The eeriest moment on this wonderful CD comes early on when
Glenn Miller steps up to the microphone to speak and one realizes that, jeez, Jimmy Stewart (in The Glenn Miller Story) really did sound a lot like him. But it's a nice kind of eerie, and the rest is pure gold -- all of the major big bands of the period were almost hyper-professional and proficient, on levels that exceeded perhaps any orchestra in the world this side of
the Vienna Philharmonic, but one can fully appreciate
Miller's exacting standards on broadcasts such as this; every nuance is spot-on perfect, yet there is still the excitement of a live performance and the ambience of an audience's very vocal presence between numbers. And one can appreciate in this setting even better than on the records why
Miller was so imposing a musical presence even among jazz musicians who didn't necessarily respect the music he made -- the
Miller band's renditions of "Georgia on My Mind" or "Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto" may only touch upon jazz in the most oblique, peripheral way, but there's enough of a jazz presence there, and enough elsewhere in this performance at a high enough level, so that even his harshest critics among the big-band jazz and even the bebop set had to acknowledge him. And numbers like "Dreamsville, Ohio," "Chattanooga Choo Choo," and "The Nickel Serenade," extended here to well over four minutes (much longer than the official studio releases), have a kick and an immediacy that's totally beguiling when heard today; and jazz enthusiasts may have to hear this just for the prominence of
Bobby Hackett on cornet for many of the songs. The singers also acquit themselves well,
Ray Eberle,
Marion Hutton, and
Tex Beneke all sounding exceptionally good, so much so that even those listeners who prefer to overlook the singers may be impressed. The sound is flawless -- why BMG/RCA never reached out to grab this and the other performances from the Cafe Rouge at the Hotel Pennsylvania is beyond this listener's understanding, but the essential point is that this is an essential part of any
Miller collection, or any big-band swing collection, and it's done with class, including excellent notes. There's also an interesting biographical element about
Miller behind these broadcasts and performances, which were aimed at supporting the USO -- this was in November of 1941, weeks (a little more than one week, actually) before the United States was in the war, and
Miller was already throwing himself with both feet into supporting the morale of the nation's servicemen.