Glenn Miller: the Popular Recordings, 1938-1942. - sound recording reviews

National Review, March 5, 1990 by Ralph De Toledano

Glenn Miller: Thje Popular Recordings, 1938-1942 (BMG RCA-bluebird 9785-2-RB). In the swing era, the Glenn Miller Orchestra synthesized all the elements of "big band" jazz and gave a generation of young people the apotheosis of dance music: smooth, sophisticated, and with a patina of sentimentality.

There was no other like it at college proms and hotel ballrooms. Righteous jazz buffs paid it little mind, but millions of people did. And when he took his orchestra into the Army, then disappeared during a routine flight, Glenn Miller became a legend. The music he made is now preserved in a three-CD album for those who once heard him and for those who only heard of him.