By Shawn Hanna on Tuesday, May 30, 2000 - 09:31 pm: Edit'Tex' Beneke, leader of Glenn Miller Orchestra, dies at 86
Beneke in 1996
May 30, 2000
Web posted at: 7:41 PM EDT (2341 GMT)
SANTA ANA, California (AP) -- Gordon "Tex" Beneke, who took over the Glenn Miller Orchestra after the band leader's death during World War II, died Tuesday at his home in Santa Ana, California, the Orange County coroner's office said. He was 86.
Beneke, whose cause of death was not immediately released, joined the orchestra in 1938 as a saxophonist and singer.
His sunny Southern voice helped make hits of Miller's "Chattanooga Choo Choo, "I Got a Girl in Kalamazoo" and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."
When Miller broke up the band in 1942 to join the military, Beneke played with other bands before joining the Navy during World War II. Although he played in the U.S. Navy Band, he never played in Miller's Air Force orchestra.
Miller disappeared in December 1944 after taking off for a flight from England to France in a plane that was never seen again.
In 1946, Miller's widow asked Beneke to take the Glenn Miller Orchestra back out on the road. Under Beneke's direction, the band flourished.
"With Miller a fallen hero," Leo Walker once wrote, "demand for the Miller sound was bigger than ever, and the band played to capacity audiences everywhere."