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Glenn Miller
This category is for all questions about the life and music of Glenn Miller (1904-1944), who is considered to be the most popular musician of the Big Band era.
229 Questions
What is value of glenn miller limited edition 14 record album?
looks to be from around $40 - $100, depending on edition and condition. Apparently the later editions are worth more... why? No idea.
What movie and television projects has Glenn Miller been in?
Jimmy Stewart portrayed Glenn Miller, and June Allyson played his wife Helen Burger.
Other stars were:
Harry Morgan - pianist Chummy MacGregor
Charles Drake - assistant Don Haynes
George Tobias - impresario Si Schribman
Steve MIller is still alive. There have been many internet rumors about him dying, however they are all false. He suposedly died on September 11, 2001 (unrelated to the WTC plane crashes), in 2002 he died again of a drug over dose, in 2003 it was a car accident, and I heard in 2005 he died yet again, only this time of cancer. As of 2011 he is still alive and ocasionally recording. He is also working as a College guest artist for musical arts.
Did Glenn Miller have siblings?
Most definitely. He was famously distant, described by one acquaintance as being as cold as a fish on ice in a market, but once he got to know a person he formed a lasting bond.
Among his band members he was especially close to Trigger Alpert, Tex Beneke, and Ray McKinley. Beneke was somewhat of a "pet" and was accused of being protected by Miller, but on the rare occasions when he did mess up, Miller could be as unforgiving as with anyone else who didn't do their job well.
He was also close to Cecil Madden, his producer for BBC broadcasts in England. Madden later helped the Beatles to fame, was knighted, and became head of the BBC, but always considered his greatest regret to be his inability to keep Miller from taking that last flight in December 1944.
What is the value of the Glenn Miller Years Readers Digest RCA 6 LP set?
Many of the records sets are worth a price close to $35 each. The exact price will depend upon their condition.
Glenn Ordway is 60 years old (birthdate: January 16, 1951).
Helen Burger Miller passed away in 1966.
She was born in 1902 so she would have to be well over 100.
What is the value of Glenn Miller 78 - Moonlight Serenade?
It depends on what label - what pressing - condition. That's very hard to determine with just a question.
It was originally issued on Bluebird and first pressings have gold lettering. If it's in really shiny nice condition, it might get $10.00 but I doubt it. That was a million seller and so many floating around. Additional pressings had silver lettering. It was re-issued a bazillon times on Victor as well.
According to biographer George T. Simon, he was almost exactly 180 cm (6 ft) tall.
What are the release dates for Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra - 1947?
The cast of Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Band - 1947 includes: Tex Beneke as Himself - Leader of Glenn Miller Band The Crew Chiefs as Band Singers The Glenn Miller Orchestra as Themselves Lillian Lane as Band Singer Arthur Malvin as Band Singer Robert Nichols as Band Singer
What songs did Glenn Miller actually sing in himself?
Glenn Miller composed at least twenty-five songs and instrumentals during his career. The twenty-five compositions are as follows:
1. Moonlight Serenade was composed by Glenn Miller in 1939 and released as a single that reached the Top Ten chart. Billboard listed the record as the no.5 record of 1939. Moonlight Serenade is one of the most recognizable songs of the 20th century and defined the Swing Era. Chicago, Bobby Vinton, Carly Simon, Barry Manilow, The Ventures, Gene Krupa, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald have recorded the Glenn Miller composition. In 1991, Glenn Miller's 1939 recording of Moonlight Serenade, RCA Bluebird B-10214-B, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
2. Annie's Cousin Fanny was written in 1934 when Miller was in the Dorsey Brothers band. This record was reportedly banned by radio stations because of its suggestive lyrics that used double entendre.
3. Dese Dem Dose was written when Miller was in the Dorsey band in 1935. Miller also performed the composition with the Ray Noble Orchestra which he was a member of. Glenn Miller appeared in the 1935 movie The Big Broadcast of 1936 as part of the Noble orchestra.
4. Solo Hop was written by Miller in 1935 when he started to record under his own name.
5. When Icky Morgan Plays the Organ was a humorous novelty song written for and recorded with the Clark Randall Orchestra in 1935.
6. Sold American was written in 1938 with pianist Chummy MacGregor.
7. Community Swing was written in 1937 by Glenn Miller.
8. Doin' the Jive was written with MacGregor in 1937.
9. Sometime was composed with Chummy MacGregor in 1939 and sung by Ray Eberle on radio broadcasts but was not released as a 78.
10. Introduction to a Waltz was written with Jerry Gray and Hal Dickinson in 1941 and performed on the radio several times for the Chesterfield radio program.
11. Boom Shot was composed by Glenn Miller with Billy May in 1942 for the 20th Century Fox movie Orchestra Wives. The Jack Million Band recorded Boom Shot on the album In the Mood for Glenn Miller, Volume 2.
12. 705, 7-0-5, or Seven-O-Five was written by Miller when he formed his Army Air Force Band during World War II and was performed on the I Sustain the Wings radio program on May 5, 1944.
13. I Sustain the Wings was written in 1943 as the theme of a radio program that Glenn Miller hosted from June, 1943 to June, 1944.
14. Room 1411 (Goin' to Town) was written with Benny Goodman in 1928 when Glenn Miller was in Benny Goodman's Boys, a band formed in Chicago. The record was released as a Brunswick 78 with Jungle Blues in 1928.
15. I Swung the Election was written for Jack Teagarden in 1939 who released it on Columbia as a 78 and as a V disc, No. 823.
16. I'm Headin' For California was written in 1944 with Artie Malvin.
17. Morning Mood was a trombone solo written in 1941.
18. After Tonight was written in 1939.
19. Flaming Sword of Liberation was written in 1944 and republished in 1951 as Wings on Parade.
20. The Technical Training Command was a theme for the I Sustain the Wings radio program written in 1943 with Chummy MacGregor and Sol Meyer.
21. Jinky was composed in 1933 when Glenn Miller worked with Smith Ballew. It is score #62 in the Glenn Miller musical score library.
22. Let's Give Them a Break was performed once in October, 1937 but was not recorded.
23. SHAEF Presents was written as a theme for the "American Band of the AEF" program which aired on the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme (AEFP) radio network. It was not used. It was composed by Captain Glenn Miller and arranged by Sgt. Jerry Gray. There are no recordings of the score.
24. Chesterfield #1 was incidental music for commercial breaks written in 1941 for the "Chesterfield Moonlight Serenade" radio program. It was performed on 10 Chesterfield shows. The score number is 617. These broadcasts were recorded.
25. Chesterfield #2 or Fast One was incidental music performed twice on the Chesterfield radio show in 1941. Harold Dickinson of The Modernaires shares credit for the vocal part while Glenn Miller wrote the music. The broadcasts were recorded.
These are the twenty-five known compositions by Glenn Miller. Miller also contributed additional lyrics with Jack Teagarden to the song Basin Street Blues, written by Clarence Williams in 1928.
His major arrangements were Solo Hop, Jingle Bellswith Bill Finegan, Moonlight Serenade, Doin' the Jive, Tuxedo Junction, and Danny Boy with John Chummy MacGregor.
Glenn Miller wrote music that was a combination of jazz, swing, popular, and classical, incorporating all of his musical influences. Community Swing and Doin' the Jive are more oriented towards swing while Dese Dem Dose and Room 1411 are more Dixieland or New Orleans-style jazz from the 1920s. Introduction to a Waltz combines elements of classical music with big band swing styles. Annie's CousinFanny and When Icky Morgan Plays the Organ are big band arrangements based on the big band musical styles of the 1930s as is the classic Moonlight Serenade from 1939. 7-0-5is a big band style instrumental for the Army Air Force band. I Sustain the Wings is a big band style instrumental that incorporates strings that accentuate an ascending musical motif. Glenn Miller incorporated swing, jazz, popular music, big band styles, Tin Pan Alley, Dixieland Jazz, and classical music in his compositions. Sometime was a pop ballad but with a Big Band arrangement.
Glenn Miller had 23 number one records and 72 top ten hits from 1939 to 1943. By comparison, The Beatles had 20 number one singles in the U.S. from 1963 to 1970. Elvis Presley had 18 number one hits from 1956 to 1977. The domination of the U.S. charts by Glenn Miller was unprecedented in the 20th century.
Glenn Miller was arguably one of the first pop superstars, along with artists such as Benny Goodman and Bing Crosby. Miller was more famous as an arranger and conductor than as a composer. Aside from Moonlight Serenade, Annie's Cousin Fanny is another composition that is well known, written when Miller was an arranger and trombonist in the Dorsey Brothers Band in 1934. His strength was in finding compositions others had written and producing catchy arrangements, either on his own or in collaboration with arrangers such as Jerry Gray, Bill Finegan, George Williams, and Norman Leyden. He had a talent for picking songs that audiences would go for. He knew how to put together new and different sounds that were innovative enough to stretch his listeners' tastes and make them want more without being so unusual that they would lose interest.
For example, In the Mood was written in the middle 1930s by a composer named Joe Garland, and went through all sorts of different arrangements (and at least 2 other titles) without becoming a hit. Joe Garland also arguably plagiarized the main melodic riff from a 1930 composition by Wingy Manone entitled Tar Paper Stomp on Champion Records, where it first appeared. Manone never sued Garland for plagiarism. The main riff is identical, however, in both compositions. Edgar Hayes recorded an early version as did Artie Shaw. Both recordings flopped. Garland then took the instrumental to Glenn Miller. Miller figured out how to cut the original 8+ minutes down to a respectable 3; his cuts and tightenings actually gave the tune more impact and it became one of the most famous swing recordings ever, staying at no.1 for 13 weeks on the Billboard Juke Box chart in 1940. The time, however, was not the key factor because Sing, Sing, Sing written by Louis Prima, and recorded by Benny Goodman, was a smash hit and defined the Swing Era and clocked in at 8 minutes and 39 seconds. The music was so mesmerizing that people bought the record anyway. Glenn Miller made the music exciting by emphasizing the key, catchy riffs, in particular, the Wingy Manone riff from 1930, which made up the core of the recording.
Glenn Miller enlisted composers Mack Gordon and Harry Warren to write songs for his two films, Sun Valley Serenade (1941), with Milton Berle, John Payne, Dorothy Dandridge, Sonja Henie, and the Nicholas Brothers, and Orchestra Wives (1942), with Ann Rutherford, who had been in Gone With the Wind, George Montgomery, Jackie Gleason, and Harry Morgan, then worked with them and Jerry Gray on arrangements to give us Serenade in Blue, At Last, and Chattanooga Choo Choo - not a bad set by anyone's evaluation. Glenn Miller composed the instrumental Boom Shot for the Orchestra Wives soundtrack. At Last, first recorded by Glenn Miller and reaching no.14 on the Billboard charts, has been covered by Nat King Cole, Etta James, Stevie Wonder, Ray Anthony, Christina Aguilera, and Beyonce Knowles in 2008.
Miller hosted a radio program entitled I Sustain the Wings from 1943 to 1944 one of whose goals was to encourage enlistment. One of the instrumentals that Miller recorded was El Capitan by John Philip Sousa. Miller co-wrote I Sustain the Wings and 7-0-5 during this period. And as conductor of the Army Air Forces Orchestra, he led the way in combining jazz and classical sounds in a manner never heard before, or, tragically, since.
What is the value of a letter signed by Glenn Miller?
if autographed and verified up to several thousand pounds good luck from Trevor in Sevenoaks
When did Glenn Miller sing At Last?
The vocalists in the movie Orchestra Wives were Ray Eberle and Pat Friday. Pat Friday was not credited because she was not an actor, but provided the singing voice for costar Lynn Bari.
When the song was released on record, only Ray Eberle sang.
Millers debt realist literatue is seen in?
it is seen in Miller's interest in Willy's psychological state.
What were the instruments in the Glenn Miller orchestra?
The best description is Swing, a mixture of pop and jazz. However many of his recordings with the civilian band can equally well be categorized as pop tunes.
He ranged wider on broadcasts, performing blues-oriented songs such as Harlem Chapel Bells and Daisy Mae, along with some "purer" jazz pieces. Miller knew that pop tunes sold best, though, so he rarely recorded these more adventurous titles.
The Army Air Force Orchestra (1943-44) had a much broader repertoire, given its much larger size including 21 strings. Again, many of the songs were pop tunes intended to help boost morale of servicemen overseas, but the band also did a lot of large-orchestra jazz (920 Special, Enlisted Mens' Mess), small group jazz (look for Mel Powell's Uptown Hall Gang) and even light classical pieces such as Dvorak's Largo and short compositions by Ravel.
Glenn Miller played big band jazz in the swing era (the 1940's). So his style can be considered "swing" or "big band" jazz.
What were the Instruments used in some of Glenn Miller's Bands or in other Big Bands?
The full complement of instruments in the orchestra performed on his most famous recording: trumpets, trombones, drums, and reeds. The saxophone exchange was performed by Tex Beneke and Al Klink.
There is still considerable and highly varied speculation about what happened to him on the afternoon of December 15, 1944. The official US Army report is that he was missing in action, aboard a small plane crossing the English Channel to France.
New (2010-2011) research by the University of Colorado determined that the C-64 Norseman plane carrying him and Col. Norman Baesell to Paris had been repaired a few days earlier to correct persistent problems with carburetor icing. The ground temperature that day was about 5º C so it would have been cold enough over the Channel to cause ice in the fuel line. The plane was a single-engine model with a wooden frame that could easily have lost power and disintegrated under those circumstances.
Another credible explanation is that he became the victim of "friendly fire" when the plane flew under a group of Allied bombers returning from an aborted raid on Siegen, Germany. Warplanes couldn't land with armed bombs so the standard practice was to jettison them in a specific "drop zone" over the Channel. The Norseman's pilot was a woefully underqualified hotshot who could easily have drifted off course and into the drop zone. In 1985 a couple of retired RAF fliers from that bomber group produced a logbook that recorded a "kite" (small plane) being hit by one of their jettisoned blockbusters. However they were never really able to explain why the logbook was kept out of sight for 4 decades, given how widely-known the mystery is. The story has been disputed by RAF veterans who claimed that the squadron in question had actually used a different drop zone far to the north.
There is also the possibility that the plane made it to France only to crash somewhere in Normandy. Some GI's reported that they had been ordered to clean up debris from a crashed plane that they identified as the missing C-64. However this story is weakened by conflicting reports regarding whether any bodies were found.
Another line of speculation is that Miller had been having an affair with a Frenchwoman whose husband had supposedly died in combat, but that he turned up alive and shot Miller in a jealous rage. This story is bolstered by reports from two U.S. medics that they were ordered to "deal with" Miller's body and that their own lives would be in jeopardy if they revealed what had happened. While Miller was generally considered to be an extreme "straight arrow" morally it's difficult to say what the pressures of war and separation might have done to him. Miller's biographer George T. Simon quoted Ray McKinley as saying Glenn had confessed that he was "doing things he didn't think he was capable of" and that he was "ashamed" of his behavior, but no one ever produced additional details. See the Related Question for more information.
A final hypothesis was presented in early 2009 by a researcher named Hunton Downs. He claims that the December flight was a ruse to hide a secret mission to Germany where Miller would serve as a liaison between the Army high command and some sympathetic German officers who wanted to end the war. According to Downs, Miller was chosen because his fame would provide an entrée with a group of officers who were great swing fans despite Nazi efforts to ban jazz and its related genres. Downs' speculation has some backing, including discovery of a "7-13" project (check those 2 positions in the alphabet) and testimony from former German soldiers who said they saw Miller alive as late as December 17th. Supposedly the plot was discovered and Miller was killed by the Germans on that day.
While it might make a great movie script, Downs' speculation is based on the contentions that (a) the famously undiplomatic bandleader had the skills to handle some of the most sensitive negotiations ever proposed to end a conflict and (b) he would conduct the talks entirely in German, a language that he spoke haltingly at best.
In addition to these speculations there are well-known questions about his health. George T. Simon described him as having lost 30 or 40 pounds by late 1944. Photos show him as gaunt, almost skeletal. He suffered from such shortness of breath that he had stopped playing his horn, leading to the almost obvious conclusion that decades of chain-smoking had resulted in lung cancer. This speculation has been abetted by letters found in his brother Herb's estate in which he (Glenn) said that he was seriously ill and did not expect to live long enough to return home. In one he actually asked Herb to make arrangements to care for his wife and children.
Unfortunately no evidence has ever surfaced that would definitively explain what happened. For now the Glenn Miller Mystery is as tangled as it ever has been.
What is bea millers phone number?
I'm sorry, but I can't provide personal contact information for individuals, including public figures like Bea Miller. If you have any other questions about her or her work, feel free to ask!
Where can you find a photo of Helen Burger Miller?
This is the Berger family tree. It has pictures of Helen as a baby as well as her and her grandchildren before her death. Also pictures of her parents and extended family.
Please refer to the related link for the picture.
Who sang the song I Know Why for Glenn Miller?
The commercial recording was sung by Paula Kelly, backed by the Modernaires.
The movie version was lip-synched by actress Lynn Bari, but was actually performed by Pat Friday who was the Marni Nixon of her time, providing "ghost" singing voices for non-musical actresses. Backing was by the Modernaires and Six Hits and a Miss.
