GLEN MILLER - BLUE MOON

BLUE MOON

GLEN MILLER

SONGWRITERS: RICHARD RODGERS & LORENZ HART

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: GLENN MILLER - BIG HITS

LABEL: RCA VICTOR

GÊNERO: STANDARD BALLAD

IN 1934

 

         Glenn Miller and His Orchestra was an American swing dance band formed by Glenn Miller in 1938. Arranged around a clarinet and tenor saxophone playing melody, and three other saxophones playing harmony, the band became the most popular and commercially successful dance orchestra of the swing era and one of the greatest singles charting acts of the 20th century.

       Miller began professionally recording in New York City as a sideman in the hot jazz era of the late 1920s. With the arrival of virtuoso trombonists Jack Teagarden and Tommy Dorsey, Miller focused more on developing his arrangement skills. Writing for contemporaries and future stars such as Artie Shaw, and Benny Goodman, Miller gained prowess as an arranger by working in a variety of settings. Later, Miller largely improved his arranging and writing skills by studying under music theorist Joseph Schillinger.

      In February 1937, Miller started an orchestra that briefly made records for Decca. With this group, Miller used an arrangement he wrote for British bandleader Ray Noble's American band in an attempt to form a clarinet-reed sound. This style developed over time, and eventually became known as the Glenn Miller sound. Frustrated with his agency over playing inconsistent bookings and lacking broad radio exposure, Miller gave the band notice in December 1937. Less than three months later, he was looking for members and forming a new band.

     Miller began a partnership with Eli Oberstein, which led directly to a contract with Victor subsidiary Bluebird Records. Gaining notoriety at such engagements as the Paradise Restaurant and Frank Dailey–owned Meadowbrook and their corresponding nationwide broadcasts, Miller struck enormous popularity playing the Glen Island Casino in the summer of 1939. From late 1939 to mid-1942, Miller was the number-one band in the country, with few true rivals. Only Harry James' band began to equal Miller's in popularity as he wound down his career in the wake of the Second World War. The AFM strike prevented Miller from making any new recordings in the last two months of his band's existence, and they formally disbanded at the end of September 1942.

       Miller's short-term chart successes have seldom been duplicated and his group's unprecedented dominance of early Your Hit Parade and Billboard singles charts resulted in 16 number-one singles and 69 Top Ten hits.

   Between 1938 and 1944, Glenn Miller and His Orchestra released 266 singles on the monaural ten-inch shellac 78 rpm format. Their studio output comprised a variety of musical styles inside of the Swing genre, including ballads, band chants, dance instrumentals, novelty tracks, songs adapted from motion pictures, and, as the Second World War approached, patriotic music.

      Non-instrumental songs featured Miller's various vocalists, generally Ray Eberle or Marion Hutton before 1940, with Tex Beneke, vocal group The Modernaires, and Skip Nelson all making studio vocal appearances after the turn of the decade. Beginning with An Album of Outstanding Arrangements in 1945, this collection has been repackaged into various album formats over time with release on 78 rpm, 10 and 12 inch LP, 7 inch 45 rpm, compact cassette, 8-track, compact disc(CD), and digital formats.

        Before his popularity, in the late 1920s, Miller played or wrote arrangements for many hot jazz groups, including a stint as a trombonist-arranger for Red Nichols’ famed Five Pennies recordings.

Blue Moon

You saw me standing alone

Without a dream in my heart

Without a love of my own

Blue Moon

You know just what I was there for

You heard me saying a prayer for

Someone I really could care for

 

And then there suddenly appeared before me

The only one my arms will hold

I heard somebody whisper please adore me

And when I looked to the Moon it turned to gold

 

Blue Moon

Now I'm no longer alone

Without a dream in my heart

Without a love of my own

 

And then there suddenly appeared before me

The only one my arms will ever hold

I heard somebody whisper please adore me

And when I looked the Moon had turned to gold

 

Blue moon

Now I'm no longer alone

Without a dream in my heart

Without a love of my own

 

Blue moon

Now I'm no longer alone

Without a dream in my heart

Without a love of my own.