectionist zeal that made it–to the exasperation of many of his musicians–by far the most precise, the most rehearsed band of the time. He managed to combine a bit of jazz, a large dose of swing, a healthy dollop of showmanship, and a sprinkling of hokum. And it worked.

In March 1939, Miller contracted to play for the summer season at the celebrated Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York. This was a coveted date–not for the money, but for the exposure over the air waves; the band broadcast from the Casino ten times a week, reaching thousands of listeners. Following that engagement, they went from sellout to sellout. In Hershey, Pennsylvania, it broke the attendance record set by the Guy Lombardo Orchestra eight years before, and in Syracuse, New York, it played for the biggest audience ever gathered for a dance.

Meanwhile, the band made one hit record after another, including ‘Little Brown Jug,’ ‘In the Mood,’ and ‘Moonlight Serenade,’ which became Miller’s theme song. In December the band was hired for a thrice weekly CBS national radio program sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes, and its national reputation was solidified. A poll taken in the summer of 1940 put the Glenn Miller band number one by a huge margin, almost doubling the votes of the runner-up, Tommy Dorsey.

Hollywood soon beckoned, and Miller traveled to California to make two movies for Twentieth-Century Fox, Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942). As examples of cinematic art, these films are forgettable, but they are priceless as a record of the Miller band in its prime. In numbers like ‘Chatanooga Choo Choo,’ ‘Serenade in Blue,’ and ‘I Got a Gal in Kalamazoo,’ the players demonstrate their showmanship, flapping their mutes, standing for solos, and flashing their choreographed pumping of trombone slides. Miller himself comes off as a credible and likeable actor.

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