Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 – missing December 15, 1944) was an American jazz musician (trombone), arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands". Miller's signature recordings include In the Mood, American Patrol, Chattanooga Choo Choo, A String of Pearls, Tuxedo Junction, Moonlight Serenade, Little Brown Jug and Pennsylvania 6-5000. While he was traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Miller's plane disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel. His body has never been found.
Early life and career
Miller was born on a farm in
Clarinda,
Iowa, to Lewis Elmer Miller and Mattie Lou (
née Cavender) .
In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he joined Sigma Nu Fraternity, but spent most of his time away from school, attending auditions and playing any gigs he could get, most notably with Boyd Senter's band in Denver. He dropped out of school after failing three out of five classes one semester, and decided to concentrate on making a career as a professional musician. He later studied the Schillinger technique with Joseph Schillinger, under whose tutelage he composed what became his signature theme, Moonlight Serenade.
In 1926, Miller toured with several groups, eventually landing a good spot in Ben Pollack's group in Los Angeles. During his stint with Pollack, Miller wrote several musical arrangements of his own. He also co-wrote his first composition, "Room 1411", written with Benny Goodman and released as a Brunswick 78. In 1928, when the band arrived in New York City, he sent for and married his college sweetheart, Helen Burger. He was a member of Red Nichols's orchestra in 1930, and because of Nichols, Miller played in the pit bands of two Broadway shows, Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy (where his bandmates included big band leaders Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa).
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Miller managed to earn a living working as a freelance trombonist in several bands.
On a March 21, 1928 Victor session Miller played alongside Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Joe Venuti in the All-Star Orchestra, directed by Nat Shilkret. On November 14, 1929
, an original vocalist named Red McKenzie hired Glenn to play on two records that are now considered to be jazz classics: "Hello, Lola" and "If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight." Beside Glenn were clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, guitarist Eddie Condon, drummer Gene Krupa and Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone. Payroll records in the Nathaniel Shilkret archives also show Glenn playing on two Shilkret radio broadcasts in 1931: on October 9 on a broadcast sponsored by the Smith Brothers and on November 21 on the Chesterfield Quarter Hour show "Music That Satisfies."
In the early-to-mid-1930s, Miller also worked as a trombonist and arranger in The Dorsey Brothers, first when they were a Brunswick studio group and finally when they formed an ill-fated co-led touring and recording orchestra. Miller composed the song "Annie's Cousin Fanny" and "Dese Dem Dose" for the Dorsey Brothers Band in 1934 and 1935. In 1935, he assembled an American orchestra for British bandleader Ray Noble, The Big Broadcast of 1936 starred Bing Crosby, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Ethel Merman, Jack Oakie, and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and also featured other performances by Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers, who would appear with Miller again in two movies for Twentieth Century Fox in 1941 and 1942.
Glenn Miller compiled several musical arrangements and formed his first band in 1937. The band failed to distinguish itself from the many others of the era, and eventually broke up. Benny Goodman said in 1976, "In late 1937, before his band became popular, we were both playing in Dallas. Glenn was pretty dejected and came to see me. He asked, 'What do you do? How do you make it?' I said, 'I don't know, Glenn. You just stay with it.'"
Success from 1938 to 1942
Discouraged, Miller returned to
New York. He realized that he needed to develop a unique sound, and decided to make the clarinet play a melodic line with a
tenor saxophone holding the same note, while three other saxophones harmonized within a single octave. George Simon discovered a saxophonist named Wilbur Schwartz for Glenn Miller. Miller hired Schwartz, but instead had him play the lead clarinet. According to Simon, "Willie's tone and way of playing provided a fullness and richness so distinctive that none of the later Miller imitators could ever accurately reproduce the Miller sound." With this new sound combination, Glenn Miller found a way to differentiate his band's style from the many bands that existed in the late thirties. Miller talked about his style in the May, 1939 issue of
Metronome magazine. "You'll notice today some bands use the same trick on every introduction; others repeat the same musical phrase as a modulation into a vocal ... We're fortunate in that our style doesn't limit us to stereotyped intros, modulations, first choruses, endings or even trick rhythms. The fifth sax, playing clarinet most of the time, lets you know whose band you're listening to. And that's about all there is to it."
In September 1938, the Miller band began making recordings for the RCA Victor, Bluebird Records subsidiary. Charlie "Cy" Shribman, a prominent East Coast businessman, began financing the band, providing a much needed infusion of cash. In the spring of 1939, the band's fortunes improved with a date at the Meadowbrook Ballroom in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, and more dramatically at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York. The Glen Island date according to author Gunther Schuller attracted "a record breaking opening night crowd of 1800..." With the Glen Island date, the band began a huge rise in popularity. In 1939, Time magazine noted: "Of the twelve to 24 discs in each of today's 300,000 U.S. jukeboxes, from two to six are usually Glenn Miller's." There were record-breaking recordings such as "Tuxedo Junction" which sold 115,000 copies in the first week. Miller's huge success in 1939 culminated with his band appearing at Carnegie Hall on October 6, with Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, and Fred Waring also the main attractions.
From 1939 to 1942, Miller's band was featured three times a week during a quarter-hour broadcast for Chesterfield cigarettes on CBS, first with the Andrews Sisters and then on its own. On February 10, 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first gold record for "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". "Chattanooga Choo Choo" was performed by the Miller orchestra with his singers Gordon "Tex" Beneke, Paula Kelly and the vocal group, the Modernaires. Other singers with this orchestra included Marion Hutton, Skip Nelson, Ray Eberle and to a smaller extent, Kay Starr, Ernie Caceres, Dorothy Claire and Jack Lathrop. Pat Friday ghost sang with the Miller band in their two films, Sun Valley Serenade and Orchestra Wives with Lynn Bari lip synching.
Motion pictures
Miller and his band appear in two
Twentieth Century Fox films. In 1941's
Sun Valley Serenade they are major members of the cast, which also features comedian
Milton Berle. The Miller band returned to Hollywood to film
1942's Orchestra Wives, featuring
Jackie Gleason playing a part as the group's bassist, Ben Beck. Miller co-wrote with Billy May the instrumental "Boom Shot" for the
Orchestra Wives soundtrack. Miller had an ailment that made laughter extremely painful. Since Jackie Gleason was a comedian, Miller had a difficult time watching Gleason more than once, because Miller would start laughing.
Harry Morgan appears as Cully Anderson, the unrequited love interest of
Ann Rutherford's character, Connie Ward. Harry Morgan was cast in 1953's
The Glenn Miller Story as Miller's pianist, Chummy MacGregor.
Public acclaim and critics' reaction
In 2004, Miller orchestra bassist
Herman "Trigger" Alpert explained the band's success: "Miller had America's music pulse ... He knew what would please the listeners." Although Miller had massive popularity, many jazz critics of the time had misgivings. They believed that the band's endless rehearsals and according to critic Amy Lee in
Metronome magazine, "letter-perfect playing", diminished any feeling from performances. They also felt that Miller's brand of swing shifted popular music away from the "hot jazz" bands of Benny Goodman and
Count Basie toward commercial novelty instrumentals and vocal numbers. For years, even after Miller died, the Miller estate maintained an unfriendly stance toward critics that derided the band during Miller's lifetime. Miller was often criticized for being too commercial. His answer to the criticism was, "I don't want a jazz band". Many modern jazz critics still harbor similar antipathy toward Miller.
Jazz critics Gunther Schuller (1991) and Gary Giddins (2004) have separately defended the Miller orchestra for whatever deficiencies earlier critics have found. In an article written for
The New Yorker in 2004, Gary Giddins says he feels that these early critics erred in denigrating Glenn Miller's music, and that the popular opinion of the time should hold greater sway. The article states: "Miller exuded little warmth on or off the bandstand, but once the band struck up its theme, audiences were done for: throats clutched, eyes softened. Can any other record match 'Moonlight Serenade' for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slaver in so many for so long?" He compares it partially to "Japanese
Gagaku [and] Hindu music" in its purity. Jazz pianist
George Shearing's quintet of the nineteen fifties and sixties was influenced by Miller: "with Shearing's 'locked hand' piano (influenced by the voicing of Miller's saxophone section) in the middle [of the quintet's harmonies]."
Frank Sinatra and
Mel Torme held the orchestra in high regard. Torme credited Miller with giving him helpful advice when he first started his singing and song writing career in the 1940s. Mel Torme met Glenn Miller in 1942, the meeting facilitated by Torme's father and Ben Pollack. Torme and Miller discussed "
That Old Black Magic" which was just emerging as a new song by
Johnny Mercer and
Harold Arlen. Miller told Torme to pick up every song by Mercer and study it and to become a voracious reader of anything he could find, because "all good lyric writers are great readers." In an interview with George T. Simon in 1948, Sinatra lamented the inferior quality of music he was recording in the late forties and in comparison with "those great Glenn Miller things" from eight years earlier. With the opposite opinion, fellow bandleader
Artie Shaw frequently disparaged the band after Miller's death: "All I can say is that Glenn should have lived, and 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' should have died."
Clarinetist Buddy DeFranco surprised many people when he led the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the late sixties and early seventies. De Franco was already the veteran of bands like Gene Krupa and Tommy Dorsey in the 1940s. He was also a major exponent of modern jazz in the nineteen fifties. But DeFranco is extremely fond of certain aspects of the Glenn Miller sound and according to him, never sees Miller as leading a swinging jazz band. "I found that when I opened with the sound of 'Moonlight Serenade,' I could look around and see men and women weeping as the music carried them back to years gone by." DeFranco's favorite Miller recordings are "Skylark" and "Indian Summer". Simply put, De Franco says, "the beauty of Glenn Miller's ballads [...] caused people to dance together."
The Army Air Force Band 1942–1944
outside the
Corn Exchange in Bedford, where Miller played in
World War II.]]
In 1942, at the peak of his civilian career, Miller decided to join the
war effort. At 38, Miller was too old to be drafted, and first volunteered for the
Navy but was told that they did not need his services. Miller then wrote to Army Brigadier General Charles Young. He persuaded the
United States Army to accept him so he could, in his own words, "be placed in charge of a modernized Army band." Captain Glenn Miller served initially as assistant special services officer for the Army Air Forces Southeast Training Center at
Maxwell Field,
Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1942. He played trombone with the Rhythmaires, a 15-piece dance band, in both Montgomery and in service clubs and recreation halls on Maxwell. Miller also appeared on both
WAPI (
Birmingham, Alabama) and
WSFA radio (Montgomery), promoting the activities of civil service women aircraft mechanics employed at Maxwell. Miller's weekly radio broadcast "I Sustain the Wings", for which he co-wrote the eponymous theme song, moved from New Haven to New York City and was very popular. This led to permission for Miller to form his 50-piece Army Air Force Band and take it to England in the summer of 1944, where he gave 800 performances. While in England, now Major Miller recorded a series of records at HMV- (now
EMI-) owned
Abbey Road Studios.
HMV at this time was the British and sometime European distributor for the American record company that handled and originated Glenn Miller's recordings, RCA Victor. The recordings the AAF band made in 1944 at Abbey Road were propaganda broadcasts for the
Office of War Information. Many songs are sung in German by Johnny Desmond and Glenn Miller speaks in German about the war effort. Also, the Miller-led AAF Orchestra recorded songs with the American singer
Dinah Shore. These were done at the Abbey Road studios and were the last recorded songs made by the band while being led by Miller. They were stored with HMV/EMI for fifty years, never being released until their copyright expired in Europe in 1994.
In summarizing Miller's military career, General Jimmy Doolittle said, “next to a letter from home, that organization was the greatest morale builder in the European Theater of Operations.”
Disappearance
,
New Haven, Connecticut]]
Miller spent his last night alive at Milton Ernest Hall, on the outskirts of
Bedford, Bedfordshire. On December 15, 1944, Miller was to fly from the United Kingdom to
Paris,
France, to play for the soldiers there. His plane (a single-engined
UC-64 Norseman, USAAF serial 44-70285) departed from
RAF Twinwood Farm in
Clapham, Bedfordshire and disappeared while flying over the
English Channel. No trace of the aircrew, passengers or plane has ever been found. Miller's status is
missing in action.
There are three main theories about what happened to Miller's plane, including the suggestion that he might have been hit by Royal Air Force bombs after an abortive raid on Siegen, Germany. One hundred and thirty-eight Lancaster bombers, short on fuel, jettisoned approximately 100,000 incendiaries in a designated area before landing. The logbooks of Royal Air Force navigator Fred Shaw recorded that he saw a small, single-engined monoplane spiraling out of control and crashing into the water. However, a second source, while acknowledging the possibility, cites other RAF crew members flying the same mission who stated that the drop area was in the North Sea.
In his 2006 self-published book, Clarence B. Wolfe—a gunner with Battery D, 134th AAA Battalion, in Folkestone, England—claims that his battery shot down Miller's plane. However, Wolfe's account has been disputed.
Another book by Lt. Col. Huton Downs, a former member of Dwight D. Eisenhower's personal staff, argues that the U.S. government covered up Miller's death. Downs suggested that Miller, who spoke German, had been enlisted by Eisenhower to covertly attempt to convince some German officers to end the war early. The book goes on to suggest that Miller was captured and killed in a Paris brothel, and his death covered up to save the government embarrassment. However the Publishers' Weekly review talks of "breathlessly written suppositions."
When Glenn Miller went missing, he left behind his wife, the former Helen Burger, originally from Boulder, Colorado, and the two children they adopted in 1943 and 1944, Steven and Jonnie. Helen Miller accepted the Bronze Star medal for Glenn Miller in February 1945.
Civilian band legacy
The Miller estate authorized an official Glenn Miller "ghost band" in 1946. This band was led by
Tex Beneke, former lead saxophonist and a singer for the civilian band. It had a make up similar to the Army Air Force Band: it had a large string section. The orchestra's official public début was at the Capitol Theatre on Broadway where it opened for a three week engagement on January 24, 1946. Future television and film composer
Henry Mancini was the band's pianist and one of the arrangers. This ghost band played to very large audiences all across the United States, including a few dates at the
Hollywood Palladium in 1947, where the original Miller band played in 1941. In a website concerning the history of the Hollywood Palladium, it is noted "[e]ven as the big band era faded, the Tex Beneke and Glenn Miller Orchestra concert at the Palladium resulted in a record-breaking crowd of 6,750 dancers." By 1949, economics dictated that the string section be dropped.
This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did. The break was acrimonious and Beneke is not currently listed by the Miller estate as a former leader of the Glenn Miller orchestra.
When Glenn Miller was alive, various bandleaders like Bob Chester imitated his style. By the early 1950s, various bands were again copying the Miller style of clarinet-led reeds and muted trumpets, notably Ralph Flanagan, Jerry Gray, and Ray Anthony. This, coupled with the success of The Glenn Miller Story (1953), led the Miller estate to ask Ray McKinley to lead a new ghost band. The official Glenn Miller orchestra for the United States is currently under the direction of Larry O'Brien. The officially sanctioned Glenn Miller Orchestra for the United Kingdom has toured and recorded with great success under the leadership of Ray McVay. The official Glenn Miller Orchestra for Europe has been led by Wil Salden since 1990.
Army Air Force band legacy
In the mid-1940s, after Miller's disappearance, the Miller led Army Air Force band was decommissioned and sent back to the United States. "[T]he chief of the European theater asked [Warrant Officer Harold Lindsay] Lin [Arinson] to put together another band to take its place, and that's when the 314 was formed." According to singer
Tony Bennett who sang with it while in the service, the 314 was the immediate successor to the Glenn Miller led AAF orchestra. The Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band's long term legacy has carried on with
the Airmen of Note, a band within
the United States Air Force Band. This band was created in 1950 from smaller groups within the Bolling Air Force Base in Washington D.C. and continues to play jazz music for the Air Force community and the general public. Herb Miller, Glenn Miller's brother, led his own band in the United States and England until the late 1980s. Herb's son, John continues the tradition leading a band playing mainly Glenn Miller style music. In 1989, Glenn Miller's daughter Jonnie purchased her father's house where he was born. The Glenn Miller Foundation was created to oversee the subsequent restoration.
In the United States and England, there are a few archives that are devoted to Glenn Miller. The Glenn Miller archive, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, includes the original manuscript to Miller's theme song, "Moonlight Serenade", among other items of interest. In 2002, the Glenn Miller Museum opened to the public at the former RAF Twinwood Farm, in Clapham, Bedfordshire, England. Miller's surname resides on the 'Wall of Missing' at the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial. A monument stone was also placed in Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut next to the campus of Yale University.
In 1953, Glenn Miller was voted into the Down Beat magazine Jazz Hall of Fame in the Readers' Poll. In 1978, Glenn Miller was a charter inductee into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
In 1996, the U.S. Postal Service issued a Glenn Miller postage stamp. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (Grammys), honored Glenn Miller by including three of his recordings in their Hall of Fame: In 1983, "In The Mood", Bluebird B-10416-A, was inducted. The recording of "Moonlight Serenade", Bluebird B-10214-B, was also honored by the Grammys in similar fashion in 1991. "Chattanooga Choo Choo", Bluebird B-11230-B, was inducted in 1996. In 2003, Miller received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
The entire output of Chesterfield-sponsored radio programs Glenn Miller did between 1939 and 1942 were recorded by the Glenn Miller organization on acetate discs. In the 1950s and afterwards, RCA-Victor distributed many of these on long playing albums and compact discs. A sizeable representation of the recording output by the various Glenn Miller led bands are almost always in circulation by Sony Music Entertainment and the Universal Music Group, the successor conglomerates to RCA-Victor, Brunswick, Bluebird, Columbia and Decca. Glenn Miller remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of 1935 to 1945.
The University of Colorado, Boulder, has an extensive Glenn Miller Archive, formed by Alan Cass, which houses many of Miller's recordings, gold records and other memorabilia, which is open to scholarly research and the general public.
Glenn Miller arranging staff and compositions
Miller had a staff of arrangers who wrote originals like "String of Pearls" (written and arranged by
Jerry Gray) or took originals like "In The Mood" (writing credit given to
Joe Garland and arranged by
Eddie Durham) and "
Tuxedo Junction" (written by bandleader
Erskine Hawkins and arranged by Jerry Gray) and arranged them for the Miller band to either record or broadcast. Glenn Miller's staff of arrangers in his civilian band, that handled the bulk of the work were Jerry Gray (a former arranger for Artie Shaw),
Bill Finegan (a former arranger for Tommy Dorsey),
Billy May and to a much smaller extent, George Williams, who worked very briefly with the band as well as
Andrews Sisters arranger
Vic Schoen (who married
Marion Hutton). According to
Norman Leyden, "[s]everal others [besides Leyden] arranged for Miller in the service, including Jerry Gray, Ralph Wilkinson, Mel Powell, and Steve Steck."
In 1943, Glenn Miller wrote Glenn Miller's Method for Orchestral Arranging, published by the Mutual Music Society in New York, a one hundred sixteen page book with illustrations and scores that explains how he wrote his musical arrangements.
Discography
Glenn Miller composed individually or in collaboration with others at least fourteen songs that are available on recordings. He added lyrics to an additional tune. These and many other songs were recorded by Miller with his pre-war civilian bands and his Army Air Force band.
Band alumni
Many of the Miller musicians went on to studio and touring careers in Hollywood and New York after
World War II. For example, Trigger Alpert, a bassist from the civilian band, Zeke Zarchy for the Army Air Force Band and Willie Schwartz, the lead clarinetist from the civilian band back up Frank Sinatra on many recordings Ernie Caceres, the Miller band's baritone saxist also appears on several Frank Sinatra recordings. Other musicians who went from the Miller bands to success afterwards include:
*George Siravo, 1916–2000 was an arranger with Glenn Miller's first band in the late nineteen thirties. Siravo went on to become a staff arranger with Columbia Records in the nineteen forties, working with Frank Sinatra, Doris Day and Mitch Miller.
*Billy May, 1916–2004 a trumpeter and an arranger for the civilian band, became a much-coveted arranger and studio orchestra leader after that band broke up, going on to work with Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O'Day, and Bing Crosby, solos on "A String of Pearls", with Miller in 1941, for Bluebird records." Hackett went on to work with Jackie Gleason and Dizzy Gillespie.
*Johnny Desmond, 1919–1985 a lead vocalist from the Army Air Force Band, became a popular singer in the 1950s, and appeared on Broadway in the 1960s in Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand.
*Kay Starr, b. 1922 became a popular singer in the post-war period. In 1939, Marion Hutton, the regular "girl singer", became sick and Starr was flown in to replace her. Kay Starr's two recordings with Glenn Miller were two 1939 sides, "Baby Me" and "Love With a Capital You".
* Artie Malvin, 1922–2006 Glenn Miller's AAF Band had a vocal group called "The Crew Chiefs". Artie Malvin was the baritone of the four men. After World War Two and Miller's death, Malvin became heavily immersed in the popular music of the forties and fifties, being involved in everything from children's music to the nascent beginnings of rock to jingles for commercials. By the nineteen seventies Artie Malvin was involved with "The Carol Burnett Show" doing special musical material.
* Paul Tanner, b.1917 trombonist for the civilian band, went on to create the electrotheremin and perform on songs such as Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys
Some of the Army Air Force members went on to notable careers in classical music and modern jazz. Three such are:
*Norman Leyden b. 1917 an arranger from the Army Air Force Band later became a noted arranger in New York, composing arrangements for Sarah Vaughan, among other artists. His long career culminated with his highly regarded work for the Oregon Symphony, now as Laureate Associate Conductor.
*Mel Powell, 1923–1998 , was the pianist and one of the arrangers in the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band. Gary Giddins comments on "[Miller's] splendid forty-two-piece Army Air Force Band’s startling performance of 'Mission to Moscow.'” "Mission to Moscow" was arranged by Mel Powell, the former pianist for the Benny Goodman orchestra before he was drafted into the service and subsequently joined the Miller orchestra. "Pearls on Velvet" with the Air Force Band is also one of his compositions."In 1949, he decided on a radical change of direction, setting aside jazz and enrolling as a pupil of the composer and teacher Paul Hindemith at Yale University." Powell started teaching at the California Institute for the Arts in Los Angeles in 1969.
*Addison Collins, Jr. played French Horn in the service band. He is featured as "Junior" Collins on the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool recordings of 1949–50.
Drummer and biographer:
*George T. Simon 1912–2001. George Simon knew and worked with Glenn Miller from his early sideman days to the days of leading his civilian band and finally, worked with him when he was stateside with the Army Air Force band. Simon was a drummer for some of the Miller bands. He helped his friend Glenn Miller with personnel using the connections that Simon had as editor with the now defunct Metronome magazine. George Simon wrote the liner notes for eleven Miller reissues, among them: Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band, 1955, Glenn Miller On The Air, 1963 and Glenn Miller: A Legendary Performer, 1974. During a long career, he also wrote articles with topics ranging from Miller and Frank Sinatra to Thelonious Monk. In 1974, Simon won a Grammy award for his liner notes for the RCA record: Bing Crosby: A Legendary Performer.
See also
Death in absentia
List of people who have mysteriously disappeared
List of swing/big band musicians
Notes
Bibliography
ASIN: B0007DMEDQ
External links
Glenn Miller Radio Show (9 episodes from 1940)
The Glenn Miller Birthplace Society, organizing the annual Glenn Miller Birthplace Festival in Clarinda, IA
Website listing recordings Glenn Miller made for Brunswick records as a sideman in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
A World War II Soldier's Insight into the mysterious disappearance of Glenn Miller
Website about Glenn Miller's appearances in January, 1942 in Toronto, Ontario and London, Ontario. Shows pictures of Miller in Canada with the band performing the "Sunset Serenade" radio show
In Search Of... television program, segment on Glenn Miller hosted by Leonard Nimoy.
George's Spink's article, "Glenn Miller: The Sound of an Era" written for the Chicago Sun-Times in December 1984 on the 40th anniversary of Miller's disappearance .
Category:People from Fort Morgan, Colorado
Category:1904 births
Category:1944 deaths
Category:Swing bandleaders
Category:Big band bandleaders
Category:Swing trombonists
Category:American jazz bandleaders
Category:American jazz trombonists
Category:RCA Victor artists
Category:Vocalion Records artists
Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Category:People from Clarinda, Iowa
Category:United States Army Air Forces officers
Category:Cultural history of World War II
Category:University of Colorado alumni
Category:Musicians from Colorado
Category:Missing in action
Category:Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in international waters
Category:United States Army officers
Category:People from North Platte, Nebraska
