Glenn Miller and His Orchestra

The most commercially successful dance orchestra of the swing era, built around a clarinet-led reed voicing that made it identifiable in a bar or two. It filmed “At Last” for Sun Valley Serenade in 1941 and recorded it in the studio that year without releasing anything, then cut the version the public finally heard on May 20, 1942 in Hollywood, with Ray Eberle singing and an arrangement by Jerry Gray and Bill Finegan. The timing was tight: the band was near the end of its civilian life, and Miller played his last concert with it in Passaic, New Jersey on September 27, 1942 before going into the Army.