Still alive? : Major Glenn Miller went missing in action on December 15, 1944.
In order to find out anything about “Elmer’s Tune”, Wikipedia will be no help. You have to go to Rick Busciglio at the Examiner.com for the whole story:
Glenn Miller's number one hit ''Elmer's Tune'' in 1941 was written by a mortician. Young Elmer Albrecht worked next door to Chicago's Aragon Ballroom and received permission to use one of their pianos on his lunch hours. Bandleader Dick Jurgens liked one of the melodies he heard Albrecht play and arranged it for his orchestra. Lyricist Sammy Gallop added words. The rest is history.
Gallop most likely added lyrics after Dick Jurgens’s instrumental version, which sounds very different from Miller’s final version above:
Busciglio also identifies the vocalists for the Glenn Miller version: Ray Eberle and the Modernaires. If you’ve been following the blog, you could probably have guess that the Modernaires were the chorus.
Oddly enough, I’m going to take a slight diversion to Glenn Miller’s death in December 1944. This is from the University of Colorado College of Music:
The weather was miserable the day Glenn was supposed to fly (on authorized, scheduled transport) and the day after. The third day, Friday, December 15, 1944, Glenn accepted a ride with Lt. Col. Norman Baessell. The plane was a single-engine C-64 Norseman. The pilot was Flight Officer John R. S. Morgan. The weather was wet, foggy and cold. The lightly equipped plane could not fly above the weather nor could it fly in the weather. Therefore, it would be forced to fly below the weather, close to the English Channel’s choppy surface. As the aircraft was about to depart, Miller yelled to Baessell (over the noise of the idling engine) “where the hell are the parachutes?” “What’s the matter, Miller,” retorted the gung-ho, extroverted colonel to the obviously apprehensive major, “do you want to live forever?”
There are three accounts of Miller’s death you can believe:
1. Something happened to Baessell’s plane and they never made it across the Channel. There’s a further theory that some English pilots on their way back from a bombing mission dumped their remaining bombs over the Channel and the plane was hit, downed by friendly fire.
2. The Germans claimed that Miller died in a Paris brothel.
3. Some conspirators claim that Miller was working for US intelligence on a secret mission that went belly-up and Miller was killed. The plane disappearance was a cover-up of the truth.
In my opinion, the theories are ranked from greatest to lowest credibility. The last is barely plausible – why would you choose one of the most recognizable people in the world to go on a critical war-time spy mission? The only reason the second theory is there at all is because Goebbels believed that wartime propaganda couldn’t be based entirely on lies – there had to be some elements of truth in order to better sell the lie to the public. But even if Miller died in a brothel and there had to be a cover-up to avoid embarrassment, it would have been very easy to come up with a good story for Miller’s death. (And the truth would have come out by now with so many potential witnesses.)
If I had to bet, I’d put my money on the first theory. Pilot error gets even good pilots killed. Either Miller’s pilot hit a snafu or they were really hit by the bombing raid.
There is a Miller-Germany connection though. In October of 1944, Miller and his orchestra showed up at Abbey Road Studios – yes, that Abbey Road – to perform some of his songs with German lyrics and messages which were going to be used for propaganda purposes – clearly, Miller’s music must have been popular in Germany. (Some people claim that Miller was fluent in German, which was not the case.)
On the internet – I won’t link where, because the source is some sort of kooky neo-Nazi – I found an alternate set of lyrics to “Elmer’s Tune” which might have been sung by William Joyce. Joyce was the infamous “Lord Haw-Haw” on English-language Nazi propaganda broadcast. Listen to the Miller clip above – I heard the propaganda broadcast with instrumental backing from someone other than Miller’s orchestra – and substitute the lyrics below:
Lord Haw-Haw version:
Why are the ships always sinking and blinking at sea?
What makes the British start thinking of their cup of tea?
It's now the season, the reason, it's plain what it means
German submarines!
What makes the sailors go crazy wherever they cruise?
What makes the market go down but frightens the Jews?
What takes the kick out the chicken, the pork from the beans?
Germans submarines!
Listen, listen,
Can't you hear the sound, they're never missin'!
Torpedoes! Torpedoes!
Hitting at day, and hitting at night!
Who sinks the trawler, the tanker, the ship pull of meat?
Who sinks destroyers, and cruisers, the pride of the fleet?
It's now the season, the reason, it's plain what it means
German submarines!
Miller disappeared in December 1944. Joyce was hanged for treason slightly more than a year later, in January 1946. If the Nazis chuckled at Miller’s death, they wouldn’t have long to chuckle.
Extra: I didn't know that Ray Eberle was the brother of Bob Eberly from the Jimmy Dorsey band. It appears that they took different approaches to spelling their last name - Ray kept the family spelling and Bob altered it.
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