Glenn Miller

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By the time Orchestra Wives was filmed, the United States was at war, and the draft was beginning to siphon off Miller’s musicians. At age thirty-eight, he was not subject to being called up, but he thought he could help the war effort. His idea was to reform military music, to update it to a style that the troops would enjoy.

Glenn first offered his services to the U.S. Navy, but was turned down. So on August 12, 1942 he wrote to Brigadier General Charles D. Young, expressing his desire to ‘do something concrete in the way of setting up a plan that would enable our music to reach our servicemen here and abroad with some degree of regularity [and thereby] help considerably to ease some of the difficulties of army life.’ General Young immediately accepted his offer. The band played their last Chesterfield show on September 24, and Glenn reported for induction on October 7, 1942.

Now a captain in the Air Corps, Glenn met resistance from what he called ‘goddamn idiot officers’ who liked the marches of John Philip Sousa just fine and saw no need for swing in the military. Eventually, however, Miller was named Director of Bands Training for the Army Air Forces Technical Training Command and authorized to organize a band at Yale University, which had become a training area for cadets. Miller proceeded to collect as many first-rate musicians as possible; some were from his group, many came from other bands. He also added a string section, getting many players from the country’s best symphony orchestras.

The outfit, officially known as the 418th Army Air Forces Band, was activated on March 20, 1943, with permanent station at Yale. The band managed to combine traditional military duties–playing at retreat parades and at review formations on the Yale Green–with performing at dances, open houses, parties, and luncheons, and on radio, over which Miller’s musicians broadcast I Sustain the Wings, a series designed to boost Air Force recruitment.

Much was made at the time of the band’s use of traditional jazz tunes such as ‘St. Louis Blues’ in march tempo, as a kind of swinging march. The military brass, fearful of scandalizing traditionalists, took pains to point out that such innovation never occurred during retreat or review, but only as the band was marching to and from these ceremonies.

On July 28, Miller’s new swinging military band made its debut in the Yale Bowl. Time magazine reported at the time that ‘Oldtime, long-haired U.S. Army bandmasters had the horrors,’ but the group was a smash with the troops. It presented an original spectacle: two drummers with full swing band kits and two string bass players–perched atop two jeeps that wheeled along slowly with the marching musicians–provided the rhythm.

Despite the misgivings of traditionalists, the band was a hit. Its appearances at bond drives were so successful that Glenn began to fear that he and his musicians might be kept stateside instead of being sent overseas to boast troop morale.

Finally, in the spring of 1944 the AAF orchestra got its orders to go to England. They arrived in time to experience the German V-I buzz bombs that fell on London, killing almost five thousand people. Feeling responsible for the safety of his men, Miller persuaded the military brass to move his unit to Bedford, a village some fifty miles north of the British capital and out then of the reach of the bombs.*[2] On the day after the men had vacated their London quarters, a buzz bomb fell a few feet from the building, blowing away its entire front and leaving the place in ruins.

Always the organizer, Glenn spun off sub-units from the full band, which was now known as the American Band of the Supreme Allied Command, to perform different types of music on four radio series. Strings With Wings featured a full string section headed by George Ockner; The Swing Shift, a seventeen-piece danceband led by Ray McKinley; Uptown Hall, a seven-piece jazz ensemble under Mel Powell; and A Soldier and a Song, crooner Johnny Desmond accompanied by the full band.*[3]

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Tags: American History, Historical Figures, Music, People