Joe Garland

Swing bands employed Joe Garland as saxophonist and arranger — the Mills Blue Rhythm Band and later Louis Armstrong's orchestra, where he became music director. He wrote In the Mood, which the Glenn Miller orchestra turned into its signature number. He had trained at the Aeolian Conservatory in Baltimore and at Shaw University before joining Graham Jackson's Seminole Syncopators in 1924, and he went on to play with Elmer Snowden, Leon Abbey and Jelly Roll Morton, and later with Edgar Hayes, Don Redman, Claude Hopkins and Earl Hines. Among his other pieces is Leap Frog, which became associated with Les Brown. Elements of In the Mood had appeared in earlier recordings, including Wingy Manone's Tar Paper Stomp of 1930.