On the second weekend in June I attended for the first time the Glenn Miller Festival in Clarinda, Iowa, his birthplace, an event that has been going on for 45 years. Although the attendance this year numbered in the hundreds, perhaps partly due to a two-year hiatus caused by Covid, the festival reportedly drew thousands of people in prior years. That seems incredible given that Clarinda only has 5,000 residents and probably fewer than 200 hotel rooms. Literally half the town would have had to show up to reach those numbers.
I arrived in the afternoon of Thursday the 9th, so I missed the vocal and instrumental music scholarship competitions that morning. Three winners from each were selected and performed the next morning during a concert by the Glenn Miller Birthplace Society big band, which is comprised mainly of local musicians. They re-created the Chesterfield-sponsored show that the Miller band had three nights a week on CBS radio for several years. But this show lasted about 90 minutes versus the 15 the original band had. One of the vocals was sung by Jan Eberle, the daughter of Glenn’s male singer Ray Eberle. She is evidently a regular attendee.
Following the kick-off picnic in the Clarinda High School cafeteria on Thursday, the 11-piece US Air Force Shades of
