There can only be a handful of people in the Western world who haven?t heard of Glenn Miller and his music. His orchestra existed for only five years yet it made an indelible mark on the history of popular music, changing and modernising dance music styles almost overnight.
Along with his contemporaries, Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Artie Shaw and others, he was a driving force and combined swing with out and out dance music which kept the public?s attention, not only in those five short years which saw the outbreak of World War II, but ever since.
Glenn Miller collectors will always point out that the ten or so bestsellers, most of them instrumentals, are just scratching the surface of Miller?s output of over 300 sides for RCA in the States, and this collection covers not only the most well known and perhaps best loved titles that Glenn made his own, but also a goodly selection of ?the rest?.
Miller?s famous theme, Moonlight Serenade, performs its usual task of getting things under way. No surprise that this record is one of the five most requested discs on record programmes in this country and surely the most imitated record by other bands down the years. Recorded in April 1939 and just six days before that other favourite, Little Brown Jug, Miller?s theme puts us all in the mood for what follows.
Glenn Miller and his Orchestra opened at the Cafe Rough in New York?s Hotel Pennsylvania on 4th January 1940 for a three month engagement. Shortly after finishing this booking the orchestra recorded Jerry Gray and Carl Sigman?s interpretation of the hotel?s telephone number, 6-5000, which must now surely be the most famous telephone number in the world. Pennsylvania 6-5000, the follow-up to the theme, gets things swinging and this tempo is continued with Johnson Rag. Bill Finegan?s arrangement of this old piece was recorded on Sunday, 5th November 1939.
We hear Glenn?s ?boy? vocalist, Ray Eberle, for the first time on a classic Hoagy Carmichael song, Blue Orchids. The American public voted this song a No.1 spot late in 1939, and we move on nearly three years for the next piece on this album, American Patrol. By then America was at war and the stirring rhythmic tones of this arrangement by Jerry Gray for the Miller Orchestra makes another well remembered recording. It was released in Britain for the first time in 1946 on the back of Glenn?s theme which was having a reissue.
Moonlight Cocktail, an above average popular song of the day, was recorded the day after Pearl Harbour was attacked in December 1941. Ray Eberle and Glenn?s vocal group, The Modernaires, perform the vocal, but the song was not without controversy here in Britain and the BBC banned it from the air after finding innuendo in the lyric. As a result British listeners didn?t get to hear Miller?s version for over two years until its release early in 1944.
I?ve already mentioned Little Brown Jug. Despite what the biopic ?The Glenn Miller Story? told, this title was recorded by the Miller band back in April 1939 and played by them many times until that fateful day in late 1944 when Miller disappeared.
Frenesi is the first of two distinctive melodies by composer Alberto Dominguez which appear here.
Ray and The Modernaires make a quick return with the vocal on Elmer?s Tune from August 1941. Miller plays a muted trombone solo on this one which benefits from a Jerry Gray arrangement.
The ?flagwaver?, Slip Horn Jive, is the next one up and Miller takes out his mute to take a sprightly solo which keeps drummer Maurice Purtill on his toes too.
Miller did his last recording session for RCA?s cheaper Bluebird label on 18th February 1942 and we now hear one of the titles recorded on that date. Don?t Sit Under The Apple Tree gives us our first chance to hear on this collection the vocal talents of saxophonist Tex Beneke and blonde, viv