The Glenn Miller Orchetra, circa 1941.
I saw her first when our party of four walked into the mezzanine at the Shubert Theatre. She stood out among the ushers as by far the youngest, perhaps a high school student. All the others had accumulated much more life experience, enough of it to turn their hair gray, a fact that fit them nicely into the evening’s crowd.
The young usher would have preferred to work a concert by her idol, Bruno Mars, who might sing “That’s What I Like” or “Grenade” or “Locked Out of Heaven.”
Alas, she was knocked out of that heavenly thought on a mid-October night, stuck helping patrons arrive for a string of musical pearls by a group called the Glenn Miller Orchestra. What on earth was that? And why were so many geezers like me coming through these mezzanine doors?
Actually, it wasn’t so many; the mezzanine was but half full. And from her perch in the back of the section, she could see all the aging heads, none of them with vibrant shocks of hair like hers, or, I dare say, more than a handful of representatives from the city’s minority communities.
And when the curtain opened, and she saw the band of 17 members and a conductor, the picture was clearly unrepresentative of her life in New Haven. The stage was filled with men, almost all of them white; a fair representation of what once was, but a statement in itself. Nostalgia makes no accommodation for diversity.
During the first of two sets, she might have glanced down in our row, where she would have seen my own gray head bobbing up and down and around to the beat of relics like “Pennsylvania 6 – 5000,” inspired by a call Glenn Miller made from a place referred to in those days as a phone booth. She might have wondered why I swooned as the band members stood to play Miller’s composition and signature tune, “Moonlight Serenade,” featuring his unique reed sound produced by four saxophones and one clarinet – a sound that for a brief moment in time – 1938 to 1942, a period when the world turned dark — sent America dancing and dreaming.
The young usher in the back would have seen me standing when the conductor and host for the evening, the slick Nick Hilscher, asked all service veterans to rise, and then dedicated “American Patrol” to us.
The usher, I figured, must know of veterans of more recent wars. She was just a few years older than I was in 1954 when my parents took me to see the film, “The Glenn Miller Story,” with Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson. That night at the movies opened my eyes and ears. I loved that music.
“In the Mood,” I was transported to “Tuxedo Junction” and, along the way, drinking from a “Little Brown Jug.” How could I explain such a revelation to a teenage usher? Probably no way. On the other hand, I wouldn’t hold it against her. I am not Paul Lynde, singing in “Bye, Bye Birdie,” that lament (“Kids, I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today”). They’re entitled to their music, and to what moves them, and who’s to say it’s not as artistic or more so than what drew me in at that age. Still…
At intermission, I noticed the teenage usher again. I asked her if she’d ever heard this music before. She was polite. “I think a little of it in school.” But it was mostly new to her. That’s when I asked her how old she was (16) who her favorite musician was (Mars), which relieved me a bit because I didn’t have to say, “Who’s that?” I knew the name, if not the work. I asked, “Are there any songs that Bruno Mars sings that I would like?”
She looked me over for a moment and said, “I don’t think so.” I said, smiling, “You really know how to hurt a guy.”
She laughed. I liked her spunk, the ease and politeness with which she spoke to someone five times her age.
By the second half of the program, audience members were all lost in time, almost literally blown away by heavy brass — four trombonists and four trumpeters. The “girl singer,” Hannah Truckenbrok, and the new version of the The Modernaires, offered “Blues in the Night.”
I recalled the old Miller film, and that bandleader disbanded his group in 1942 to form a new military band to entertain the troops overseas, and that, alas, the small plane he took from England to France disappeared in the mist over the English Channel. But, unlike other such tragic endings, this one had an afterlife.
The Glenn Miller Orchestra has been touring the world since 1956. And on that night in New Haven, it echoed the Shubert’s old days, when our historic playhouse hosted road shows on the way to their Broadway openings. For the next night, the band was to perform at New York City’s Town Hall before embarking on its fall tour to dozens of destinations.
To that end, we all, at least metaphorically, came aboard the “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” which, by the way, no longer runs along the tracks even if the tune, number one on the charts in 1941, still does. And by the time the encore came, “Farewell Blues,” I had been through the emotional wringer. But I kept my composure as, walking out, I saw the teenage usher for the third time.
I asked her, “What did you think of the music?”
She said, “Amazing.”
I said, “Really?”
She said, “Yes.”
And as I left the mezzanine, there was a hop in my geezer step.
It was truly a great performance. I grew up listening to the Glenn Miller music because my mother and her sisters would always sing along with the songs. I remember many of the words of the songs as I continued to enjoy the big band era. It was truly a big part of music history at the Shubert Theatre. A friend of mine commented he remembered as a young boy the original Glenn Miller Orchestra playing on the New Haven Green. Many of the aging grey heads also arrived with canes and found their way safely to their seats. A standing ovation for a great performance.