WWII and the jazz musicians that fought

[Hardbopjazz]

Outside of Glenn Miller being shot down over the English Channel I can't think of any other jazz musician that died in the war. I know there were many that fought in WWII. Were there others that died as of a result of the war?

[Free For All]

There are a variety of explanations for Miller's demise (most interesting is a story that the plane crash was a cover-up for his actually dying in a Paris brothel ) including that the plane a) went down in bad weather or b) was inadvertently struck by jettisoned bombs from Allied bombers . I don't think it was shot down, although who knows for sure.

Off topic anecdote: one of my favorite Woody Herman one-liners was when someone would ask him to play a Glenn Miller tune. He had several responses, but my favorite was "When they find the plane I'll play his music!".

Edited August 20, 2011 by Free For All

[Hardbopjazz]

Propaganda reasons I guess, getting shot down sounds better when telling the American public. I could imagine the news reels saying Glenn Miller was killed while in a Paris brothel while refusing to pay.

Edited August 20, 2011 by Hardbopjazz

[A Lark Ascending]

Ken 'Snakehips' Johnson

Not a combatant but a casualty.

Edited August 20, 2011 by A Lark Ascending

[Swinging Swede]

Tenorist Tony Zimmers who played with Larry Clinton, Artie Shaw and Wingy Manone among others.

[AllenLowe]

there was a lot of draft dodging - Curley Russell told me that a lot of the guys in the Benny Carter band took some kind of drug concoction to make their blood pressure go crazy, just before they went to their physical -

[sonnymax]

Outside of Glenn Miller being shot down over the English Channel I can't think of any other jazz musician that died in the war. I know there were many that fought in WWII. Were there others that died as of a result of the war?

What's the fascination with artists who died tragically in war?

[Hardbopjazz]

Outside of Glenn Miller being shot down over the English Channel I can't think of any other jazz musician that died in the war. I know there were many that fought in WWII. Were there others that died as of a result of the war?

What's the fascination with artists who died tragically in war?

I watched a show on baseball players that went to war, and how many of their stats were of effected. Ted Williams spent 4 years. Had he not been in the service his 521 career home rums may have been well over 650. I just wondered how many musicians went into the service.

Edited August 21, 2011 by Hardbopjazz

[Chuck Nessa]

None of them could hit a fastball.

[AllenLowe]

Dave Schildkraut was in the service - I forget which branch - he told me when he came back he'd been practicing in his head for 4 years and that the first thing he did was go to Mintons to hear Charlie Parker. It was all new to him, he said, but he stood next to Fats Navarro who kept telling him what tunes the heads were based on - "that's Whispering" - my eyes popped out whenever he told me things like that - I heard private recordings he made with Gene DiNovi prior to this, and he sounded like Johnny Hodges.

Bill Triglia was on a Carrier that got sunk by Kamikazee pilots - he told me the whole thing one afternoon - people screaming as they drowned - I didn't realize until years later that a lot of Bill's nutty behavior was probably post-traumatic stress.

Johnny Carisi told me he spent most of the war stationed in New Haven with Glenn Miller's band, I think. I might be a little off on that, but he was in New Haven.

that's all the war stories I know, other than Curley's above.

Edited August 20, 2011 by AllenLowe

[ghost of miles]

You're right about Carisi being with Miller's wartime band in New Haven, Allen. For anybody interested in Miller's AAF (originally called the American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces when it went over to Europe, but long since routinely referred to as the Army Air Force band), Geoffrey Butcher's Next to a Letter From Home is well worth tracking down. At least two members of the band are still alive--bassist Trigger Alpert, and trombonist Nat Peck, whom I interviewed for a recent program about the AAF (Glenn Miller Goes To War With The Army Air Force Band).

Not sure about other jazz musicians besides Miller who died in the war. Artie Shaw and Claude Thornhill both served in the Pacific (Thornhill as pianist for Shaw's band for awhile), and several accounts suggest that they suffered some psychological debilitation as a result. (Wasn't Shaw hospitalized for awhile after he returned stateside? Thornhill too, I think, though I may be conflating the two.) Lester Young didn't see combat, but sure had an infamous time of it during his military stay.

Not a jazz musician, but the critic Otis Ferguson, who wrote frequently about jazz (and who's much admired by me and some others around this joint) died in 1943 while serving in the Merchant Marines when his ship was struck by a bomb.

Edited August 20, 2011 by ghost of miles

[Larry Kart]

Percy Heath was one of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was trained as a fighter pilot but didn't see combat. Artie Shaw gave post-traumatic stress disorder to other people.

Singer David Allyn had a very rough time of it in the army in North Africa.

Reaching further afield, Lenny Bruce served on the light cruiser USS Brooklyn during the landing at Salerno in 1943 (lots of German air raids). And Jonathan Winters was aboard the carrier USS Franklin, which lost 724 killed in a Japanese air attack in 1945.

If Bill Triglia was aboard a carrier that was sunk by a kamikaze, that would have been the light carrier St. Lo, which I'm pretty sure was the only U.S. carrier to sink as a result of a kamikaze attack, in the battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, with the loss of 113 men.

The troop ship that my dad (a signal officer) would have been on the bridge of but for a twist of fate, the Henrico, was hit by a kamikaze off of Okinawa in 1945 with much loss of life among bridge personnel.