QUARANTINE BLOG # 95

July 3, 2020

I have been asked how I decide on what pieces to include in the Quarantine Blog and how I find them.  Good question.  Answer: I don’t know.  Just kidding.  Maybe.

In the beginning (hmmmm, I think someone has used that line before) the coronavirus had just slapped us awake as to its presence and its deadly influence.  So that was in almost every early blog.  Other pieces fell into place as they popped into my head, or were recommended to me by family members and other blog readers.  But the truth is, a lot of what you’ve read was caused by me chasing a large white rabbit (who was wearing a vest and a pocket watch) down a rabbit hole.  In other words, one idea opened up another which opened up another, and the search was on.

This morning, for instance, I was preparing to share some history and songs from Glenn Miller, and that ran into trying to select songs out of an incredible catalog, and that ran into two movies in which Glenn Miller and his orchestra starred, and that ran into two of the most incredible dancers I’ve ever seen, and an unsold TV pilot for a detective series about “Nero Wolfe” with William Shatner as the co-star (but that’s a story for another blog and another rabbit hole). 

One of the joys of writing this blog is the sheer thrill of discovery, those “ah ha” moments when we say, “I didn’t know that!”  So, look what I’ve uncovered today!

Alton Glenn Miller was a big-band trombonist, arranger, composer, and bandleader.  He was the best-selling recording artist from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best-known big bands.  His recordings include “In the Mood,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKb-qfwbZ2M “Moonlight Serenade,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,”  “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “A String of Pearls,” “At Last,” “(I’ve Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo,” “American Patrol,” “Tuxedo Junction,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lpr3Qqti_w and “Little Brown Jug.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOG89TrL4Vk

In just four years Glenn Miller scored 16 number-one records and 69 top ten hits – more than Elvis Presley (38 top 10s) and the Beatles (33 top 10s) did in their careers.  While he was traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Miller’s aircraft disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel.  The aircraft was never located.

In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado in Boulder.  He spent most of his time away from school, attending auditions and playing any chance he could get.  After failing three out of five classes, he dropped out of school to pursue a career in music.   He studied the Schillinger System – a method of musical composition based on mathematical processes – with Joseph Schillinger, under whose tutelage he composed what became his signature theme, “Moonlight Serenade.” This link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9nItq6gjW8 is to a recording made on April 4, 1939. 

Joseph Moiseyevich Schillinger was also advisor to many of America's leading popular musicians and concert music composers including George Gershwin, Brown, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey.

Miller and his band appeared in two Twentieth Century Fox films,  Sun Valley Serenade, and Orchestra Wives.  In Sun Valley Serenade, they were major members of the cast – ice skating star Sonja Henie was also in the film.  Another feature was  the Nicholas Brothers in the show-stopping song and dance number, “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2aj0zhXlLA “Chattanooga Choo Choo” was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1996, and was awarded the first Gold Record for sales of 1.2 million.

👉  The Nicholas Brothers were a team of dancing brothers, Fayard and Harold, who performed a highly acrobatic technique known as “flash dancing.”  They were considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day (the 1930s and 40s). Their performance in the musical number “Jumpin’ Jive” with Cab Calloway and his orchestra, featured in the movie Stormy Weather is considered widely as the most exceptional technically skilled dance display of all time.  Fred Astaire once called this performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhf_Xv6HCA “the greatest dance number ever filmed.”

👉  Next week, comic strips.  Favorites, anyone?

👉  Tomorrow, for Independence Day, I am giving the whole blog over to Paul Harvey.

👉  A Prayer for Our Nation, by Debbie McDaniel

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.  Raise your voice like a trumpet” (Isaiah 58:1).

Sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin or how to pray.  We just know we have a deep ache in our hearts that cries out for God’s mercy, and a longing to see him heal our land.  And maybe other times we wonder how effective our prayers even are.  Yet God is faithful, no matter how we feel, and over all that swirls around us in our nation today.

He hears our prayers.  He knows our needs.  There’s great power in uniting together, turning our hearts towards God, and praying on behalf of our nation.

Remembering today this powerful truth upon which this nation was founded.  We are “One Nation Under God.”  He is where our real hope is found, not in our leaders, not in our economy, not in the condition of our nation today, or any other day. 

Let us pray:

Dear God,

Thank you for your great power.  We’re grateful that you have set us free from the clutching grasp of sin and death.  Would you be with your people, extending your grace, granting your freedom, providing your protection, and empowering with your strength?  We ask that you’d bring about an awakening of your presence as never seen before.  We ask that your Name be proclaimed, that all plans to silence the Name of Jesus would be thwarted and crushed.  We pray that many would come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, we pray that many would see your Light, that you would open blind eyes and release those still imprisoned.

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