Glenn Miller...the real King of Swing?

All serious big band fans know that Benny Goodman was crowned "The King Of Swing" by the press in the 1935-1938 period. The Carnegie Hall concert may have been his finest moment. Benny's contribution to the broad national success of swing music is without question. Was he alone...no....Fletcher Henderson's arrangments that Goodman used are a key part of his success. Many jazz historians passed the crown on to Artie Shaw in the 1940's. But, if "King" means "top of the heap" over the course of the big band era and up to today,(clear leader in record sales) then Alton Glenn Miller may be the true "The King Of Swing."

"A leading swing band was that of Glenn Miller (1904-1944). From 1939 until 1942 the Miller Orchestra was the most popular dance band in the world, breaking record sales and concert attendance records. Miller developed a peppy, clean-sounding style that appealed to small-town midwestern people as well as to the big-city, East and West Coast constituency that had previously sustained swing music. In terms of sheer popular success, the Miller band marked the apex of the swing era, racking up 23 Number-One recordings in a little under four years." [This is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007)

Here is "String of Pearls"