Jazz Articles about Glenn Miller

The Glenn Miller Orchestra: In the Mood

by Jack Bowers
November 20, 2013

You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of big bands formed in the 1930s that continue to perform today, long after the storied Big Band Era has faded from national craze to modest footnote in American musical history. Foremost among the survivors is the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the latest incarnation of which was established more than half a century ago in 1956, about a dozen years after Miller's disappearance on a presumably routine flight over the ...

Glenn Miller: In the Mood

by David Rickert
December 27, 2005

One Of the Kings Of Swing

While many people argued whether Goodman or Shaw was the better musician, nobody during the Swing Era could ignore that Glenn Miller left both of them in his wake once he hit the scene. Sure, the bespectacled, tight-lipped bandleader seemed more like the leader of a choir than a swing band, but his keen arranging skills and ear for melody ensured that at least every other tune he recorded seemed like the anthem of ...

Glenn Miller: The Godfather Of Bop?

by Richard Jessen
August 14, 2004

The idea of Glenn Miller being the godfather of bop at first sounds like the most outlandish of ideas. Yet this is just what he became. In 1939, Glenn Miller recorded the first evidence we have of what would become known as be-bop (later known as bop).

Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary tells us that bop is “jazz characterized by harmonic complexity, convoluted melodic lines, and constant shifting of accents and played at a very rapid tempo." The word ...

Glenn Miller: Miller plays Mercer

by Ian Nicolson
May 1, 1999

Chapter 1 - in which the cat gets the cream. The Miller band at the height of their powers playing sixteen lapidary lyrical gems from Porter's equal, Johnny Mercer, recorded when both were flying. And although Mercer's albums with Benny Goodman are better celebrated, Miller's respect for the man he called the best matches Mercer smile for smile and innuendo for innuendo.His band's witty, stylish charts, cushioned by the insouciant confidence of a nation not at war, slink ...