The Almost Complete 'Orchestra Wives'

About eight years ago I prepared what I described as the "almost complete Sun Valley Serenade," which involved wrangling the soundtrack recordings to the Glenn Miller band's first movie. They had appeared piecemeal across a few different releases over the years.

Today I am doing the same for Miller's second and final film, Orchestra Wives, an uneasy amalgam of musical and melodrama, with a score just as glorious as the first Miller film. And again, the recordings have been cobbled together from several sources.

Meanwhile I've revamped and added to the Sun Valley Serenade post, which you can find here. The music from both films is available in sterling ambient stereo.

The primary sources for both films are the RCA Victor albums that came out in 1954, timed to the release of Hollywood's Glenn Miller Story, and the 20th Century Fox LPs that were issued about five years later. Each set contains materials that can't be found on the other. For this go-round, I've added an alternate take for each film, derived from a long-ago bootleg.

Here are the details of the Orchestra Wives recordings. This second Miller film comes from 1942, just a year after Sun Valley Serenade. The bandleader was to enter the Army soon after its completion. Two years later his plane disappeared over the English Channel.

The Orchestra Wives score opens with a brief version of Miller's theme, his own composition "Moonlight Serenade," heard over the titles. This is an alternate version that adds a swirling harp opening.

Tex Beneke, Marion Hutton, Ray Eberle and the Modernaires tighten their belts

Respecting its wartime setting, the next song, "People Like You and Me," is half sentiment and half patriotism, concluding with a "let's pitch in" stanza:

We'll have to roll up our sleeves, 

Tighten our belts,

But through the dark we'll see
The lady with the liberty light for
People like you and you and you,
And people like me,
People like you and me!

As with many Miller performances, what makes the song work so well is the brilliant arrangement (by Jerry Gray or George Williams) and the meticulous execution by the band and the vocalists - Marion Hutton, Ray Eberle, Tex Beneke and the Modernaires. The song itself is a highly professional effort by the stellar Hollywood team of composer Harry Warren and lyricist Mack Gordon. They also wrote most of the Sun Valley Serenade songs.

The next number is an instrumental, "Boom Shot," which the band plays at a dance in Iowa and which kicks off the plot. (Per a blog post by Miller expert Dave Weiner, the title relates to the overhead camera technique used during the sequence.) This is a Billy May original with a George Williams arrangement.

Pat Friday

"At Last" is one of the most enduringly popular songs in the Miller canon, not least because of Etta James' 1960 cover version. But the performance in the film is perfect in its own right. The song is one of Harry Warren's best, with a fine Mack Gordon lyric, and a powerful vocal by Pat Friday dubbing for Lynn Bari's viperish band singer. Friday's excellence is matched by Ray Eberle, in fine voice, the Modernaires, and a crack chart by Jerry Gray and Bill Finegan. (Miller at the time employed several famous arrangers - Gray, Finegan, George Williams and Billy May).

"At Last" was actually written for (and cut from) Sun Valley Serenade (available here), where Friday also dubbed for Lynn Bari. Her partner that time was male lead John Payne, who sang for himself but was no match for Eberle. The Orchestra Wives version is more romantic; it also has a slightly revised melody line.

"American Patrol" is a joyous swing march, an arrangement by Jerry Gray of F.W. Meacham's "American Patrol March" of 1885. As with all these songs, the playing is flawless.

Moe Purtill

"Bugle Call Rag," which dates from 1922, is from the New Orleans Rhythm Kings band book. This spirited version, arranged by Miller himself, has a feature for the band's flashy drummer, Moe Purtill.

"Serenade in Blue" is one of the Miller band's best known songs. Written for the film by Warren and Gordon, it receives an almost impossibly romantic treatment by Billy May and Bill Finegan, vocalists Pat Friday and Ray Eberle, the Modernaires, cornetist Bobby Hackett and tenor saxophonist Tex Beneke. This version from the RCA release is much longer than what is heard in the film; notably it has a moody instrumental opening that is a marked contrast with the balance of the song.

Following this swooning number is the jaunty specialty (also by Warren and Gordon) "(I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo." It was an entirely successful attempt to replicate the popularity of Sun Valley Serenade's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." Once again, Beneke is on the move to see a girl in another town, and again he is interrogated by the Modernaires in the process. Instead of "Hi there, Tex, what you say?" we get "Hi there, Tex, how's your new romance?" The performance is polished and the Jerry Gray arrangement is most effective.

The amazing Nicholas Brothers

As with "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," "Kalamazoo" was the basis of an extended dance sequence featuring the astonishing Nicholas Brothers. The extended version of the song, with the brothers' contribution, only appeared on the RCA Victor release.

Marion Hutton

Now for three songs that were cut from the film, but appeared on the later 20th Century Fox LPs. The first is a feature for Marion Hutton, a personable singer who was not quite as explosive as her sister Betty. "That's Sabotage" makes use of a wartime concern to admonish a wayward suitor - "If you've been untrue, that sabotage!" Hutton insists.

Glenn Miller and Chummy MacGregor

"Moonlight Sonata" is a Bill Finegan arrangement of Beethoven featuring pianist Chummy MacGregor and Beneke on tenor sax. It is better than the usual run of such things. Miller expert Dave Weiner says that it probably was meant as a feature for Cesar Romero, who played a pianist in the film. Miller had recorded a commercial version of the song in 1941.

George Montgomery, Cesar Romero, Tex Beneke, Marion Hutton, Lynn Bari

The final unused song was "You Say the Sweetest Things, Baby," a song that Warren wrote for the Alice Faye film Tin Pan Alley. Here, a subset of the Miller troupe parodies the overripe sound of a society band until it is interrupted by a raucous trumpet solo. Dave Weiner says this was apparently supposed to be the soundtrack of a scene in which trumpeter George Montgomery, the film's lead, interrupts a square ensemble with his hip playing. The trumpet you hear is Billy May.

To close the set we have an alternate take of "Serenade in Blue." This one has a different moody intro to the main melody, a modified arrangement and no vocals. Please excuse the noise and pitch wobble on this decades-old bootleg.

Why do I call this the "almost complete" Orchestra Wives? I believe there may be a snippet or two I don't have that can be found on a limited edition of the soundtrack.

Several of the musicians mentioned above have appeared elsewhere on this blog: arrangers Jerry Gray, Bill Finegan and George Williams, vocalists Pat Friday (here and here) and the Modernaires, cornetist Bobby Hackett and tenor saxophonist/vocalist Tex Beneke.

The photo below of the band on set shows three actors in place of the real musicians: Cesar Romero is at the piano for Chummy MacGregor, Jackie Gleason is on bass instead of Doc Goldberg, and George Montgomery is at the left in the trumpet section, replacing Johnny Best - who is in the photo as well.

The Nearly Complete Sun Valley Serenade

For some time now, the erudite Dave Weiner has been providing session-by-session commentary on the civilian recordings of the Glenn Miller band on Dave's blog, Community Swing.

This has been a real pleasure for me, a Miller fan since I was 10, and when Dave recently covered the songs from the 1941 film Sun Valley Serenade, I decided to do a post of my own. This for two reasons: one, these were among the first Miller items I owned myself, and two, the soundtrack recordings exist in a variety of versions, which Dave neatly straightens out, enabling me to assemble a coherent and nearly complete package.

We start with RCA Victor's 10-inch soundtrack LP, which belatedly came out in 1954 as part of the blitz of Miller recordings that RCA reissued in the wake of The Glenn Miller Story. In 1959, 20th Century Fox issued a Miller soundtrack set that included some but not all of this material - and added one item that isn't found on the RCA edition.

The RCA LP is unusual in that it includes the first version of the gorgeous Harry Warren-Mack Gordon ballad "At Last" (yes, the Etta James song), cut from this film only to turn up in the second Miller pic, Orchestra Wives. Here's Dave: "It’s a great arrangement by Jerry Gray and Bill Finegan, done here as a rhythm ballad, vocalized by Lynn Bari and John Payne. Payne sings for himself, rather reedily and Bari is doubled, as usual, by Pat Friday." I might add that Pat Friday was a superb singer who unfortunately is quite unknown these days. The Pat Friday-Ray Eberle version of "At Last" in Orchestra Wives is even better than this one. Friday, Payne and the Modernaires also do another beautiful Warren-Gordon ballad, "I Know Why" in Sun Valley Serenade.

The RCA LP includes the complete eight-minute "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." It starts with the familiar Tex Beneke-Modernaires vocal, followed by a long section featuring Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers. This is as seen during the film, but minus the sound of the brothers' tap dancing. (Their routine is astonishing, by the way.)

Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers

The album contains what Dave calls the best-ever version of Miller's famous "In the Mood," among several outstanding band features, including Jerry Gray's terrific "The Spirit Is Willing."

But as I mentioned, the RCA LP is not complete. It did not contain the snatch of Miller's theme "Moonlight Serenade" as heard in the movie. So I have added that song from the Fox soundtrack album (which did not contain this first rendition of "At Last" and had truncated versions of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and "I Know Why").

Another song, "The Kiss Polka," appears in the film but is not played by the Miller band. However, the band did make a commercial recording of it that I have appended to the download.

I say my version is "nearly complete" because there is one song that was cut from the movie and has never been released. It is called "The World Is Waiting to Waltz Again." Dave, however, has somehow come up with the recording, and it can be heard via his blog post discussing Sun Valley Serenade.

The RCA LP has excellent sound, and is better than the Fox edition, which adds unneeded reverb. The soundtrack also is superior to the Victor commercial recordings of the early 40s. One final note for those who might be curious: the strange whistling sounds heard under the muted trumpet solos during "The Spirit Is Willing" are on both the RCA and Fox records.

Note (July 2023): I have now added an alternate take of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" to the download, cleaned up from a long-ago bootleg. You will note that Tex's whistling intro is different from the version used in the film. Please excuse the pitch instability and noise on this outtake. Also new in the download is a long document about the film from the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Below, the Miller band as seen during the film, with Lynn Bari as vocalist, John Payne as pianist, the sections all mixed up.