“Moonlight Cocktail” by Glenn Miller

At #1: February 28, 1942-May 2, 1942 (10 weeks)
Still alive? No. Glenn Miller went missing in action on December 15, 1944

There’s an anecdote involving General Tso I’ve been waiting to use, and now I have a chance to use it. General Tso was a 19th century Chinese general who has been pretty much forgotten to history, except for having a chicken dish named after him. Odds are, General Tso or Zuo Zongtang never got the chance to enjoy as much of a bite of this delicious and addictive dish – he certainly didn’t invent it.

At least his name survived, although in a way he never expected. Glenn Miller’s name had survived for several years and several of his songs seemed to have survived except for “Moonlight Cocktail”. This was a song that was at #1 for almost a quarter of a year but this is the first time I’ve ever heard it. This song didn’t deserve to be forgotten – it’s a wonderful song, probably one of the best if not the best of the #1s I’ve written about.

“Moonlight Cocktail” has not merely enjoyable lyrics, but clever and intelligent ones. Falling in love is compared to preparing an alcoholic beverage. A snippet from the song:

Couple of jiggers of moonlight and add a star,
Pour in the blue of a June night and one guitar,
Mix in a couple of dreamers and there you are:
Lovers hail the Moonlight Cocktail.

Now add a couple of flowers, a drop of dew,
Stir for a couple of hours 'til dreams come true.
Add to the number of kisses, it's up to you.
Moonlight Cocktail - need a few.

Oddly enough, the song was banned for radio airplay in the United Kingdom for two years. From a website about the UK’s Denny Dennis:

At one point the BBC was concerned about the image the dance bands were projecting within their broadcasts, especially the ‘crooning’ element, which it was thought might be promoting too much ‘over sentimentality’.

A committee (which became known as the ‘anti slush’ committee) was set up to look into it, and it eventually began to ban certain numbers, including Glenn Miller’s ‘Moonlight Cocktail’.

More information about the ban can in the book Victory Through Harmony: The BBC and Popular Music in World War II by Christina L. Baade. With Britain reeling in early 1942 from the war, an elite committee within the BBC decided that they were going to purge sentimentality from the airwaves. Apparently, this group thought that certain songs had a salacious or demasculinizing element to them. (I suppose their dream would have been Sousa marches or some kind of noble propaganda on the lines of a British Fox News, a steady diet of World War II Toby Keiths.) Molding the public’s taste by censoring what could be heard didn’t work very well in World War II but that wouldn’t stop the Brits from trying again in the rock and roll era.

While looking for information, I found an article in the old Ottawa Citizen of 1975 by Bill Fagan. Fagan was writing about recent record releases – one from Chuck Mangione and a rerelease of Glenn Miller standards. It’s rare to find criticism of Miller, so I’ll share Fagan’s thoughts on Miller:

In retrospect, some facts should be made clear. Glenn Miller was, at best, a journeyman trombonist – and he knew it. Exempting Bobby Hackett, his band suffered from a lack of good soloists and his rhythm section was wobbly and uninspired. But Miller was a shrewd businessman, astute and hard-working. To cover the deficiencies he employed Billy May, Bill Finegan and Jerry Gray, all skilled arrangers, to write charts for his superbly disciplined brass and reed sections. Even Glenn’s vocalists – Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, Dorothy Claire, Skip Nelson, The Modernaires and, of course, Tex Beneke, were carefully chosen for their “boy and girl next door” images.

Interesting, as both Ray Eberle and The Modernaires were the vocalists on “Moonlight Cocktail.” Doubly interesting that these “boys next door” got themselves Banned in Britain.

“Song of the Volga Boatmen” by Glenn Miller

At #1: March 15, 1941 (one week)
Still alive? Very much not alive. Major Glenn Miller went missing in action on December 15, 1944



When I was a kid growing up and suckling on the teat of television, sometimes during cartoons or comedies an odd background tune would play when someone was slaving away or being forced to perform some odious task. The tune – very slowly – went:

bwha bwha BWAAAAAAAH bwhaaaa
bwha bhha BWAAAAAAAH bwhaaaa

And now I can tell people what that tune is. It’s the “Song of the Volga Boatmen”. The version by Glenn Miller – well, actually arranged by Bill Finegan – is very peppy. There’s clearly no toting of barges or lifting of bales. This is the kind of music that your average person would associate with “big band” music, lots of brass and clarinets and trombones.

There’s so much to write about when it comes to Glenn Miller. One can write about the circumstances of his death. One can debate whether or not Miller counts as a “war hero”. One can write about his place in music history.

Instead, I want to write about the concept of the “Ghost Band”. What happens to a big band when the person after whom the orchestra is named passes away? A lot of big bands became “ghost bands”, named after band leaders who were no longer alive and becoming nostalgia acts.

After Glenn Miller died, his estate allowed the Glenn Miller Orchestra to keep playing. Tex Beneke became the band leader of Glenn Miller’s band, but there was a struggle over the musical direction with the Glenn Miller estate. Beneke didn’t want the band to sound too much like Glenn Miller’s, whereas the estate wanted the Glenn Miller Orchestra to play Glenn Miller songs just the way Glenn Miller wanted them. They parted ways.

The Glenn Miller Orchestra still exists today. Not every song they play is a Glenn Miller Orchestra but a lot of them are. These ghost bands are a cross between a rock band losing its lead singer and a rock band essentially becoming a nostalgia/tribute band, playing its old standards and not creating anything new. (The only modern rock band I can think of that has taken this direction is Queen after Freddie Mercury died. Most rock bands keep creating new material even after a change in personnel, but I guess it would be a lot tougher for Eddie Van Halen to hire Sammy Hagar as lead singer if his band were called the David Lee Roth Quartet.)

Count Basie is long gone, but his orchestra is still active in 2012. Harry James gave Frank Sinatra his first big start, but his band outlived both of them. Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra is still out there, somewhere.

A music fan of the 21st century would probably suggest that these ghost bands just pack it in. Andrew Gilbert wrote:

Though descriptive rather than pejorative, the term often carries a whiff of the dismissive, as if a musical legacy should be interred with its creator (things work differently in the world of dance, where no one seems interested in tossing dirt on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater).

Artie Shaw actually had a ghost band under his name while he was still alive. It was conducted by Dick Johnson. Shaw said, “…that term ‘ghost band’. I hate it. I’m not a ghost. It’s just a band.”