big band, disco, east midlands, music, forties, music, recordings, sinatra, records, wedding, Glenn Miller, swing, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, glenn miller disco music east midlands

The Miller estate authorized an official Glenn Miller "ghost band" in 1946. This band was led by Tex Beneke and had a make up similar to the Army Air Force Band: it had a large string section. "[T]he orchestra's 'official' public debut was at the Capitol Theater on Broadway where it opened for a three week engagement [on January 24, 1946]." "The theater held three or four thousand people, I guess-it was sheer bedlam, an incredibly exciting thing to hear, [said Bob Ripley]" Ripley also says, "People would call out from the audience 'where's Glenn?' and it was apparent that a lot of people didn't even know he wasn't with us." This ghost band played to very large audiences all across the U.S., including a few dates at the Hollywood Palladium, where the original Miller band played in 1941. "Even after the war, when big bands began to lose their popularity, the Palladium still drew in a record 6,750 eager dancers to the 1947 opening night performance of Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra – an event enthusiastically covered by Life Magazine.By 1949, economics dictated that the string section be dropped.

This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did. Beneke was struggling with how to expand the Miller sound and also how to achieve success under his own name. The Miller estate had to please the ballroom operators and the record producers at RCA Victor. What began as the "Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Tex Beneke" finally became "The Tex Beneke Orchestra". By 1950, Beneke and the Miller estate parted ways.The break was acrimonious and Beneke is not currently listed by the Miller estate as a former leader of the Glenn Miller orchestra.

When Glenn Miller was alive, various bandleaders like Bob Chester imitated his style. By the early 1950s, various bands were again copying the Miller style of clarinet led reeds and muted trumpets, notably Ralph Flanagan,Jerry Gray and Ray Anthony. This, coupled with the success of The Glenn Miller Story, led the Miller estate to ask Ray McKinley to lead a new ghost band. This 1956 band is the original version of the current ghost band that still tours today.

Legacy Glenn Miller's widow, Helen, died in 1966. Herb Miller, Glenn Miller's brother, led his own band in the United States and England until the late 1980s. In April 1992, at his daughter's request, a stone was placed in Memorial Section H, Number 464-A on Wilson Drive in Arlington National Cemetery Every year Clarinda, Iowa, Glenn Miller's birthplace, runs a Glenn Miller festival. In the United Kingdom, at Twinwood Airfield which is the last place he was seen alive, The International Glenn Miller Festival of Swing, Jazz & Jive is held annually every August bank-holiday. In 2003, Miller posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In July of 2006, the now adult children of Glenn Miller were in the news with a lawsuit they filed against Glenn Miller Productions in the Ninth Circuit Court.

The entire output of Chesterfield programs Glenn Miller did between 1939 and 1942 were recorded by the Glenn Miller organization on acetate discs. In the 1950s and afterwards, RCA distributed many of these on long playing albums and compact discs. He remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of 1935 to 1945.