Alton Glenn Miller (March 1 1904–presumably December 15 1944), was an American jazz musician and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best known "Big Bands". Miller's signature recordings include, "In the Mood", "Tuxedo Junction", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Moonlight Serenade", "Little Brown Jug", and "Pennsylvania 6-5000". While traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Miller's plane disappeared in bad weather. His body was never found. Miller's recordings are still familiar refrains, even to generations born decades after Miller disappeared.

Glenn Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa on March 1 1904. In 1915, Miller's family moved to Grant City, Missouri where he went to grade school. Around this time, Miller was given his first trombone and then played in the town orchestra. In 1918, the Miller family moved again, this time to Fort Morgan, Colorado where Glenn went to high school. During his senior year, Miller became very interested in a new style of music called "dance band music". Miller enjoyed this music so much that he and some classmates decided to start their own band. By the time Miller graduated from high school in 1921, he had decided he wanted to become a professional musician.

In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado 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, who is credited with helping Miller create the "Miller sound", and under whose tutelage he himself composed what became his signature theme, "Moonlight Serenade."

In 1926, Miller toured with several groups and landed a good spot in Ben Pollack's group in Los Angeles. During his stint with Pollack, Miller had the opportunity to write several musical arrangements of his own. 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, played in the pit bands of two Broadway shows, Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy, his bandmates included Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. The consensus there was that Miller was no more than an average trombonist. Despite this, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Miller managed to earn a living working as a freelance trombonist in several bands. In November of 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". The session is also historic for its integration of both black and white musicians in the studio. Besides Glenn were clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, guitarist Eddie Condon, drummer Gene Krupa and Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone.

In the mid-1930s, Miller also worked as a trombonist and arranger in The Dorsey Brothers ill-fated co-led orchestra. In 1935, he assembled an American orchestra for British bandleader Ray Noble, developing the arrangement of lead clarinet over four saxophones that eventually became the sonic keynote of his own big band. Members of the Noble band included future bandleader Claude Thornhill, Bud Freeman and Charlie Spivak.

Glenn Miller compiled several musical arrangements before forming 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."

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 on the same note, with three other saxophones harmonized within a single octave. With this new sound combination, the Miller band found success. Miller was not the first to try this style, but he was the most successful at refining it and making it key to almost his entire repertoire. After a shaky start, it made his new band a nationwide hit. Tex Beneke, Al Klink, Chummy MacGregor, Billy May, Johnny Best, Maurice Purtill, Wilbur Schwartz, Clyde Hurley, Ernie Caceres, Ray Anthony, Hal McIntyre, and Bobby Hackett were some of the musicians in the band. Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, Skip Nelson, Paula Kelly, Dorothy Claire, and The Modernaires were the seven singers.

In September 1938, the Miller band began making recordings for the RCA Victor Bluebird Records subsidiary. 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. 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. 1939's huge success culminated with the Miller band in concert 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 broadcast for Chesterfield cigarettes. On February 10 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first gold record for "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". In 2004, Glenn Miller orchestra bassist Herman "Trigger" Alpert explanied 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 their misgivings, believing that the band's endless rehearsals and "letter-perfect playing" diminished excitement and 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 towards commercial novelty instrumentals and vocal numbers. 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. Miller himself emphasized orchestrated arrangements over improvisation, but he did leave a little room for his musicians to ad lib. This would be best exemplified by Tex Beneke, who soloed often on songs like "Sunrise Serenade," and "Falling Leaves". In an article written by Gary Giddins for The New Yorker in 2004, Giddins felt 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?"

Miller and his band appeared in two Hollywood films, 1941's, Sun Valley Serenade and 1942's Orchestra Wives, the latter featuring future television legend Jackie Gleason playing a part as the group's bassist. A stickler for the truth, Miller insisted on a thoroughly believable script before he'd go before Twentieth-Century Fox cameras. Miller also demanded that the band become an integral part of the story and not just be thrown into some inconsequential scene. He had achieved star status and he was now demanding and getting star treatment.

In 1942, at the peak of his civilian career, Miller decided he could better serve those in uniform by joining the war effort. At 38 years old, Miller was too old to be drafted, and first volunteered for the Navy but was told that they didn’t need his services. Miller then wrote to the Army’s Brigadier General Charles Young on August 12 1942. Miller persuaded the Army to accept him so he could in his own words, "put a little more spring into the feet of our marching men and a little more joy into their hearts and to be placed in charge of a modernized army band." After being accepted in the Army, Glenn’s civilian band played their last concert in Passaic, New Jersey on September 27 1942.

He initially formed a large marching band that was to be the core of a network of service orchestras, but his attempts at modernizing military music were met with some resistance from tradition-minded career officers. An example is the arrangement of "St. Louis Blues March", combining blues and jazz with the traditional military march. This was recorded on October 29 1943 at the Victor studios in New York City. Miller's striking innovations and his adaptations of Sousa marches for the AAF band prompted Time magazine to claim that he had rankled traditionalists in the field of Army music and had desecrated the march king. The magazine also criticized Miller's injection of casual enjoyment into the disciplined cadences of military music, stating that the Army was 'swinging its hips instead of its feet.'" In the end, the soldiers had a positive reaction to the new music and the Army gave tacit approval to the changes.

The orchestra was first based at Yale University. From mid-1943 to mid-1944 they made hundreds of live appearances, transcriptions, and "I Sustain the Wings" radio broadcasts for CBS and NBC. Miller felt it was important that the band be as close as possible to the fighting troops. In mid-1944 he had the group transferred to London, where they were renamed the "American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force". While in the United Kingdom, the band gave more than 800 performances to an estimated one million Allied servicemen. After one of the band's performances, General "Jimmy" Doolittle told a then Captain Miller, "Next to a letter from home, Captain Miller, your organization is the greatest morale builder in the ETO (European Theater of Operations)."

By February 1944, the band consisted of thirty musicians. The dance band boasted several members of his civilian orchestra, including chief arranger Jerry Gray, alongside stars from other bands such as: Ray McKinley, Peanuts Hucko, and Mel Powell. Johnny Desmond and The Crew Chiefs were the singers, although recordings were also made with guest stars such as Bing Crosby, Irene Manning , and Dinah Shore. The Dinah Shore recording sessions took place on September 16 1944, at the EMI studios on Abbey Road (renamed the Abbey Road Studios), and include Shore's version of Stardust. These recordings are of special musical interest as they were some of the final recordings of Miller's career.

On December 15, 1944, Miller, now a major, was scheduled to fly from the United Kingdom to Paris to play for the soldiers who had recently liberated Paris. His plane departed from RAF Twinwood Farm, in Clapham, Bedfordshire, but disappeared over the English Channel and was never found. Miller's disappearance remains a mystery; neither his remains nor the wreckage of his plane (a single-engined Noorduyn Norseman UC-64, USAAF Tail Number 44-70285) were ever recovered from the water. In 1985, British diver Clive Ward discovered a Noorduyn Norseman off the coast of Northern France. His findings were unverifiable and contained no clues as to what happened. The disappearance still remains unresolved.

Since the disappearance of Miller over sixty years ago, a number of theories about what happened to bandleader have surfaced. Buddy DeFranco, one of the leaders of the post-war Glenn Miller orchestra, told Glenn Miller biographer George T. Simon of the many supposed truths he was told of Miller's true fate while he was leading the Glenn Miller band in the 1970s. DeFranco stated, "If I were to believe all those stories, there would have been about twelve thousand four hundred and fifty eight people there at the field in England seeing him off on that last flight!".

It is now thought that Glenn Miller's plane was accidentally bombed by RAF bombers over the English Channel after an abortive air raid on Germany. The bombers, which were short on fuel, dumped four thousand pounds of bombs in a safe drop zone to lighten the load. The logbooks of Royal Air Force pilot Fred Shaw record that a small single-engined monoplane was seen spiraling out of control, and crashed into the water.

Glenn Miller's music is familiar to many born long after his death, especially from its use in a number of movies. James Stewart starred as Miller in 1953's popular The Glenn Miller Story, which featured many songs from the Glenn Miller songbook, but also took many liberties with his life story. For example, Tex Beneke, Marion Hutton, Paula Kelly and Ray Eberle are not mentioned at all. The film did not project Miller's often stern and thin-skinned personality which alienated some of his musicians. Nor did it explore his ambivalent relationship with jazz; while Miller greatly admired jazz musicians in general, having played with many of them in his younger days, his primary concern was creating a commercial sound that appealed to the widest possibly audience, not all of whom were interested in the "jam session" atmosphere of pure jazz. Much of the movie was out of sequence; the first arrangement Glenn did for the "band that made it" was "Little Brown Jug", not the last one. (Check out the book, "Glenn Miller and His Orchestra", by George T. Simon, 1980's publication).

Many of the Miller musicians went on to studio careers in Hollywood and New York after World War II:

*Billy May became a much-coveted arranger and studio orchestra leader, going on to work with Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O'Day, and Bing Crosby.

*Wilbur Schwartz, Herman "Trigger" Alpert, Johnny Best, and Ernie Caceres backed up many singers in the 1940s and 1950s.

*Cornetist Bobby Hackett soloed on "A String of Pearls", with Miller in 1941. His reputation only ascended in the years after. Hackett went on to work with Jackie Gleason and Dizzy Gillespie."

*Norman Leyden from the Army Air Force Band was a noted arranger in New York, who later composed arrangements for Sarah Vaughan, among other artists.

*Johnny Desmond (Army Air Force Band) became a popular singer in the 1950s, and starred on Broadway in the 1960s, and appeared in Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand.

*Kay Starr became one of the most popular singers of the post-war period; she got her start with Glenn Miller in 1939 recording two sides, "Baby Me" and "Love With a Capitol You".

The Miller estate authorized an official Glenn Miller "ghost band" in 1946. This band was led by Tex Beneke and had a make up similar to the Army Air Force Band: it had a large string section. The orchestra's official public debut was at the Capitol Theater on Broadway where it opened for a three week engagement on January 24, 1946. Henry Mancini was the band's pianist and arranger. This ghost band played to very large audiences all across the U.S., including a few dates at the Hollywood Palladium, where the original Miller band played in 1941. Even as the big band era faded, Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra played to a record-breaking crowd of 6,750 dancers at the Hollywood Palladium. By 1949, economics dictated that the string section be dropped

This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did. Beneke was struggling with how to expand the Miller sound and also how to achieve success under his own name. What began as the "Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Tex Beneke" finally became "The Tex Beneke Orchestra". By 1950, Beneke and the Miller estate parted ways. 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, led the Miller estate to ask Ray McKinley to lead a new ghost band. This 1956 band is the original version of the current ghost band that still tours the United States today. 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 Europe has toured and recorded with great success since 1990 under the leadership of Wil Salden.

Glenn Miller's widow, Helen, died in 1966. 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 April 1992, at Miller's daughter's request, a stone was placed in Memorial Section H, Number 464-A on Wilson Drive in Arlington National Cemetery.

Every year, on the first weekend of June in Clarinda, Iowa, the birthplace of Glenn Miller, hosts a Glenn Miller Days Festival. The city of Fort Morgan, Colorado holds a similar festival in honor of Miller. Miller graduated from high school in Fort Morgan.

The city of Duarte, California has a small public park dedicated to Miller. The land on which the park now exists was once the property that Miller's house and future recording studio were originally located.

In the United Kingdom, at Twinwood Airfield, the last place Glenn Miller was seen alive, The International Glenn Miller Festival of Swing, Jazz & Jive is held annually every August.

In 2003, Miller posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award

In July 2006, the children of Glenn Miller made news with a lawsuit they filed against Glenn Miller Productions in the Ninth Circuit Court.

The entire output of Chesterfield 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 sizable representation of the recording output by the band is almost always in circulation by SONY/BMG Music, the successor labels to RCA-Victor and Bluebird. Glenn Miller remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of 1935 to 1945.

The roots of the famous Airmen of Note big band can be traced to its earliest beginnings with the band which Glenn Miller directed for the Army Air Force during World War II.

* Swing music * Bandleader * Big band * Glenn Miller Orchestra * The Glenn Miller Story * World War II * Missing in action * Death in absentia * List of people who have disappeared * List of swing/big band musicians * Sigma Nu LEADership learning program

* Glenn Miller Radio Show (9 episodes from 1940) * American BigBands Database Plus on Glenn Miller and others * Glenn Miller Biography at Vh1.com * The Glenn Miller Birthplace Society * The Jack Million Band, Belgium, working band with authentic interpretation of Glenn Miller original arrangements,
directed by Jack Coenen * The Glenn Miller Orchestra for Europe,
directed by Wil Salden * A WWII soldier's insight into the mysterious disappearance of Glenn Miller * The Glenn Miller Orchestra South Africa (also known as the Johnny Cooper orchestra)