Hotel Pennsylvania during the three years of Miller's great popularity as a major bandleader of the Swing Era. Glenn Miller and his Glenn Miller Orchestra broadcast multiple live radio performances from the Café; some were recorded by RCA Victor. Gray, Shaw's principal orchestrator from 1937–39, was immediately hired by Miller as a staff arranger when Shaw deserted his band; it was during Miller's 1940 engagement at the hotel that Gray wrote the popular instrumental tune that immortalized the Hotel's telephone number. The hotel's telephone number appears in the title of one of his best-known songs, "Pennsylvania 6-5000". Les Brown's band, with its
Glenn Miller 1948, Sinatra lamented the inferior quality of music he was recording in the late forties, in comparison with "those great Glenn Miller things" from eight years earlier. Frank Sinatra's recording sessions from the late forties and early fifties use some Miller musicians. Trigger Alpert, a bassist from the civilian band, Zeke Zarchy for the Army Air Forces Band and Willie Schwartz, the lead clarinetist from the civilian band back up Frank Sinatra on many recordings. With opposite opinion, fellow bandleader Artie Shaw frequently disparaged the band after Miller's death: "All I can say is that Glenn should have lived, and