TromboneChat

Enjoyed deep diving Glenn Miller a lot of good info out there hopefully you find something interesting in this episode.

What does Glenn Miller represent to you?

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cH ... ICBAF&ep=6



https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/g ... 0585672182

Sorry I kept mispronouncing song titles I think I fixed them both but 6-5000 and Serenade were getting to me with my lack of sleep.

I'll suggest a correction to the record... Glenn Miller and big band set were certainly significant in American music n the 30s and early 40s but... the mainstream of it?

No, not for most of America, not for a population was still mostly rural farmers and small towners. The real mainstream in that time were very conventional, very sentimental singers like Kate Smith, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby.

They are not well-remembered today but all were big stars on radio, which had far more penetration into American tastes than recordings or live performances did. Kate Smith was a ginormous radio star of the era. "God Bless America" became a hit 20 years after Irving Berlin wrote it... because Kate Smith pulled it off the shelf and sang it on her show.

When FDR introduced her to George VI he just said, "This is Kate Smith. Miss Smith is America." No one would have argued with him on that.

The image of Glenn Miller as the center of 1930s music is more of a mis-remembered Hollywood version of the time than what was really happening at the moment.

Miller was a good trombonist but his main claim to fame was arranging. His band had a unique sax sound with clarinet as the top voice instead of alto sax. Also, he had a utility player named Ernie Caceres who played alto and baritone, doubled on the clarinet (and wore a size 37 suit ).

Miller also became famous for creating a Big Band for the Army Air Corps and touring through the War Bases entertaining the troops. That is one reason his band disappeared from Radio after 1942.

robcat2075 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:54 pm I'll suggest a correction to the record... Glenn Miller and big band set were certainly significant in American music n the 30s and early 40s but... the mainstream of it?

No, not for most of America, not for a population was still mostly rural farmers and small towners. The real mainstream in that time were very conventional, very sentimental singers like Kate Smith, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby.

They are not well-remembered today but all were big stars on radio, which had far more penetration into American tastes than recordings or live performances did. Kate Smith was a ginormous radio star of the era. "God Bless America" became a hit 20 years after Irving Berlin wrote it... because Kate Smith pulled it off the shelf and sang it on her show.

When FDR introduced her to George VI he just said, "This is Kate Smith. Miss Smith is America." No one would have argued with him on that.

The image of Glenn Miller as the center of 1930s music is more of a mis-remembered Hollywood version of the time than what was really happening at the moment.

Interesting I definitley wasn't around so thanks for sharing! I do find it interesting how things get remembered after time has passed. I am certainly very proud of the legacy Glenn Miller has left in terms of brining attention to the trombone.

A side note about Kate Smith. She was a "large" woman with a powerful voice. The Ethel Merman of her day (actually, you could say Ethel Merman was the Kate Smith of her day).

Smith had a radio show and later a television show where she always finished off with a song, usually "God Bless America" or "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain". This lead to the saying that "it ain't over until the fat lady sings". That referred to Kate Smith signing off her program.

BGuttman wrote: ↑Sat Nov 12, 2022 2:04 pm [Kate] Smith had a radio show and later a television show where she always finished off with a song, usually "God Bless America" or "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain". This lead to the saying that "it ain't over until the fat lady sings". That referred to Kate Smith signing off her program.

Actually, that phrase was attributed to the typical buxom Wagnerian soprano, who ended the opera Götterdämmerung with a very long closing scene. For more details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_ain't_ ... lady_sings

Not that this has anything to do with Glenn Miller.

I saw the Wikipedia article, but remember they refer to 1975 or so for the first use of the term. Kate Smith was active in the 1940s. In fact, I think I remember hearing that phrase long before 1975 and referring to Smith ending her show.

Smith was also associated with the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team where she sang "God Bless America" before many hockey games, which the Flyers won to a very large degree. That lead to a Philadelphia slogan of "It hasn't begun until the fat lady sings".

"it ain't over" could only have been coined by an American colonial doing what they always do to a perfectly good language. That said I think Bruce must be right on its origins because I am sure I too can remember the phrase being used a long time before 1975 and I grew up in a UK that was largely uninterested in what the USA was doing but was left with a lot of World war 2 Americanisms from when half your Army was stationed here (including Glenn Miller of course) preparing to cross the channel and for a year or two after... It could still refer to the opera I suppose but not the version of adoption outlined in Wikipedia... Doug

I always associated the use of the coarse phrase with what seems to occur shortly before Baptists parishioners are released from services on Sunday mornings.

“Mainstream” is an ambiguous term. Merriam-Webster gives as an example of usage as follows:

“In general, buyers shopping for mainstream non-luxury vehicles tend to pay more over sticker price than luxury car buyers, according to analysts at Cox Automotive.”

The purchaser of a Dodge sedan could have considered Chrysler Motors as a mainstream manufacturer in spite of its solid third place in The Big Three. But not so much a Rambler, Studebaker, or Packard. Ken Burns states in the Chapter 5 Episode Guide for his jazz documentary that “. . . jazz comes as close as it has ever come to being America’s most popular music.”

Depending on individual interpretation, Glenn Miller could have been a mainstream force in a mainstream swing movement, even if the band took third place behind Kate Smith and Western swing. Bob Wills is said to have outdrawn and outsold any jazz swing big band. If the use of definite and indefinite articles was not precise, the podcast is also unscripted. Like Glenn Miller, it is arguable that Dodge is the most popularly remembered. Or alternatively, “Dodge had a good time too.”

Glenn Miller had 14 records in the Billboard Top 100 in 1942, including 3 in the top 10. That seems to qualify as "mainstream," depending on how you define it. At the very least, he was enormously popular.

http://billboardtop100of.com/1942-2/

I heard an interesting anecdote about Miller and his Armed Forces band. When Miller was trying to find musicians for his band, he looked for soldiers growing marijuana outside their tents. These were the musicians he figured who had the best potential for jazz.