Donld Miller

Glenn Miller's reign as the most popular bandleader in the U.S. came relatively late in his career and was relatively brief, lasting only about three and a half years, from the spring of 1939 to the fall of 1942. But during that period he utterly dominated popular music, and over time he has proven the most enduring figure of the swing era, with reissues of his recordings achieving gold record status 40 years after his death. Miller developed a distinctive sound in which a high-pitched clarinet carried the melody, doubled by a saxophone section playing an octave lower, and he used that sound to produce a series of hits that remain definitive examples of swing music.

Frankie Miller is one of the great unsung rockers of the '70s, a blue-eyed soul singer on par with Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker who could also rock as hard as Bob Seger. All three of these artists recognized a kindred spirit in Miller, with all three covering his songs in the '70s and '80s. Like all hard-working rockers, Miller kept working right into the '90s, when he tragically suffered a brain hemorrhage while woodshedding a new band with Joe Walsh. After five months, he emerged from a coma but was paralyzed and lost his speech. His friends did their best to keep his legacy alive, a mission that peaks with 2016's Frankie Miller's Double Take. Instigated by the curiosity of Rod Stewart, producer David Mackay asked Miller's wife if there were any unreleased songs, and she sent him a bunch of tapes, which he then polished and refurbished into Double Take.