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Glenn Miller music biography continued...

was born on March 1, 1904 in Clarinda, Iowa. In Grant City, Missouri, where his family moved in 1915, he joined the town band and began playing trombone. He played in a series of bands in different parts of the country before settling in New York and becoming part of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra as a trombonist. He began recording with his own band in 1935, but wouldn't hit until 1939 with "Sunrise Serenade" and "Moonlight Serenade." Miller scored 17 Top Ten hits in 1939, including the subsequent chart-topping Glenn Miller songs "Stairway to the Stars," "Moon Love," "Over the Rainbow," and "Blue Orchids." This led to even greater exposure at extended engagements and on the radio and Miller racked up 31Top Ten hits in 1940, more than three times as many as the second most successful recording artist of the year, Tommy Dorsey.
In 1942, Miller disbanded his orchestra and signed up for the army, fairly quickly forming a service band that began performing at military camps and war-bond rallies in the United States. 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, 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 and soon there was a successful fictionalized movie version of Miller's life in which the band leader was played by Jimmy Stewart. Although Miller's style was more regimented than the improvisational methods that rule contemporary jazz, there is no doubting that Miller left an admirable musical legacy.