Song of the Day 12/7: Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, “Chattanooga Choo Choo”

The No. 1 song in the nation the day of the Pearl Harbor attack was also the first one ever awarded a gold record. Glenn Miller’s swing rendition of the song, which debuted in that year’s movie “Sun Valley Serenade,” hit No. 1 on Dec. 7, 1941, and stayed there (with a one-week break) until the end of January, a total of nine weeks. “Chattanoogo Choo Choo,” in another tribute to record company executives’ unerring instincts, started out as the record’s B-side.

By February RCA had sold 1.2 million copies of the 78 rpm record on its Bluebird label — especially impressive given that it was a victim of the boycott of ASCAP recordings by NBC and CBS for most of 1941. The suits decided to make a big fuss about the sales figure, the highest in years given the Depression’s effect on the industry, by presenting Miller with a supposedly solid-gold pressing of the song (in reality just a copy of the shellac record painted gold). It kicked off a trend cemented with the formation of the Recording Industry Association of America, which started keeping track of sales independently and awarding gold records in 1958.

The song was written by two mainstays of Hollywood musicals. Harry Warren, who composed the tune, has 800 songwriting credits, including “I Only Have Eyes for You,” “We’re In the Money” and “That’s Amore.” Lyricist Mack Gordon wrote mostly for stage and screen, including “You Make Me Feel So Young,” later made a standard by Frank Sinatra. Together they were nominated for nearly a dozen Best Original Song Oscars in the 1930s and ’40s. Miller’s hit version, like the movie’s, features vocals by Tex Beneke, backed by Paula Kelly and the Modernaires.

Here’s how it looked and sounded on screen, where the band wasn’t bound by the limited length of a 78. The extended version ends with a song-and-dance routine by Dorothy Dandridge and the amazing Nicholas Brothers.