A Salute to Major Glen Miller (S.A.V.E.)

To one of my favorite all time composers, and a man who made me fall in love with Jazz and especially Big Band Music, I salute you Major Glen Miller. The man served in the Army Air Force and was the most popular musician and composer of his time. I love this guy's style because it has a classic structure to it but throws a flip to the blues and puts it's arm around Jazz. I may be young but I  have read a few books about the man and listened to every CD of his I could find.

Yall have all heard Moonlight Serande haven't you? Who could forget that ground breaking clarinet led saxaphone section that gave him that classic "Glen Miller" sound? At the time he wrote it he was under the guidance of his tutor Joseph Schillinger who became his new music teacher after he dropped out of college, and who's Schillinger technique helped Glen develope his new sound. The best known band of his early career I would say is Red Nichols’s orchestra in 1930. His band mates at the time were much bigger names. You had Benny Goodman on Clarinet and Gene Krupa on Drums, and they did a whole slew of bitchin musicals (Strike up the Band and Girl Crazy)that most kids my age (25) don't give a rats ass about because they are too busy listening to the likes of Justin Timberlake. Heck even Glen was considerd just an average  Trombone player in his early career.

 It wasn't until 1938 that He had his first Glen Miller band and after a shaky start his new style of matching the Clarinets with a prominent sax section, it took off like a rocket. Time magazine in 1939 noted: "Of the twelve to 24 discs in each of today's 300,000 U. S. juke boxes, from two to six are usually Glenn Miller's." By 1942 Glen Miller had already nabbed his first gold record for "Chattanooga Choo Choo", which happens to be my favorite song to dance to. Allot of his early critics thought the guy was a sell out because he strode away from Count Bassie and Benny Goodman's "hot Jazz" style and had more arrangements then improv jazz pieces. He still left some room for Tex Beneke to improvize on a few pieces, but I will agree, he was a bit more commercial. I think that is why so many folks loved him those days, and why there wasn't a dry eye or a calm heart on the dance floor when the theme song would strike up, and the hips would sway to Moonlight Serenade.

In 1942 Glen Miller started marching to a different tune and joined the Army Air Force as a captain and headed the marching band. He tried to apply blues jazz to marching and fought hard to modernize Army music.  Yall old timers might remember the "St. Louis Blues March"? In 1943- 44 the band was deployed to London to boost some morale over in the ETO and played some 800 or so showings to more than a million allied servicemen. It was said his concerts were the next best thing to a letter from home to those men. it was an amazing accomplishment this man made and his dedicated service soon advanced him to the rank of  Major. He was a hero and loved by many.

The craziest part of Glen Miller's story came on December 15th, 1943 when the band was headed to Paris to play for the guys who had just kicked German tail and liberated France, but they never made it. The Plane took off and disapeared somewhere over the English Chanel. I am not making this up, his disapearance and that of the whole plane, remains a mystery up to this day. I know what really happened, God reached down and snagged him before any other agents got the contract.

S.A.V.E. Support American Veteran's Endurance