Glenn Miller - Critical Reaction

Critical Reaction

In 2004, Miller orchestra bassist Herman "Trigger" Alpert explained the band's success: "Miller had America's music pulse ... He knew what would please the listeners." Although Miller had massive popularity, many jazz critics of the time had misgivings. They believed that the band's endless rehearsals and according to critic Amy Lee in Metronome magazine, "letter-perfect playing", diminished any feeling from performances. They also felt that Miller's brand of swing shifted popular music away from the "hot jazz" bands of Benny Goodman and Count Basie toward commercial novelty instrumentals and vocal numbers. For years, even after Miller died, the Miller estate maintained an unfriendly stance toward critics that derided the band during Miller's lifetime. Miller was often criticized for being too commercial. His answer to the criticism was, "I don't want a jazz band". Many modern jazz critics still harbor similar antipathy toward Miller. Jazz critics Gunther Schuller (1991) and Gary Giddins (2004) have separately defended the Miller orchestra for whatever deficiencies earlier critics have found. In an article written for The New Yorker in 2004, Gary Giddins says he feels that these early critics erred in denigrating Glenn Miller's music, and that the popular opinion of the time should hold greater sway. The article states: "Miller exuded little warmth on or off the bandstand, but once the band struck up its theme, audiences were done for: throats clutched, eyes softened. Can any other record match 'Moonlight Serenade' for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slaver in so many for so long?" Schuller, notes, " was nevertheless very special and able to penetrate our collective awareness that few other sounds have..." He compares it partially to "Japanese Gagaku Hindu music" in its purity. Schuller and Giddins do not take completely uncritical approaches to Miller. Schuller says that Ray Eberle's "lumpy, sexless vocalizing dragged down many an otherwise passable performance." However finally Schuller notes: "How much further musical and financial ambitions might have carried him must forever remain conjectural. That it would have been significant, whatever form(s) it might have taken, is not unlikely."