Bernie Miller

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Bernie Miller was an American pianist and composer from Washington, D.C. He lived from 1919 to 1945 and so died before the age of thirty. Little is known about his life, and that is also apparent from what his contemporaries say about him. Gerry Mulligan later said that he had never met Miller. As far as he knew, Miller was a pianist from Washington who had already died when Mulligan got to know his music.

Music and breakthrough

Yet his name has stuck in jazz because of a single composition, Bernie's Tune. The number became a jazz standard in the 1950s, above all because the Gerry Mulligan Quartet played it. With its light, pianoless sound, that group drew attention to so-called West Coast Jazz, and Bernie's Tune was part of it. In 1955 the songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote lyrics for it, so that the number also existed as a vocal number.

Influence

Mulligan praised Miller's melodic sense and said that he also wrote a few other pieces that musicians liked to play. One of them was Loaded, which was recorded by, among others, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Vido Musso, Kai Winding and Peter Griesar. Miller is thus an example of a composer whose music outlived him and became known through other musicians.

Listening

In School of Rock

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