Missing Over the Channel
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival turns twenty on Chicago's South Side, free, with a stage named for Willie Pickens at half past twelve and Joshua Redman playing solo saxophone in Rockefeller Chapel at ten. Today's record is "In the Mood," which the Library of Congress keeps in the National Recording Registry, and then Sekou takes us to England in December 1944, where Glenn Miller takes a seat on a small plane that he has no authorization for.
LioraHyde Park turns twenty today, and opens by naming a stage. Today's record is in the National Recording Registry. And later, a small plane, December 1944. It's Saturday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Saturday, September 26th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: The Hyde Park Jazz Festival turns twenty today
LioraThe Hyde Park Jazz Festival turns twenty today, and day one opens with a ceremony, not a set.
Twelve thirty, on the Midway Plaisance. The festival names its stage after the Chicago pianist Willie Pickens.
At two thirty, on that same stage, his daughter. The Bethany Pickens Soulful Coalition. Across the Midway at one thirty, the Orbert Davis Sextet. DownBeat reports Davis played the first note at the first festival, and plays it again today.
It is free, and the festival welcomes a ten dollar donation. Thirty eight performances over two days. Most of today is indoors, in museums, churches and a bank.
LioraThe Logan Center runs three rooms at once. The Greg Ward Octet at five fifteen, playing Held Together, a suite the festival commissioned out of the music of the Black church. Emmet Cohen presents Miles and Coltrane at 100 at seven thirty.
Back outside at eight fifteen, the anniversary band. Hill, McCraven, Paul and Ross.
Then the last thing, alone in a church. Ten o'clock, Rockefeller Chapel. Joshua Redman, solo saxophone.
All of it as scheduled.
Two. Listen to This: "In the Mood," Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, cut August 1st, 1939
LioraToday's record is from 1939, and the Library of Congress keeps it. "In the Mood," Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, cut on August 1st, 1939, and added to the National Recording Registry in 2004.
He did not write it. Joe Garland did, and copyrighted it in June 1938. Artie Shaw bought the piece, played it slow and long, and never recorded it. Miller bought it from Garland around June 1939 and had Eddie Durham help cut it down, to four and a half minutes for broadcasts and three minutes for one side of a seventy eight.
Here is the tip. Listen for the edit. Dennis Spragg, who wrote the registry essay, calls it the anthem of the swing era. It runs three minutes because one side of a record ran three minutes.
LioraThe release desk. Mack Avenue put out "Caged Bird" yesterday, the recording debut of the vocalist Ekep Nkwelle, inspired by the Maya Angelou book. Blue Note has announced a Joshua Redman record for Sonny Rollins, out November 20th. Redman is the one in the chapel at ten.
Later, on The Bridge: England, December 1944. Glenn Miller takes a seat he has no authorization for, on a small plane bound for France, and for seventy-two hours no one in his chain of command realizes he's gone. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: England, December 1944. Glenn Miller takes a seat he has no authorization for
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouBedford, England. Friday, December 15th, 1944. Major Glenn Miller, the famous bandleader, is trying to reach France. Too old for the draft, he volunteered, and now his Army Air Forces band is due there to play on Christmas Day. He's going ahead to get things ready.
For days, bad weather has grounded the regular flights, and Miller is impatient. He runs into an officer he knows, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Baessell, who is flying to France regardless. Baessell offers him a seat. Miller takes it. He has no authorization, and he doesn't tell his commanders.
A small single-engine plane, a Norseman, lands at Twinwood Farm, an airfield near Bedford. More than a dozen witnesses see Miller board with Baessell. At 1:55 that afternoon, it takes off into the fog.
LioraSo he wasn't supposed to be on that plane.
SekouNo. By one account, the pilot, Flight Officer John Morgan, has been refused clearance to fly to France, and is cleared for local flying only.
Three men on board: Morgan, Baessell and Miller. The Norseman is the military version of a Canadian bush plane.
Dennis Spragg spent six years investigating the case. By his account, the route the military requires crosses the Channel from Beachy Head to Saint Valery, in France. He says military and civilian observers track the plane south from England, over Beachy Head. It never appears over France.
The next morning, the German attack that begins the Battle of the Bulge takes the Allies by surprise. For seventy-two hours, no one in Miller's chain of command realizes he's gone.
LioraThree days. What about his band?
SekouMonday, December 18th. Miller's band flies to Paris and lands at Orly, expecting him to meet them. He isn't there. It's raining, with mud everywhere. The clarinetist Peanuts Hucko put it this way: "It was a mess, really a mess."
The band's manager, Don Haynes, breaks the news. "Guys, I don't know how to tell you this, but Glenn is unofficially missing. He never arrived in Paris." "It's still unofficial," he says, "but it doesn't look good."
SekouBefore any announcement, Allied commanders tell his wife, Helen. By one account, General Hap Arnold, head of the Army Air Forces, calls her himself. On Christmas Eve, the news goes out: Glenn Miller is missing.
On Christmas Day, the band plays its broadcast anyway. Sergeant Jerry Gray conducts.
LioraDo we know what happened to the plane?
SekouNot for certain. Nothing of the plane or the three men has ever been recovered.
The Army's inquiry in 1945 judged the most likely cause to be pilot disorientation, with icing. The Norseman's carburetor was known to freeze over.
In 1984, Fred Shaw, who had been on an RAF bomber that Friday, said the bombs his crew dumped brought down a small plane. Bombers did dump bombs in the Channel that day, but as Spragg reads the records, more than an hour before the Norseman was over the water. It's a legend the records don't support.
Officially, all three men are still unaccounted for. Their names are on the Wall of the Missing at the Cambridge American Cemetery, in England. At Arlington, Miller has a memorial stone, placed in 1992 at his daughter's request.
LioraHe left three days before his band, to get things ready. They got there. He never did.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Chris' Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia marks its thirty seventh anniversary with Lucy
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is a birthday. Chris' Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia marks its thirty seventh anniversary with Lucy Yeghiazaryan and the saxophonist Grant Stewart and his quartet. Seven thirty and nine thirty, thirty five dollars. The cafe says seating for the first show is limited.
Now the sweep.
In New York, Mezzrow has four sets and a solo. The Helio Alves Quartet at six and seven thirty, forty dollars in advance. The Janice Friedman Trio at nine and ten thirty, the nine sold out in advance. Then Chris McCarthy alone at the piano, eleven fifty five.
In Chicago, after the festival, the Green Mill. Jeff Newell's New Trad Octet from eight to midnight, twenty dollar cover.
In Detroit, Cliff Bell's has DICHI twice, seven thirty and nine thirty, twenty five dollars.
LioraIn Austin, the Elephant Room has one band and one set. The Brew at nine, with the bar's ten dollar Saturday cover.
Two rooms I cannot call. Blues Alley in Washington and Dazzle in Denver publish tonight only off their own sites.
Five. One More Note: September 26th, 1937, on Highway 61 north of Clarksdale
LioraSeptember 26th, 1937. Highway 61, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Bessie Smith is in a car crash.
She was born in Chattanooga in 1894, worked with Ma Rainey, and cut "Down Hearted Blues" and "Gulf Coast Blues" on one February day in 1923. The billing was the Empress of the Blues.
The sources split on the end. The Blues Trail marker says she died that day, in the building that is now the Riverside Hotel. The Park Service says the crash was the 26th and she died the next morning.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Saturday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.