Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 8:57 pm
So what could Glenn Miller have done, had he survived? Could his understanding of pop music have kept the Big Band genre rolling through the rock and roll era?
It leads into it. We drifted into talking about "Sing, Sing, Sing", and "Take the A-Train", I thought it'd be good to bring it back to Glenn Miller.trev wrote:No. There were many other factors. You sure ask some random questions.
Ah, but has anyone heard the Oscar Aleman version of it? Great stuff!...and very different to boot!straycat wrote:Well - speaking only for myself, I don't like it either (though 'hate' is a bit strong) - it's just not a track that inspires me.
I think - I've just heard it far too much - rarely on the dancefloor, but off it, more times than I can possibly count - from my perspective, it's the definitive overplayed swing track. If I were to hear it today for the first time, my feelings about it might be completely different - but it's impossible to know for sure...
I've spun it twice and gotten people dancing both times. Not a full floor, but not empty, either. And I like it, too.lindyhop4life wrote:Ah, but has anyone heard the Oscar Aleman version of it? Great stuff!...and very different to boot!
Just coming back to this, I think it's from a CD called The Radio Years, 1940 by Gene Krupa And His Orchestra.straycat wrote:Well - on the last night of Herrang this year, I ended up dancing to a version I'd not come across before - pretty fast, lots of fun, but with more false endings that all the others put together - in that respect, it was about as evil as a track can get.
The DJ (Ron Leslie) told me it was by Gene Krupa, but I can't seem to find hide nor hair of any versions by him. Ring any bells with anyone?
Goodness, that's a sweet song!Haydn wrote:Just coming back to this, I think it's from a CD called The Radio Years, 1940 by Gene Krupa And His Orchestra.straycat wrote:Well - on the last night of Herrang this year, I ended up dancing to a version I'd not come across before - pretty fast, lots of fun, but with more false endings that all the others put together - in that respect, it was about as evil as a track can get.
The DJ (Ron Leslie) told me it was by Gene Krupa, but I can't seem to find hide nor hair of any versions by him. Ring any bells with anyone?
The track listing on allmusic is wrong, In The Mood is Track 17. See the listing on Amazon for the correct track listing and some reviews
(The Swing Era, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1989: 674-676)....has an interesting history. A riff tune, built on blues changes, it was composed by the black reed instrumentalist and arranger Joe Garland. But as is so often the case in riff pieces, it was based on a motif that had kicked around a long time and was simply assembled, notated, and put by Garland in a specific copyrightable form. It appears that the trumpeter Wingy Manone first used the basic In the Mood lick from 1930 on a Chicago-style recording called Tar Paper Stomp. He recorded it again, rechristened as Jumpy Nerves, in 1939, just four months before Miller's In the Mood recording. But by that time Joe Garland had picked the riff up and had used it in his 1935 composition and arrangement of There's Rhythm in Harlem for the Mills Blue Rhythm Band. But long before that (March 1931) Horace Henderson had incorporated the riff as the second strain in his Hot and Anxious, recorded by both his brother Fletcher's band and Don Redman's.
Joe Garland took his 1935 arrangement with him when he left the Blue Rhythm Band along with Edgar Hayes, and recorded it as In the Mood for Hayes in early 1938. Next he offered it to Artie Shaw, who played but never recorded it, on the one hand thinking the simplistic riff a little beneath his own musical ambitions and on the other hand finding Garland's arrangement too long to fit on a ten-inch disc.
When Garland offered In the Mood to Miller, who was undoubtedly looking for strong new numbers for his Glen Island Casino booking, Miller grabbed the piece. With the precise skills of a first-rate surgeon Miller trimmed Garland's arrangement down to essentials, retaining the two initial strains, building in two solo sections (a saxophone exchange between Beneke and Klink, and a Hurley 16-bar trumpet solo over an Aflat pedal point) to the famous fade-away ending with its riff repeated three times at ever softer dynamic levels, then suddenly roaring in ff a fourth time for the final climax. At this point a trumpet-trio coda was added, climbing from the low register to a high Aflat-chord... [and here Schuller continues with an in-depth analysis of the score]
As the example show[ed], this is a harmonically relatively complex passage, of the kind of modernity that Miller had by now ruled out. But here, after the somewhat static preceding material - the circular riff (heard already six times before the final coda), the trumpet solo pedal point - the zigzagging chromaticism of the trumpet trio, rising inexorably to the final climax, was an uncannily perfect touch. For their time these eight bars were not all that easy to play and to hear - and it took the trumpet section quite a while to play them really well. (On the recording they are somewhat ragged.)
Part of the excitement of the whole coda derives from the exquisite sense of suspended animation created in the diminishing riff repetitions by the surprising elongation - it is surprising even after the 1000th listening - of the low unison Aflat pedal-note in the trombones, thereby yielding an unexpected 14-bar phrase length, rather than the traditional twelve.
No official word has ever been offered as to how the arranger's credits are to read. Two things are clear, however, from the aural evidence itself: 1) that Miller oversaw the concept of the piece, and 2) that at least four hands contributed to the final result. Miller's pianist, Chummy MacGregor, seems to have laid claim to the final trumpet coda. My guess is that Eddie Durham did the actual transferring of Garland's original arrangement, as pruned by Miller, and that Durham is also responsible for the trombone pedals towards the end. He was a trombonist, of course, and had used similar effects for years with the Lunceford band.
It is ironic but in the nature of the popular music business, that Miller became a millionaire on In the Mood alone, unlike his three arranger helpmates - Garland, Durham, and MacGregor - who did not share in the financial rewards. Durham reputedly received all of five dollars for his contribution.
Glenn Miller is reputed to have flatly asked John Hammond, after the latter had written a scathing review of Miller, why he judged him as a musician; "All I'm interested in is making money." That unbelievable admission - surely taken out of context - may be an exaggeration.
Yeah, The Wingy Manone song is nice and mellow and seems to go down quite well. In contrast, "There's Rhythm In Harlem" by The Mills Blue Rhythm Band has great energy, but the few times I've heard it DJ'd, the reaction has been pretty low-key and disappointing.dogpossum wrote:I am very tempted, though, to try all those different songs featuring that riff. I have a version of that Wingy Manone Jump Nerves (1939 - from the Mosaic Chu Berry collection) that I quite like. It's pretty mellow, but I kind of like it. I really like the MBRB one too.... and if I can find that Krupa one... !!