Today we had an attendance of 20 with 3 apologies, no new members or visitors.
Our speaker today was Paul Scott and the title of his presentation was Glenn Miller his life and music.
Paul arrived at our meeting accompanied by his Alto Saxophone.
Although Paul claims he is not a professional musician, judging by his performance today I would disagree with him.
Paul started his presentation by playing some music for us ( boy could he play that instrument) and his choice of music was from the Glenn Miller era.
Glenn married his college sweetheart Helen Burger on the 6th October 1928 in Manhattan .New York City. New York.
They had two children, Johnny Miller and Steven Miller adopted 1943 and 1944
Now Glenn Miller was not a saxophonist, he only played the trombone, but he did have a number of saxophone’s in his orchestra and it was this that gave his music that magic sound.
Paul told us how Glenn Miller saved up enough money to buy a saxophone by milking cows, that must have taken him quite some time because those instruments are quite expensive.
In between all of this information Paul would play more music ( people in the room above must have thought that all of us men were having a dance together) because Glenn Miller music was always perfect for dancing to, but no, we stayed in our seats.
Glenn Miller tried to sign up for service in the army air force but because his eye sight was so poor they said that this was not possible, but not to be put off Glen asked if he could join with his orchestra with intention of entertaining the troops, and was given the rank of captain and later major.
Paul spoke about the day Glenn Miller was due to fly from Bedford England to Paris to lead a Christmas concert for troops, Paul said that when Glenn saw the aircraft he was going to fly in a single-engine UC- 64A Norseman, ha called it a bucket of bolts, it was old and quite rare at the time.
The weather was particularly misty and most pilots would not have flown in such conditions, but they took off, the pilot was not qualified to fly using instruments but only by sight which meant they would be flying quite low, and that’s all we know, the rest is a mystery to this day.
Todays meeting went well and we all had a good time, questions were asked and Paul did his best to answer all of them.
Paignton Probus Club 