Music. Glenn Miller's "Sunny jazz"

The whole world was absorbed by Jazz at the end of the 30s of last century. "The great jazz fever" stirred up the recently depressed America which now rushed to concerts and dancing halls! One of the brightest stars at the sky of American jazz was a white trombonist Elton Glen Miller.

The eldest son in a poor Jewish Miller family was born on the 29^th of February (according to other sources on the 1^st March) of 1904 (Clarinda, Iowa). The childhood of the future star was, of course, not triumphal. Until 1926 the young man performed as part of Ben Pollack's orchestra and during the next 10 years performed in numerous leading dance orchestras of America. All these years Glen Miller tried to create his own orchestra, and in 1938 one of these attempts met with success. His music became a revelation for the Americans. Soon the film "The Serenade of a Sunny Valley" will be released in America. In the first days of sales, the now world-famous hits: "Moonlight Serenade", "In the Mood", "Engine to the Chattanooga" and others were sold out in large numbers.

During the war Miller disbanded his orchestra and became a soldier in the USA army. Having found gifted musicians among conscripts and volunteers, Glen founded an orchestra of the American Air Force (Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band) which already in 1943 went on a first tour to England. The orchestra performed in Great Britain more than 800 times. Many performances of the orchestra were broadcasted. Giving a few concerts daily, by the end of 1944 the USA Air Force orchestra was in a great creative form. It was planned to carry out a one and half month tour of the orchestra in Paris where in December a large radio concert all over Europe with the participation of American and European jazzmen was supposed to take place. Miller decided to arrive to Paris earlier than the rest of the musicians in order to settle down and prepare better. A casual encounter at the officers club in the evening of 14^th December helped to get a place on board of a small airplane which, despite the non-flying weather, was supposed to fly over La Manche. On 15^th December, 1944 Glen Miller stepped on board of the one-engine airplane "Norsemen" at the Twinwood military aerodrome. The plane took off, hid behind the haze and vanished…

Only on 24^th December of 1944 the military authorities announced that the famous musician and band-master was missing. The key decisive stage of the operations in Europe was to begin and the American headquarters was busy with other far more important affairs. Everyone readily agreed with the assumption that the airplane crashed in La Manche due to engines failure or freezing of the airscrewplane.

Officially this case was consigned to oblivion during 40 years. In 1984 Gerb Miller, Glen's younger brother, made a stunning public utterance: the maestro did not die in a plane crash at all, he died from cancer of lungs in one of the hospitals. He really climbed on board of the plane on 15^th December but the airplane landed half an hour after taking off and Miller was taken to the hospital where he died the next day. Gerb Miller asserted that he was the one sho spread a rumor about the airplane crash since his brother wanted to "die like a hero and not to kick the bucket in a stinking bed" and attempted to confirm this rumor with Glen's letter dated on summer 1944: "I became totally emaciated, even though I eat for two, - confessed the musician who, as it is known, took the cigarette out of his mouth only to blow his trombone. - it is hard to breathe. Probably I am seriously ill".

According to Gerb's statements no one searched or investigated the case simply because there was no crash. Moreover, the weather reports for 15^th December stated that the air temperature in the south of England was 5°C and it is unlikely that the airscrew planes could have iced over. The airplane pilot died in a battle later. This version was confirmed by a number of circumstances. It is true, Miller in the last years of his life often fell into a spleen and irritation, looked exhausted and suffered from pains in the thorax. According to his assistant, the uniform that was sawn to order was as lose on him as a sack. The USA military authorities did not confirm Gerb Miller's version but did not refute it either.

After the opening of the "second front" hundreds of copies of "The Serenade of the Sunny Valley" film got into the Russian troops and were distributed among the cities and villages in Russia. This was the first film "from there", which revealed at once all the best in America of those times. No other battling country had such a film, such music!