“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.

“Elmer’s Tune” by Glenn Miller

At #1: December 20, 1941 (one week)
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.