In this blog, I have written about both Elvis Presley and the Beatles, but before them, in an extraordinary four year period between 1938 and 1942, there was a man who scored 23 number-one hits in the US: bandleader and icon of the swing era, Glenn Miller. Miller was perhaps an unlikely star and certainly a reluctant one, as he shied away from the spotlight and hated personal appearances, but he nonetheless had such an ear for melody and such keen arranging skills that most of his output became classics of the age – think Moonlight Serenade, Pennsylvania 6-5000, Tuxedo Junction, Chattanooga Choo Choo, and of course In the Mood, one of the best dance songs to emerge from the period and the one big band song that gave the swing era its defining moment.
Miller had cut his teeth as a freelance trombonist in a variety of bands in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and worked as a composer and arranger for the Dorsey brothers. He had put an orchestra together for British bandleader Ray Noble in 1935, and in 1937 formed his first band, but this proved short-lived after failing to distinguish itself from the plethora of rival bands. Miller knew that he needed a unique sound and in 1938 he put together an arrangement with the clarinet playing a melodic line with a tenor saxophone holding the same note, while three other saxophones harmonised within a single octave. It soon became the basis of the “Miller sound”, the template for what big band music would sound like.
In the Mood is based on an old jazz riff that had been passed around in various incarnations for many a year. It was a fellow named Joe Garland who created a new arrangement for the riff with the title of “In the Mood”, but it was Miller who pared the tune down to its bare essentials. Released in September 1939, the tune went on to top the charts in the US for thirteen straight weeks. With its famous introduction featuring the saxophones in unison, the catchy riff anchoring the tune, the two solos (a “tenor fight” between saxophonists Tex Beneke and Al Klink, and a 16-bar trumpet solo by Clyde Hurley), and the suspense-building ending, it has all the Miller specialities. A true model of suspense and dynamics. Here it is as featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade.
