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Glenn Smiles, London, 1944
Abbey Road Studios
© EMI Music Ltd. |
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[ click to enlarge ] |
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On June 28, 1944, just three weeks following the D-Day landings in Normandy, Captain Glenn Miller would meet the sixty-two members of his orchestra at the Scottish port-town of Gourock, as they first arrived in the United Kingdom. Traveling overnight from Glasgow to London, by train, the ABAEF would soon experience the horror of 1940s London, and its relentless, rocket bombardment. Arriving in England one week earlier, Miller quickly realized the need to make arrangements for the transfer of his handpicked unit to a safer area of Britain (outside of London), or he may not have an orchestra left to fulfill his mission there. Because their orders to report to London had already been given prior to the commencement of German rocket attacks, on June 13th, many aspects of the ABAEF’s planned broadcasts and performances in the British capital had to now be carefully reconsidered.
Having already contacted British film star Colonel David Niven for assistance in relocating his orchestra, Miller, Niven, Don Haynes (now Lieutenant Don Haynes), Sergeant Paul Dudley, and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) engineer Teddy Gower immediately traveled to see what would become the orchestra’s new base of operations, in the small town of Bedford, fifty-miles north of London. When once recalling their first trip there, Gower would state “Miller, Haynes, Dudley, Maurice Gorham, and Dr. Alexander and I drove up to Bedford at that time, and we saw this hall, which was a social hall belonging to the Gas Company. Anyway, it was all we could get, and it was not really large enough. Acoustic-wise, it was pretty terrible; anyway, we had to have it and there we stayed for six months, more or less everybody doing recording or doing live transmissions.”
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Horn Section, London, 1944
Abbey Road Studios
© EMI Music Ltd. |
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[ click to enlarge ] |
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In the accompanying photo, the orchestra’s horn section can be seen in the upper half of the image, with several members of the string section also visible in the lower area of the frame, as well as Miller shown conducting from the center of the room. While now recording in one of the premier facilities in the world, and with Abbey Road’s studios unquestionably being a stark contrast from the makeshift recording space the ABAEF had been encountering during their months in Bedford, daily life in the British capital continued to be a harrowing experience for both the Miller Orchestra and the entire London community.
When once describing the orchestra's initial experience in London, before being relocated to Bedford, ABAEF singer Artie Malvin would state "Our first night in London, most of the band headed for the neighborhood bomb shelters with their blankets, but several heroes, or idiots, you make the choice, by the name Johnny Desmond, Steve and Gene Steck, Jack Steele, and myself, put on our steel helmets and climbed to the roof of our house to watch the rockets, with their flaming tails, flying over the city. Fortunately for us, they were concentrated on targets at some distance from our perch. When the flame coming out of their rear bomb went out, the engine would cut out and, in a brief few seconds it seemed, a thunderous explosion would follow, with ensuing death and destruction. Glenn’s intuition was surely working overtime when he insisted we be moved out of London no later than Sunday, 2 July 1944."
Leaving London on the afternoon of July 2nd, Malvin and the ABAEF would
later learn that a German rocket had struck directly behind their London
quarters on the very next morning (July 3rd). The first of many close
encounters to come, throughout their time in England, and with this type
of tragic destruction now an everyday occurrence for the British people,
more than one-hundred military personnel and civilians were killed or
wounded by that single attack.
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During their six-day crossing of the Atlantic, Miller’s orchestra had already been faced with the challenges of managing extremely rough seas, while at the same time playing for the seventeen-thousand troops also on board. When once recalling their crossing, Ray McKinley would state “We must have played seven-or-eight shows in one day. Just as soon as one group left that main ballroom, another would come in. I don’t know how the brass players’ lips took it.”
Immediately upon their arrival in Bedford, the Miller Orchestra began transforming what had once been an old pottery factory into a workable studio space for music. Since the time of the German blitzkrieg, the factory had previously been used as a makeshift, news studio for the BBC, with a direct line to their recording and broadcast facilities in London. By using hundreds of burlap bags, shelter halves, and extra blankets, the band and their engineers were able to keep the sound from wildly bouncing-off the factory’s massive, brick walls, successfully simulating an intimate feeling characteristic of the recordings and broadcasts of the early forties. Naming their new performance space “8-H,” in honor of the famed, NBC studio where Benny Goodman had aired his popular, Saturday night dance programs, Glenn Miller and the ABAEF were prepared to begin their mission in Great Britain in a matter of days.
With the studio complete, their broadcasts began exactly one week after the band’s arrival in Bedford, and were distributed over the Allied Expeditionary Forces Network (AEFN), available to troops in both Great Britain and continental Europe, as well as over England’s, government-owned, BBC Network.
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