Music with Ease > Jazz Quotes > Glenn Miller Quotes

"I haven't got a great jazz band and I don't want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat's among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It's all in what you define as 'real jazz.' It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony."
-- Glenn Miller, 1940

"We didn't come here to set any fashions in music. We merely came to bring a much-needed touch of home to some lads who have been here a couple of years."
-- Glenn Miller, letter to George Simon from England, 1944

"A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality."
-- Glenn Miller

"Major Miller, through excellent judgment and professional skill, conspicuously blended the abilities of the outstanding musicians, comprising the group, into a harmonious orchestra whose noteworthy contribution to the morale of the armed forces has been little less than sensational."
-- Bronze Star Medal citation regarding Glenn Miller

"I think that band [Glenn Miller] was the beginning of the end. It was a mechanized version of what they called jazz music. I still can't stand to listen to it."
-- Artie Shaw


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Jazz musicians are well known for strong opinions and a major sense of humor.

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