Glenn Miller and His Orchestra - “In the Mood” - 1939 - Yasmine Klein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aME0qvhZ37o&list=RDaME0qvhZ37o&start_radio=1 

Biography

Glenn Miller was born on March 1, 1904, in Clarinda, Iowa, and went on to become one of the most popular bandleaders of the swing era. He grew up moving around the Midwest, living in Nebraska, Missouri, and eventually Fort Morgan, Colorado, where he graduated high school (Spragg, n.d.-a). His father brought home a mandolin, but Miller traded it for an old, beat-up horn and practiced it so much that his parents worried about his future. He got his first trombone around age 11 or 12, after his family moved to Grant City, Missouri (Spragg, n.d.-b). He later attended the University of Colorado, where he played the trombone well enough to support himself through two years of college, but then moved to Los Angeles to play full time in Ben Pollack’s orchestra (“Miller, Glenn,” n.d.). Over the next few years, he also worked with big names like Ray Noble and the Dorsey Brothers, and he started writing his own arrangements, which became just as important to his career as his playing.

Miller had attempted to create his first band, but it failed. Things completely changed in 1939 when his new band landed a summer spot at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York, which had a nationwide radio hookup (“Miller, Glenn,” n.d.). Within months, his band took the nation by storm, garnering a national following with hits like “In the Mood.” By the fall of 1939, his band was one of the biggest in America, working around 100 hours a week, recording about two songs a week, and doing a radio show three times a week for Chesterfield cigarettes (Colorado Music Experience, n.d.). After a few years of relentless work, Miller received the first gold record ever awarded, for his song “Chattanooga Choo Choo” (“Miller, Glenn,” n.d.).

That same year, he joined the military and led the Army Air Force Band, which included 50 members and even a string section, something his civilian band never had (“Miller, Glenn,” n.d.). In the summer of 1944, his band went to England to perform for Allied troops. On December 15, 1944, Miller disappeared on a flight over the English Channel, and he was never found. He was only 40 years old.

Even though Miller made “In the Mood” a national hit, he wasn’t the one who actually wrote the song. The credited composer is Joe Garland, a saxophonist, composer, and arranger from Norfolk, Virginia, who studied at Shaw University and the Aeolian Conservatory and started out playing classical music before joining a jazz band in 1924. Garland also wrote other swing hits, including “Serenade to a Savage” for Artie Shaw and “Leap Frog” for Les Brown. I think it’s important to include Garland in this biography, because his story is a big part of why this song is so interesting.

Musicological Analysis

To preface, I’m not a music major, so I’m going to focus mostly on what I actually hear. “In the Mood” is very swing-oriented, and it’s built around one main riff, a short musical phrase that repeats over and over and gets stuck in your head almost instantly. The song has a strong horn section, with the saxophones, trumpets, and trombones trading the spotlight throughout. My favorite part is in the middle, where two tenor saxophones go back and forth. Instead of competing against each other, they almost seem to be complementing each other’s styles in a playful way, kind of like a conversation.

Even without being a music major, there are a few things that make the song’s structure stand out. “In the Mood” is built on a twelve-bar blues, which is a repeating pattern of chords that a lot of blues and jazz songs use (Covach, 2005). The main riff is made of arpeggios, where the notes of a chord are played one at a time, and the pattern keeps landing on different beats each time it repeats. This creates something called a hemiola, where a pattern of three is played over a beat of four, so it feels like the riff is pulling against the beat. I think that’s a big part of why the song feels so bouncy and makes you want to dance.

The song sounds like an instant classic because it makes you want to get up and literally swing your hips and arms. The beat is steady and upbeat the whole way through, which makes sense since swing was dance music first. I especially love the ending. Around the 2:50 mark, the band repeats the riff and slowly starts to fade, getting quieter each time, so it almost feels like the song is over. Then you’re brought back to life by that loud, punchy trumpet, and the whole band comes back in at full volume. It’s such a fun trick, and I think it’s a big reason why people still remember this song today.

In comparison to songs like “Maple Leaf Rag” or “West End Blues,” “In the Mood” has a similar sort of structure, with sections that repeat, and it shares that almost cartoon-ish sound that old-time ragtime is known for. “Maple Leaf Rag” only uses piano, but “West End Blues” has a strong trumpet part like “In the Mood,” even though it’s much slower and more sensual. What makes “In the Mood” different is that it’s not about one star soloist the way “West End Blues” is about Louis Armstrong. Instead, it’s about the whole band working together as one big, tight group, which is a big part of what made the swing era sound so different from the music that came before it.

Context

The riff that makes “In the Mood” so recognizable didn’t start with Glenn Miller. It goes back almost a decade before his recording, to a song called “Tar Paper Stomp,” recorded by New Orleans trumpeter Wingy Manone on August 28, 1930. Many jazz historians see Manone’s recording as the beginning of “In the Mood” (Spragg, n.d.-c). Only a few months later, Horace Henderson used the same riff in “Hot and Anxious,” which was recorded by his brother Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra in 1931. Back then, riffs were passed around between bands all the time, and since copyright mostly protected written melodies and lyrics, nobody really owned a riff once it was out there.

This is where Joe Garland comes in. Garland, a Black saxophonist and arranger, built the riff into his own composition, which he called “In the Mood,” and copyrighted it in June 1938 (Spragg, n.d.-c). The first recording was made that same year by the Edgar Hayes Band, where Garland played sax, but it didn’t take off. Garland then tried to sell the song to white bandleaders, starting with Artie Shaw (NPR, 2000), but his original arrangement was too long to fit on one side of a 78 record. Miller finally bought the song around June 1939, first broadcast it on NBC radio that July, and recorded it for RCA Bluebird on August 1, 1939 (Spragg, n.d.-c). His band members remembered him arranging it right on the spot during rehearsal (NPR, 2000). The final version was put together almost like a committee, with help from his pianist Chummy MacGregor and Eddie Durham, a Black arranger Miller borrowed from Jimmie Lunceford’s band (Spragg, n.d.-c).

I think this history connects a lot to what we read from Morrison. In the story of Mama Lou, a Black performer’s music was taken up and owned by white publishers who had the power to copyright it, and she was barely credited (Morrison, 2024). “In the Mood” isn’t exactly the same, since Garland did get credit as the composer, but it was still a white bandleader who turned it into a national hit and became the name everyone associates with it. Hickey also talks about how white bandleaders like Paul Whiteman made Black music more appetizing for white audiences by cleaning it up (Hickey, 2018), and honestly, Miller’s polished, tight sound fits right into that.

When Miller recorded “In the Mood,” the country was coming out of the Great Depression, and swing had become the music of young people. Teenagers and young adults packed ballrooms to dance, and big bands were heard everywhere on the radio. Only a month after the recording, World War II started in Europe when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. The United States wasn’t in the war yet, but people were anxious about what was coming, and upbeat music like “In the Mood” gave them a way to forget about it, even if just for three and a half minutes.

Once the U.S. joined the war, the song took on an even bigger meaning. Miller took “In the Mood” with him into the military and performed it regularly with his Army Air Force band (Spragg, n.d.-c). For soldiers overseas, hearing it was like hearing a piece of home, and for families back in the States, it was connected to the people they were waiting for. I think that’s why the song became more than just a dance hit. It became part of how Americans remember the war era as a whole.

I used to listen to this song when I was younger without knowing anything about its history, but now I understand why it meant so much to people living through the war. Just like when I was a young kid dancing and tapping my feet to the rhythm of the song, I can imagine people in dance halls grooving to the beat. I think this song became almost a war anthem because it brought a sense of hope in such a time of doom and despair.

Impact

“In the Mood” became Glenn Miller’s biggest instrumental hit and his most-requested song (Spragg, n.d.-c). Even decades later, it’s still recognized as one of the most important recordings in American history. In 1983, Miller’s 1939 recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2004 it was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry, which preserves recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant (NPR, 2005). NPR also included it on its list of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century (NPR, 2000).

Musically, the song’s biggest influence comes from its riff. Hickey explains that the repetitive, call-and-response riffing heard in swing became the hallmark of the jump band style a few years later, and that jump band music is what eventually became known as rhythm and blues (Hickey, 2018). Since rhythm and blues was one of the biggest influences on rock and roll, songs like “In the Mood” are part of the chain that led to the music of the 1950s. In a way, the riff that started with Manone and Henderson and went through Garland and Miller kept moving forward into new genres, just like it had been passed around before.

The song’s story also had an impact on how we think about credit in the music industry. Even though “In the Mood” became one of the most famous songs of the era, Miller only received $175 for recording it under his original RCA contract (Spragg, n.d.-c). The real money in songs back then came from owning the composition, which is why who copyrighted the riff and who got credited as the songwriter mattered so much. As a Music Business student, I think this is one of the most interesting parts of the song’s history, because it shows that being the face of a hit didn’t always mean being the one who profited from it, and the people whose ideas the song was built on often got even less.

Today, “In the Mood” still lives on as a symbol of the 1940s. The song has been heard in movies, commercials, and TV shows, and it’s often used to instantly set the scene of the World War II era. In 1954, Hollywood even released The Glenn Miller Story, starring James Stewart, which helped keep Miller’s music popular long after his death (Colorado Music Experience, n.d.). For a lot of listeners now, the song brings up nostalgia for a time they never even lived through, and it’s still played at swing dances, weddings, and big band concerts around the world.

Now that I know the full history behind “In the Mood,” I hear it differently because of the context and impact it had. It’s still the same fun song I used to dance to as a kid, but now when I hear that riff, I think about all the musicians like Wingy Manone, the Hendersons, and Joe Garland who helped create it before it ever became a Glenn Miller hit. I think that’s what makes the song so special today, because it shows how music gets passed down and built on over time, even if not everyone gets the credit they deserve.

References

Colorado Music Experience. (n.d.). Glenn Miller. https://colomusic.org/profile/glenn-miller/

Covach, J. (2005). Form in rock music: A primer. In D. Stein (Ed.), Engaging music: Essays in music analysis (pp. 65–76). Oxford University Press.

Hickey, A. (2018, October 8). Episode 1: “Flying Home” by the Benny Goodman Sextet [Audio podcast episode]. In A history of rock music in 500 songs. https://500songs.com/podcast/flying-home-by-the-benny-goodman-sextet/

Miller, Glenn (1904–1944). (n.d.). In D. J. Wishart (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. University of Nebraska–Lincoln. https://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.mus.030.html

Morrison, M. D. (2024). Blacksound: Making race and popular music in the United States. University of California Press.

NPR. (2000, July 29). NPR 100: Glenn Miller’s “In the mood” [Radio broadcast]. https://www.npr.org/2000/07/29/1080105/npr-100-glenn-millers-in-the-mood

NPR. (2005, April 5). Grunge, rap music added to U.S. recording registry. https://www.npr.org/2005/04/05/4577934/grunge-rap-music-added-to-u-s-recording-registry

Spragg, D. M. (n.d.-a). Glenn Miller. https://www.dennismspragg.com/?p=7820

Spragg, D. M. (n.d.-b). A portrait of Glenn Miller. Glenn Miller Archives, University of Colorado Boulder. https://www.colorado.edu/amrc/sites/default/files/attached-files/a_portrait_of_glenn_miller.pdf

Spragg, D. M. (n.d.-c). The story of “In the mood.” Glenn Miller Archive, American Music Research Center, University of Colorado Boulder. https://www.colorado.edu/amrc/sites/default/files/attached-files/THE%20STORY%20OF%20IN%20THE%20MOOD.pdf