On 15 December, 1944 a US plane, the UC-64 Norseman, took off from RAF Twinwood in Clapham (on the outskirts of Bedford) and disappeared over the English Channel.  On take-off the weather was foggy and was forecast to remain that way all the way to its destination, Paris. On board were Major Glenn Miller, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Bacsell and the pilot John Morgan.  Miller’s disappearance was not made public until 24 December when it was announced that Miller would not be conducting the scheduled BBC broadcast and that Miller’s deputy conductor would stand in. The occupants of the plane were never found.

Immediately rumours began to circulate.  Some speculated he had been assassinated; others that the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, Dwight D Eisenhower had sent him on a secret mission to try and negotiate a peace deal with the Nazis.  The Germans themselves spread the rumour that he died of a heart attack in a Parisian bordello.

Another theory that gained traction was that the plane had been destroyed by Allied bomber planes returning from an aborted raid over Germany and were forced to jettison their unused bombs. 

In 1987 a fisherman found remnants from a plane in his nets.  He took note of the co-ordinates, dropped it back in the Channel (off Portland Bill) then hog-tailed it to the UK.  Years later in 2017, after he saw pictures of Miller’s plane, he reported it to a music curator, and was advised to contact The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery or TIGHAR for short.  On hearing the news, Ric Gillespie, director of the Philadelphia branch of TIGHAR, announced that they would shortly decide whether an attempt would be made to carry out a physical search. We await with bated breath whether the proposed search is off or on – it was scheduled for this year.

A far simpler explanation is that the UC-64 Norseman, which was notorious for seizing up in cold weather, had suffered carburettor failure, losing power and ditching in the cold water.  Survival experts claim that in those conditions hypothermia would set in and a body could not survive after 20 minutes.

Alton Glenn Miller (born 1 March 1904) joined the US army when he was 38.  He was later transferred to the Army Air Force where he was allowed to form a 50-piece band.   He’d first volunteered for the Navy but was told they did not need his services. At the time Miller was earning $15,000 to $20,000 per week.  He joined because he wanted to be ‘placed in charge of a modernised Army band.’ His civilian band played their last concert in Passaic, New Jersey on 27 September 1942 and he joined the Army with the rank of captain at Omaha, Nebraska on 8 October 1942.  He was later elevated to the rank of major by August 1944.

He initially formed a military marching band which met with some resistance, but his fame and support from other military leaders allowed him to continue.  He and his band were transferred to England in the summer of 1944 where he gave 800 performances. While there he recorded a series of tracks for EMI (probably known as HMV at the time) at their Abbey Road studios.  For propaganda purposes, many of the songs broadcast on the BBC were sung in German by Johnny Desmond and were broadcast for the Office of War Information. Miller himself broadcast in German too.

Alton Glenn Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa the son of Mattie Lou and Lewis Elmer Miller.  Young Glenn originally played cornet and mandolin in the town band but soon switched to the trombone in 1916.  By the time he’d turned 17 and had graduated from high school he’d decided he wanted to be a professional musician.  He entered the University of Colorado in Boulder but soon left to pursue his dream. He joined various bands, including Ben Pollack’s in Los Angeles but when Jack Teagarden joined, Miller’s role as lead trombonist was reduced and he realised his future lay in arranging, composing and conducting.

He started arranging and performing with the likes of Benny Goodman, Red Nichols, the Dorsey brothers and British bandleader Ray Noble.  The drummer, Gene Krupa, was a constant collaborator. Miller even arranged for Bing Crosby and Judy Garland. 

It was during the association with Noble that Miller started experimenting with various musical combinations; blending a lead clarinet and four saxophones was one such experiment.  But the big hits still eluded him. Benny Goodman advised him to: ‘Just stay with it.’

All the time Miller continued to seek a sound that would differentiate him from the other swing bands. In the late 30s after countless experiments he found it by blending a clarinet playing the melodic line with a tenor saxophone, while the background consisted of three other saxophones harmonising within the same octave.  He converted a saxophonist, Wilbur Schwartz into playing the lead clarinet.

Recording companies were soon taking notice and Miller began taping with Bluebird, a subsidiary of RCA Victor.  However, the greatest exposure for any band of the time was a regular spot on the radio. But before that could happen Miller and his band were signed up to perform at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York.  A record crowd of 1800 turned up to swing the night away. In 1939 Time magazine reported that: ‘Of the twelve to twenty four discs in each of today’s 300,000 US jukeboxes, from 2 to 6 are usually Glenn Miller’s.  

From December 1939 to September 1942 the band finally got their radio contract and they started performing 15 minute spots three times a week sponsoring Chesterfield cigarettes on CBS radio.  The band received their first gold record in February 1942 for Chattanooga Choo-Choo and also appeared in motion pictures – in 1941 in Sun Valley Serenade and the following year’s Orchestra Wives. 

Miller had his critics too.  Amy Lee, writing in the Metronome magazine, commented that the band was too impersonal with its ‘letter-perfect playing’.  But his supporters like Gary Gidding, writing in the New Yorker magazine in 2004, wrote: ‘Miller exuded little warmth on or off the bandstand, but once the band struck up its theme, audiences were done for (!); throats clutched (and) eyes softened.  Can any other record match Moonlight Serenade for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slaver (!) in so many for so long?’  Another critic noted : ‘(The Miller sound) was nevertheless very special and able to penetrate our collective awareness that few other sounds have.’

Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, George Shearing and Mel Tormé all admired Miller with Sinatra, in 1948, lamenting the lack of ‘all those Glenn Miller things.’

There are quite a few Glenn Miller bands about these days keeping his swinging type of music alive. There are some in Europe, in the United States and one presumes they have all been licensed to perform his brand of music.  

Finally, I’ll leave clarinettist Buddy de Franco, who led the orchestra in the late 60s and early 70s, to have the last word.  He couldn’t envisage Miller leading a jazz band, but he said this of Glenn Miller’s style: ‘I found that when I opened with the sound of Moonlight Serenade I could look around and see men and women weeping as the music carried them back to years gone by…the beauty of Miller’s ballads caused people to dance together.’