<P> In 2004, Miller orchestra bassist Herman "Trigger" Alpert explained the band's success: "Miller had America's music pulse...He knew what would please the listeners ." Although Miller had massive popularity, many jazz critics of the time had misgivings . They believed that the band's endless rehearsals--and, according to critic Amy Lee in Metronome magazine, "letter - perfect playing"--diminished any feeling from performances . They also felt that Miller's brand of swing shifted popular music away from the "hot jazz" bands of Benny Goodman and Count Basie, and toward commercial novelty instrumentals and vocal numbers . For years, even after Miller died, the Miller estate maintained an unfriendly stance toward critics that derided the band during Miller's lifetime . Miller was often criticized for being too commercial . His answer, "I don't want a jazz band ." Many modern jazz critics still harbor similar antipathy toward Miller . As recently as 1997 on a website administered by JazzTimes, Miller is listed as an example of an overrated jazz musician by Doug Ramsey . "Miller was a businessman who discovered a popular formula from which he allowed little departure . A disproportionate ratio of nostalgia to substance keeps his music alive ." Jazz critics Gunther Schuller (1991), Gary Giddins (2004) and Gene Lees (2007) have separately defended the Miller orchestra for whatever deficiencies earlier critics have found . In an article written for The New Yorker in 2004, Gary Giddins says he feels that these early critics erred in denigrating Miller's music, and that the popular opinion of the time should hold greater sway . The article states: "Miller exuded little warmth on or off the bandstand, but once the band struck up its theme, audiences were done for: throats clutched, eyes softened . Can any other record match' Moonlight Serenade' for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slaver in so many for so long?" Schuller, notes, "(The Miller sound) was nevertheless very special and able to penetrate our collective awareness that few other sounds have ..." He compares it partially to "Japanese Gagaku (and) Hindu music" in its purity . Schuller and Giddins do not take completely uncritical approaches to Miller . Schuller says that Ray Eberle's "lumpy, sexless vocalizing dragged down many an otherwise passable performance ." However finally Schuller notes: "How much further (Miller's) musical and financial ambitions might have carried him must forever remain conjectural . That it would have been significant, whatever form (s) it might have taken, is not unlikely ." </P> <P> Louis Armstrong thought enough of Miller to carry around his recordings, transferred to seven - inch tape reels when he went on tour . "(Armstrong) liked musicians who prized melody, and his selections ranged from Glenn Miller to Jelly Roll Morton to Tchaikovsky ." Jazz pianist George Shearing's quintet of the 1950s and 1960s was influenced by Miller: "with Shearing's locked hands style piano (influenced by the voicing of Miller's saxophone section) in the middle (of the quintet's harmonies)". Frank Sinatra and Mel Tormé held the orchestra in high regard . Tormé credited Miller with giving him helpful advice when he first started his singing and song - writing career in the 1940s . Mel Tormé met Glenn Miller in 1942, the meeting facilitated by Tormé's father and Ben Pollack . Tormé and Miller discussed "That Old Black Magic", which was just emerging as a new song by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen . Miller told Tormé to pick up every song by Mercer and study it and to become a voracious reader of anything he could find, because "all good lyric writers are great readers ." In an interview with George T. Simon in 1948, Sinatra lamented the inferior quality of music he was recording in the late forties, in comparison with "those great Glenn Miller things" from eight years earlier . Frank Sinatra's recording sessions from the late forties and early fifties use some Miller musicians . Trigger Alpert, a bassist from the civilian band, Zeke Zarchy for the Army Air Forces Band and Willie Schwartz, the lead clarinetist from the civilian band back up Frank Sinatra on many recordings . With opposite opinion, fellow bandleader Artie Shaw frequently disparaged the band after Miller's death: "All I can say is that Glenn should have lived, and' Chattanooga Choo Choo' should have died ." Clarinetist Buddy DeFranco surprised many people when he led the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the late sixties and early seventies . De Franco was already a veteran of bands like Gene Krupa and Tommy Dorsey in the 1940s . He was also a major exponent of modern jazz in the 1950s . He never saw Miller as leading a swinging jazz band, but DeFranco is extremely fond of certain aspects of the Glenn Miller style . "I found that when I opened with the sound of' Moonlight Serenade', I could look around and see men and women weeping as the music carried them back to years gone by ." De Franco says, "the beauty of Glenn Miller's ballads (...) caused people to dance together ." </P> <P> In 1942, at the peak of his civilian career, Miller decided to join the war effort, forsaking an income of $15,000 to $20,000 per week in civilian life, including a home in Tenafly, New Jersey . At 38, Miller was too old to be drafted and first volunteered for the Navy but was told that they did not need his services . Miller then wrote to Army Brigadier General Charles Young . He persuaded the United States Army to accept him so he could, in his own words, "be placed in charge of a modernized Army band". After he was accepted into the Army, Miller's civilian band played its last concert in Passaic, New Jersey, on September 27, 1942, with the last song played by the Miller civilian band being "Jukebox Saturday Night"--featuring an appearance by Harry James on trumpet . His patriotic intention of entertaining the Allied Forces with the fusion of virtuosity and dance rhythms in his music earned him the rank of captain and he was soon promoted to major by August 1944 . </P> <P> Miller reported at Omaha on October 8, 1942, to the Seventh Service Command as a captain in the Army Specialist Corps . Miller was soon transferred to the Army Air Forces . Captain Glenn Miller served initially as assistant special services officer for the Army Air Forces Southeast Training Center at Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1942 . He played trombone with the Rhythmaires, a 15 - piece dance band, in both Montgomery and in service clubs and recreation halls on Maxwell . Miller also appeared on both WAPI (Birmingham, Alabama) and WSFA radio (Montgomery), promoting the activities of civil service women aircraft mechanics employed at Maxwell . </P>

Where did glenn miller perform his final concert