Theoretically Speaking -S5:E11: What Makes Swing Swing ? Part 2

Big Bands added slower tunes to their repertoire in the 1940s.

After all, you can’t Lindy Hop all night without a break or a heart attack.

Miller wasn’t just a popular Swing star. He was one of the most popular musicians of the 20th Century. Depending on which chart of the day you use, he had more than fifteen #1s. Hits like “In The Mood,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” sold millions.

He was a trombonist for hire in Los Angeles and then New York City. But after realizing there were better trombone players, like Tommy Dorsey and Jack Teagarden, he concentrated on writing and arranging. He did a lot of arrangements for the Dorsey Brothers, and wrote four songs for them, before they angrily split up, with Jimmy leading the group on his own and Tommy taking over Joe Haymes’ band.

Miller started his own band in 1937 and it broke up two days into the following year. It just wasn’t different enough from other bands to make a name for itself. 

Looking for his own sound, he arranged songs for a band with one clarinet, four saxes and muted trumpets. That made all the difference.

A mute is a device that changes the sound of a brass instrument and makes it somewhat quieter. The player sticks it into the horn’s bell and it stays in place with cork pads. There are a variety of shapes and each alters the sound in its own way.

The new Glenn Miller And His Orchestra had its first hit with “My Reverie,” its first top ten single with “Moonlight Serenade,” and its first #1 with “Wishing (Will Make It So).” Between 1939 and 1943, they had ten singles that sold over a million copies each.

The Andrew Sisters sang with the Orchestra for the first year or so, later it was just Miller and the band. 

Then, in 1942, the U.S. got involved in World War II after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Many workers, including musicians, were drafted, but Miller was 38, too old for active service, so he volunteered to entertain the troops. Miller disbanded the Orchestra, gave his radio show to Harry James, and went off to become director of bands for the Army Air Forces Technical Training Command.

Miller couldn’t just walk away from his contract so he had to find a replacement who not only wouldn’t lose listeners, but might bring new ones. That would make Lorillard happy. He chose James, who was already known for his hits “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want To Do It),” “All Or Nothing At All” with Frank Sinatra singing, and “Sleepy Lagoon.”

In 1944, Capt. Miller’s unit was transferred to England so he could broadcast to the troops in Europe.

Some of the broadcasts were meant for the German people, with Miller reading scripts written phonetically. Germany had their own propaganda, of course, broadcasting radio shows into the U.K. 

Now promoted to Major, Miller and his British cohort, Lt. Col. David Niven (yes, that David Niven) asked to move the unit to Paris to entertain troops on leave from the battlefields. Their request was approved, and Miller wanted to go to Paris to help speed stalled preparations.

No wreckage was found so it’s presumed that the plane went down in the English Channel. The official inquiry said it was a combination of engine failure, human error, and bad weather but there are many other theories as to what happened. One says that it was friendly fire, another says the official story is a cover up for him dying in a Paris brothel, and another that he faked his death and fled to South America.

There are more, because conspiracy theorists are going to theorize.

War changes everything. Even music.

Even fashion. Consider the zoot suit. 

No one can take credit for designing the zoot suit. It just happened spontaneously in the 1930s. Young men would buy a suit two sizes too big and then tailor it to fit at the waist. That left a lot of fabric hanging loose. 

We don’t really know where the zoot suit first appeared.

Others think it was the other way around, starting as a variation of a traditional costume from Pachuca, Mexico. Still others say it started in Florida and Georgia and spread north and west from there. 

Whatever its origin, it first became popular with black and Hispanic men. Some Asians and Anglos took to wearing it, too. 

While the zoot suit didn’t come from Swing, musicians took to wearing them on stage.

It’s a purely American style, and its wearers saw it as patriotic.

As the country entered WWII, rationing was put in place.

Sugar, gasoline, metal, everything was directed to the war effort. Fabric, too.

Many Japanese-Americans were interned. And some Mexican-Americans were deported as security risks, despite some being citizens because they were born in the U.S. At the same time, agricultural and manufacturing workers were needed for the war effort.

Racial tensions were high.

In August of 1942, José Gallardo Díaz was found unconscious near a reservoir on the Los Angeles River. The reservoir was a popular hangout for Mexican-Americans and was nicknamed “Sleepy Lagoon,” after the Harry James song. Diaz died shortly after he was taken to the hospital.

In 1944, the ruling was overturned on appeal for lack of evidence. The judge, Charles W. Fricke, was found to have mishandled the case and his bias “materially injured” the defense. The damage to race relations, however, had already been done.

In some instances, the victims were teens or younger. Too young to defend themselves against a gang. They were stripped and beaten. All the victims were Mexican American or African American or Asian American. All the attackers were white.

It wasn’t about patriotism.

These attacks became known as the “Zoot Suit Riots” and later inspired a song of that name by the Oregon band Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.

The Brian Setzer Orchestra hit #23 in 1998 with a cover of Louis Prima’s “Jump, Jive, and Wail.” Setzer, of course, had already led a Rockabilly revival in the 80s with his band Stray Cats. Rockabilly is more than a little influenced by Swing.

Revivals suggest that a genre has waned, and that began happening to Swing during WWII.

Glenn Miller’s death was not the end of Swing, but it was never the same. Not only was he gone but the public wanted something different after the war and, like it or not, Swing and WWII were inextricably linked. New styles came and went, in both music and clothing.

Likewise, the excess of a big band with two dozen players wasn’t appropriate anymore. Another contributing factor was the musicians strike of 1942. No union members recorded anything for two years. 

The record labels got around this in two ways. First, they had a backlog of unreleased songs, and let them trickle into the market. 

Second, since singers weren’t union members, they could be the “orchestra” behind a lead vocalist. An a capella group can’t swing like a big band, but this gave crooners a chance to fill the vacuum. Perry Como’s “Lili Marlene” and “You’ll Never Know” by Dick Haymes are good examples.

Interestingly, “All Or Nothing At All” hadn’t sold many copies when it was first released by Harry James And His Orchestra, with featured vocalist Frank Sinatra, but that was before Sinatra became widely known. When it was re-released during the strike credited to “Frank Sinatra with Harry James and his Orchestra,” it was a hit.

So after the war, the attention shifted from bandleaders to singers.

However, there was still a hankering for dance music.

Even so, Swing continues both in its original style.

Albums by Robbie Williams and Michael Bublé sell millions. And also in the form of Electro-Swing:

Not long after his disappearance, Miller’s family authorized the Glenn Miller Orchestra as a continuing enterprise.

Swing isn’t our most popular genre anymore, but it’s one of our longest-lived.

You’ll find Swing dances in every major city, and they usually start with lessons for newbies.

So get out there and dance.

Suggested Listening – Full YouTube Playlist:

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