Klarinet Archive - Posting 000513.txt from 1997/03

From: Michael Andrew Cassara <99casmic@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Glenn Miller Band (was No Subject)
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 09:21:30 -0500

Hello gang,

>Thomas wrote:
>Yes indeed he did play trombone but his reed section was always led with a
>clarinet, not by him per se.
>
> *****************
>Always ? I don't think so. I know they made a big (and apparently
>fictitious) deal over this in the movie the Glenn Miller Story. Of course,
>there is a clarinet lead in Moonlight Serenade. But in years past I
>listened to a lot of Miller recordings (when I should have been listening
>to Kell, I suppose) and I don't think the clarinet lead is all that common,
>probably less than 25 percent of his charts. Maybe a lot less.

Well, the Miller band did use the lead clarinet in a number of charts. If I
think, and I'm no huge Miller fan, the following come to mind:

Moonlight Serenade
I Know Why
American Patrol

You know, you do have a point... I know there are more tunes out there -
it's just been so long since I've listened to him.

For many years the lead was played by Wilbur Schwartz who certainly doubled
the sax parts when the chart didn't call for the better woodwind. John
Kuehn wrote an excellent article on him and the Miller band published in the
Clarinet. I'm sure there are back issues available somewhere. For a number
of years, Buddy DeFranco led the band as well.

As always, I invite and plead everyone to check out my slowly growing
project, The Jazz Clarinet Homepage:
http://www.en.com/users/cassara/clarinet

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

With two weeks of vacation now (yeah!) I might be able to do some damage on
the pages...

:-)

Mike
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Michael A. Cassara 99casmic@-----.edu
Hawken School in Gates Mills, Ohio Http://www.hawken.edu
My homepage: Http://www.en.com/users/cassara
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