Joe Garland

Joseph Copeland Garland (August 15, 1903, Norfolk, Virginia – April 21, 1977, Teaneck, New Jersey)[1] was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and arranger, best known for writing "In the Mood".

He started by playing classical music but joined a jazz band, Graham Jackson's Seminole Syncopators, in 1924, where he first recorded.

He had a long run of associations as a sideman on saxophone and clarinet, with Elmer Snowden (1925), Joe Steele, Henri Saparo, Leon Abbey (including a tour of South America), Charlie Skeete and Jelly Roll Morton in the 1920s.

[1] Garland is credited as the composer (with Andy Razaf as lyricist) of the Glenn Miller hit "In the Mood",[2] but "In The Mood"'s main theme, featuring repeated arpeggios rhythmically displaced, had previously appeared under the title of "Tar Paper Stomp", credited to jazz trumpeter/bandleader Wingy Manone.

This song was first performed by bandleaders Charlie Barnet and Artie Shaw, but fell out of favor because Garland's original arrangement was too long to fit on one side of a 78rpm record.