Flashback
70 years ago
Orchestra puts UB “In the Mood”
At the junior prom on Feb. 25, 1939, 600 UB students and alumni swayed to the new swing sound of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Playing in the Statler Hotel’s Grand Ballroom, the recently formed orchestra was just a few months from international stardom.
Harold Feldman, a UB junior and prom organizer, recognized the potential of Miller’s unique swing sound featuring a clarinet floating on top of four saxophones and brass—“Miller can play sweet swing equally well as hot, dingy jazz”—and he predicted in the Bee, UB’s student newspaper at the time, that Miller “will soon rival Dorsey, Goodman and Shaw.”
Dancers swayed to tunes like “One O’clock Jump,” and may have heard early versions of such 1939 Miller hits as “Stairway to the Stars,” “Over the Rainbow,” “In the Mood” and the orchestra’s signature “Moonlight Serenade.”
By summer, Feldman’s prediction had come true. The orchestra received its big break with an engagement at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, leading to 59 Top 10 hit recordings between 1939 and 1941 when Miller stepped away from stardom to join the Army Air Force during World War II. He and his Army band recorded at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London.
In December 1944, Glenn Miller and his plane disappeared without a trace over the English Channel on a flight to arrange performances for the troops in France.
Click here to get “In the Mood” by listening to Miller’s sweet swing, including “Star Dust,” “Moonlight Serenade,” “String of Pearls” and more.
—Judith Adams-Volpe, University Libraries
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