Glenn Miller - Rainbow Rhapsody '2017

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Johnson Rag
02. The Spirit is Willing
03. Take the a Train
04. Rug Cutlers Swing
05. I Want to be Happy
06. Pagan Love Song
07. Slow Freight
08. Glen Island Special
09. Slip Horn Jive
10. Boulder Buff
11. Farewell Blues
12. I Dreamt I Dwelt in Harlem
13. Sun Valley Jump

 Glenn Millers reign as the most popular bandleader in the U.S. came
relatively late in his career and was relatively brief, lasting only about three
and a half years, from the spring of 1939 to the fall of 1942. But during that
period he utterly dominated popular music, and over time he has proven the most
enduring figure of the swing era, with reissues of his recordings achieving gold
record status 40 years after his death. Miller developed a distinctive sound in
which a high-pitched clarinet carried the melody, doubled by a saxophone section
playing an octave lower, and he used that sound to produce a series of hits that
remain definitive examples of swing music. Millers approach is not much
appreciated by jazz fans, who prefer bands that allow for greater improvisation
than was found in his highly disciplined, rigorously rehearsed unit. But he
brought the swing style of popular music to a level of sophistication and
commercial acceptance it had not previously achieved and would not see again
after his untimely passing.

Miller was the son of Lewis Elmer and Mattie Lou Cavender Miller. He lived in
various locations in the Midwest while he was growing up. He first took up the
mandolin, then switched to a horn. In Grant City, MO, where his family moved in
1915, he joined the town band and began playing trombone. By 1918, the family
had moved to Fort Morgan, CO, where he played in the high school band and
graduated in May 1921. He immediately joined the Boyd Senter band, but quit to
start college at the University of Colorado in January 1923. After a year,
however, he left college and moved to Los Angeles, where he joined Ben Pollacks
band. In the summer of 1928, he left Pollack and settled in New York, where he
worked as a session musician and arranger. When in the spring of 1934 Tommy and
Jimmy Dorsey formed the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, he signed on as trombonist
and arranger, remaining with the band almost a year. He left to organize an
American band for British bandleader Ray Noble that made its debut at the
Rainbow Room in New Yorks Rockefeller Center. Meanwhile, he was studying theory
and composition with Joseph Schillinger.

Miller began recording under his own name for Columbia Records on April 25,
1935, using a pickup band containing members of the Noble orchestra. His
instrumental Solo Hop reached the Top Ten in the summer of 1935. But he did not
organize a permanent touring band of his own until 1937, when he signed to
Brunswick Records. The group was not a success, and he disbanded it in early
1938, then reorganized a couple of months later and signed to the
discount-priced Bluebird subsidiary of RCA Victor Records. Still without any
great success, he managed to maintain this orchestra for the next year until he
got his big break with an engagement at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle,
NY, in the summer of 1939. Glen Island was a major swing venue with a radio
wire, giving the band extensive exposure. Already, Miller had hit the charts
with the Top Ten hit Sunrise Serenade; soon, its flipside, Moonlight Serenade,
would become an even bigger hit. Wishing (Will Make It So) (vocal by Ray Eberle)
hit number one in June. Ultimately, Miller scored 17 Top Ten hits in 1939,
including the subsequent chart-toppers Stairway to the Stars, Moon Love, Over
the Rainbow, and Blue Orchids (all vocals by Ray Eberle), as well as The Man
With the Mandolin (vocal by Marion Hutton).

Millers recording success led to other opportunities. He became the star of the
three-times-a-week radio series Chesterfield Supper Club in December 1939 and
began the first of several extended engagements at the Café Rouge in the
Hotel Pennsylvania in New York in January 1940, also appearing occasionally at
the Paramount Theatre. He scored 31 Top Ten hits in 1940, more than three times
as many as the second most successful recording artist of the year, Tommy
Dorsey, hitting number one with Careless, When You Wish Upon a Star,
Imagination, Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread), and Blueberry Hill (all
vocals by Ray Eberle); The Woodpecker Song (vocal by Marion Hutton); and the
instrumentals In the Mood and Tuxedo Junction (both of which were later inducted
into the Grammy Hall of Fame).

Miller scored another 11 Top Ten hits in 1941, which was enough to make him the
top recording artist for the second year in a row. His number one hits included
Song of the Volga Boatmen, You and I (vocal by Ray Eberle), Chattanooga Choo
Choo, from his first film, Sun Valley Serenade (vocals by Tex Beneke and the
Modernaires with Paula Kelly), and Elmers Tune (vocals by Ray Eberle and the
Modernaires). The story was much the same on the recording front in 1942, 11 Top
Ten hits and a third straight ranking as the years top recording artist, the
chart-toppers including A String of Pearls, Moonlight Cocktail (vocals by Ray
Eberle and the Modernaires), Dont Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but
Me), and (Ive Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo (vocals on the last two by Tex Beneke,
Marion Hutton, and the Modernaires). Kalamazoo came from Millers second film,
Orchestra Wives.

Yet 1942, the first full year of American participation in World War II, marked
the end of Millers dominance of popular music, since, after months of
negotiations, he arranged to receive an officers commission in the army air
force on September 10 and, 17 days later, played his final date with his band,
which he then broke up. He organized a service band and began performing at
military camps and war-bond rallies while hosting a weekly radio series, Sustain
the Wings. Nevertheless, he scored two more Top Ten hits in 1943, including the
number one That Old Black Magic (vocals by Skip Nelson and the Modernaires). He
took his band to Great Britain in June 1944 and continued to perform for the
troops and do radio broadcasts. He was preparing to go on to Paris when the
plane on which he was traveling disappeared over the English Channel and he died
at age 40.

Glenn Miller & His OrchestraGlenn Miller, an album of 78 rpm records, topped the
newly instituted album charts in May 1945 and became the most successful album
of the year. The Glenn Miller Orchestra was reconstituted as a ghost band after
the war under the direction of Tex Beneke. In October 1947, Glenn Miller
Masterpieces, Vol. 2 topped the album charts. Miller was the subject of a partly
fictionalized film biography, The Glenn Miller Story, starring James Stewart, in
February 1954; a soundtrack album of re-recordings not featuring Miller,
released by Decca Records, hit number one in March. RCA Victor countered with
the 10 LP Selections from the Glenn Miller Story, which hit number one in May.
(The album was reissued as a 12 LP with a modified track selection in 1956 and
was certified gold in 1961. In 1962, RCA Victor released Glenn Miller Plays
Selections from the Glenn Miller Story and Other Hits, which had an identical
track listing to the 1956 Selections from the Glenn Miller Story LP. It went
gold in 1968.) The Miller estate, having parted ways with Tex Beneke, hired Ray
McKinley, a former member of the Miller band, to organize a new ghost band in
1956, and this Glenn Miller Orchestra continued to record and perform under
various leaders from then on. In 1959, RCA Victor released a triple LP of
previously unissued performances, For the First Time ..., which earned a Grammy
nomination for Best Performance by a Dance Band. Reissues of Millers original
recordings sold well perennially. The double-LP A Memorial 1944-1969, released
in October 1969, went gold in 1986; Pure Gold, released in March 1975, went gold
in 1984. In 1989, Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers sampled Millers recording of
In the Mood on their gold single Swing the Mood. While RCA Victor remains the
primary repository of Miller recordings and continues to reissue them in various
configurations, other labels have also come up with airchecks and other stray
recordings, making for a large and constantly growing catalog.

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