Jazzletter PO Box 240, Oiaica93024-0240 Utu2007 Vd
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
GerE Lrc Ad Libitwm €' Jazzletter PO Box 240, OiaiCA93024-0240 utu2007 Vd. 23 Na 10 coming up on records. He figured that if he got you in the The Glenn Miller Years V band playing trumpet, it would torpedo Charlie's band'" This attitude to Bamet is interesting. The bandleaders of be on cordial terms, the glaring Billy May said, "Glenn was a terrible drunk. When he'd go that period seemed to and in some of the cases they on the wagon, he'd be one of those stiff people. He never exception being Artie Shaw, Beat magazine may have divided the learned to be a decent sober man. I know other people with were friends. Down hip (or, in those days, hep) and corny, the same personality. When I drarrk and I'd stop, I'd grit my bands into two classes, its readers to be hostile to the latter. Woody teeth. and say. 'I'll stay sober, god damn it!' And then when and encouraged with Les Brown, and Glenn was you'd let go, you went qazy. Herman was on good terms and Woody Herman and "Chummy MacGregor was the first guy that told me about friends with Benny Goodman Kaye, who was relegated by the trade D"T. s. He'd wake up in the morning in New York and there indeed with Sammy category. When Glenn was overseas was nothing to drink, so he'd have to get down to Plunkett's press to the cornball Corps band, he counted on Sammy Kaye speakeasy. That was the only place you could get it. He'd run with his Army Air keeping him apprised of affairs in the down and get a cab. When he tried to get in, the back seat to write him letters this hostility to Barnet? v;ould t'e full of lions and tigers, and he would have to run business at home. Why then several factors, not the least among down to Plunkett's on the street. Chummy had been dry for One may surmise dissolute life and serial polygamy' By all six or seven years when Glenn started the band. And I know them Barnet's and testimony, Glenn was faithful to Helen a couple of times Glenn was drunk when we were working a evidence relationship, and he was obviously some- theater somewhere. And he was staggering, emceeing a show, throughout their puritan. Another factor may have been Barnet's and Chummy didn't let him up. Every time he'd come near thing of a have to make money from his band; Glenn Chumnry, Chummy would say, 'Whatsamattet, someone hit wealth: he didn't in the early days were hard. you with the bar rag, for Chris'sake?' did, and his struggles write for Miller lda, Delilah, Long Tall "The rest of the time Glenn was kind of mad at the world' Billy May would "A" Train, Always in My Heart, Blues in He was bitter about everything. Kind of a down kind of guy. fuIama, Take the "Interestingly enough, Glenn Miller was Putting things down all the time." Billy affected a grousing the Night.He said, in the Nightbefore anybody else and he turned snarl: 'Ah for Chris'sake, Dorsey did that.' offeredBlues he said the format wasn't the conventional Broadcaster Fred Hall asked Billy: "What took you to the it down because He said, 'That'll never be a hit.' We had to end Miller band, money?" AABA song. Night of course, and I did the arrange- Billy said: "What else? I enjoyed working for Charlie up doing Blues in the was bright, and he said, 'That's one I really Barnet, and I wasn't really a fan of the Miller band. A guy by ment. Miller the name of Miles Rinker worketl for the Shribman agency' blew.' playing more than I was arranging. We worked the bookers in New England, and he offered me the job with 'oI was It was a lucrative job, but Miller already Glenn." A1 Rinker was, along with Bing Crosby, one of the hard in the band. Gray and Bill Finegan' original Rhythm Boys who sang rvith Paul Whiteman. Their had two great arrangers, Jerry quite a come-down to go from the fieedom of sister was Mildred Bailey. "It was was so loose, to go with the regi- "Years later, after the war," Billy continued, "I ran into Charlie's band, where it I mean, we even had to wear the same Miles' brother Al, who said, 'Didn't you know why Glenn mented Miller band. With Charlie, we had two uniforms, a blue offered you the job? It wasn't your trumpet playing. He knew colored socks! tell us, 'Wear the blue suit tomorrow,' you were writing all the Barnet charts and a lot of the origi- and brown. They'd came with the blue suit except Bus Etri, the nals that were catching on with the public. Charlie's band was and so we all October 2007 Eddie Sauter guitar player, who wore the brown suit. Now that would have Fletcher Henderson and later Mel Powell and Hefti and Ralph Burns with been a big disaster in the Miller band. Charlie made a big joke with Benny Goodman, Neal with Jimmie Lunceford and then of it and we all had a big laugh. We presented Bus as a soloist Woody Herman, Sy Oliver Dorsey, Bill that night." Paul Weston and Sy Oliver with Tommy with Claude Some of the musicians said Glenn was "chicken-shit" or Borden and Gil Evans and later Gerry Mulligan "square." Louis Mucci said, "He was almost militaristic. But Thornhill in one of the bands that Glenn backed, George with Les Brown, he got a lot of good results . I stayed with the band seven Duning with Kay Kyser, Frank Comstock band he wrote for' or eight months. It was very good' I liked him." each of them strongly identified with the and Bill Al Klink said of Miller: "About my personal relationship And Miller had, as well as Billy May, Jerry Gray, with him, he kind of left me alone and I left him alone. And Finegan. as we have noted, were I think we both liked it that way. I was always trying to do my The first three sides for Bluebird, the Waters of the best, to come on time and all that. I existed there' arranged by Glenn: My Reverie, By recorded August 27, "Glenn was a totally different kind of guy as compared to Minnetonka, and King Porter Stomp, produced four Benny Goodman. He was difficult to influence about any- 1938. The next session, February 6,1939, Like to Be with thing, including musicians. Some guys were fairly close to sides, (Gotta Get Some) Shut-eye, How I'd Romance Runs in Glenn but it seems to me that Glenn never had friends who You in Bermuda, Cuckoo in the Clock, and songs, Bermuda an were on the same level with him. Although I guess Chalmers the Family, all of them trivial and was the norm MacGregor was. They were old buddies. Glenn was aloof. egregious example of the kind ofutter crap that from After I'd left the band and joined Benny, we were on a for that era. The great songs of the period came mostly but the run of what you train and I was going through the dining car. I passed where Broadway musicals and the movies, appallingly cute Benny was sitting without speaking, because that's the way heard on juke boxes was of the caliber of the on the third you did it in the Miller band. He didn't want to know about Three Little Fishes,whichMiller in fact recorded The three Miller arange- the guys and didn't bother. Benny said, 'Hey, kid, come on Bluebird session on April 4,1939. competent and over and sit down.' I was amazed at all this because Glenn ments for the first Bluebird session are second session, as bad never asked anybody to be friendly'"' conventional. The four songs on the Klink spoke of his vivid memories of the time Hal as they are, have alrangenlents by Finegan, and they are far leaving one to Mclntyre left the band. superior to Miller's, fresh and imaginative, got his hands on The "swing era" was expanding with a growing need for wonder what they were lil<e before Miller who wrote for the bands for the hundreds of dance pavilions and ballrooms that them. Marion Evans, a superb afianger New York had sprung up throughout the country. Seeing this clearly, post-war Miller band, exatnined them in Miller's "before Benny Goodman backed Harry James in starting a band, office, and was fascinated by how good they were expanding the franchise as it were. Claude Thornhill and Miller fucked them up." Charlie Spivak wanted to start their own bands. But they The third Bluebird session, April 4, 1939, contained didn't go to Artie Shaw, now drowning in money after the Finegan charts on Frankie Carle's Sunrise Serenade and on 1869. The latter would success of his record ing of Begin the Beguine for help. They Little Brown Jug,which dates from enduring hits. And on went to Glenn when he became a success, and he backed them be one of Miller's biggest and most Finegan arrangements both: he owned pieces ofthose two bands. And he promised the next session, two weeks later, two Pavanne' to back Hal Mclntyre and Tex Beneke in starting bands.