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| The beginning...of this story. |
Far too many weeks ago, I profiled one half of the famous, tumultuous Dorsey Brothers. In this post, I talk about the brother who made it tumultuous. First, to set the scene:
“Dorsey was also an occasionally mean drunk who was known to fire many of his sidemen if they had an off night. He had an erratic personality, loving a good fight but also being warm and generous much of the time, as long as things went his way.”
- Syncopated Times biography (best of the bunch, fwiw)
“Tommy was always punching someone out.”
- Swingmusic.net biography
“…and so began Dorsey's long-running practice of raiding other bands for talent.”
- Radio Swiss Jazz biography
Finally, from a mash note to both Dorsey and the Swing era, in a post within a post on Swingmusic.net:
“He could be a rugged guy offstage or to work for, but on stage, he was there for the paying customers...and for the kids. In 1946, when the bottom dropped out of the band biz, he was one of the first leaders to cut his price to venues so that not only would he keep his guys working, but so that 'the kids will have something to come dance to' again.”
Tommy Dorsey was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in 1905, 21 months after his older brother Jimmy. Their father, Thomas Francis Dorsey, Sr., was a bandleader, taught them play, they played with literally any musician 9/10th of the people who know something about the era could name, they recorded for the first time starting in the second half of the 1920s, they had formed the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra by then (though they recorded as the Dorsey Brothers Concert Orchestra, the Dorsey Brothers Novelty Orchestra, and the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra from 1928-33), but they only officially debuted it in 1934 at a ballroom up in New England. If that reads rushed, my apologies, but I touched on most of the details in my post on Jimmy Dorsey, and I’d direct anyone who curious about that to that post. For those who feel like they can do with less, this paragraph should catch you up nicely:
“Big success had been following both brothers since 1928 when they broke into the charts with a recording of "Coquette." In 1929 a recording with Bing Crosby of "Let’s Do It (let’s fall in love)" broke into the top ten. By 1935 they had one of the hottest bands in the country and may well have been the band that ushered in the Swing era instead of Benny Goodman. However, the fighting Dorsey’s had a volatile relationship. There was reportedly constant bickering between the two. After a bitter disagreement on the bandstand in May of 1935 (some say a fist fight) Tommy left the band for good.”
“I’ll Never Say Never Again Again” was the song that led to the final explosion; Tommy didn’t like how his brother counted off the tempo. When they split, Jimmy kept the main Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, while Tommy hired “the remnants” of Joe Haymes orchestra in the fall of 1935. The younger Dorsey hit the ground running, posting four hits into the Top 10 by the end of the year. Before long, Tommy Dorsey posted his first No. 1 single, “Music Goes Round and Round.” Things only got bigger from there. Tommy Dorsey had played without Jimmy countless times before - for instance, he played with the legendary Bix Beiderbecke on “Davenport Blues” and “Toddlin’ Blues” way back in 1925 - but he outstripped his older brothers band through the rest of the 1930s and would outlast all the others, and several strides ahead, through the early 1940s.
Most of the sources I checked - including Wikipedia (which contains large chunks of the Radio Swiss Jazz write-up verbatim) - puts the Dorsey’s choice to cut the “hot jazz” touches out of his act and to go for the “sweet,” dance sound on management. That makes enough sense, but this passage from Syncopated Times massages that into a fuller narrative:
“He had learned from observing Paul Whiteman and other bandleaders the importance of balancing swinging jazz with commercial material and of playing his music at danceable tempos. Although he loved freewheeling jazz and played Dixieland-oriented music as a contrast, Dorsey’s repertoire always contained plenty of ballads, vocalists, and new material.”
“Dorsey was also an occasionally mean drunk who was known to fire many of his sidemen if they had an off night. He had an erratic personality, loving a good fight but also being warm and generous much of the time, as long as things went his way.”
- Syncopated Times biography (best of the bunch, fwiw)
“Tommy was always punching someone out.”
- Swingmusic.net biography
“…and so began Dorsey's long-running practice of raiding other bands for talent.”
- Radio Swiss Jazz biography
Finally, from a mash note to both Dorsey and the Swing era, in a post within a post on Swingmusic.net:
“He could be a rugged guy offstage or to work for, but on stage, he was there for the paying customers...and for the kids. In 1946, when the bottom dropped out of the band biz, he was one of the first leaders to cut his price to venues so that not only would he keep his guys working, but so that 'the kids will have something to come dance to' again.”
Tommy Dorsey was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in 1905, 21 months after his older brother Jimmy. Their father, Thomas Francis Dorsey, Sr., was a bandleader, taught them play, they played with literally any musician 9/10th of the people who know something about the era could name, they recorded for the first time starting in the second half of the 1920s, they had formed the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra by then (though they recorded as the Dorsey Brothers Concert Orchestra, the Dorsey Brothers Novelty Orchestra, and the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra from 1928-33), but they only officially debuted it in 1934 at a ballroom up in New England. If that reads rushed, my apologies, but I touched on most of the details in my post on Jimmy Dorsey, and I’d direct anyone who curious about that to that post. For those who feel like they can do with less, this paragraph should catch you up nicely:
“Big success had been following both brothers since 1928 when they broke into the charts with a recording of "Coquette." In 1929 a recording with Bing Crosby of "Let’s Do It (let’s fall in love)" broke into the top ten. By 1935 they had one of the hottest bands in the country and may well have been the band that ushered in the Swing era instead of Benny Goodman. However, the fighting Dorsey’s had a volatile relationship. There was reportedly constant bickering between the two. After a bitter disagreement on the bandstand in May of 1935 (some say a fist fight) Tommy left the band for good.”
“I’ll Never Say Never Again Again” was the song that led to the final explosion; Tommy didn’t like how his brother counted off the tempo. When they split, Jimmy kept the main Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, while Tommy hired “the remnants” of Joe Haymes orchestra in the fall of 1935. The younger Dorsey hit the ground running, posting four hits into the Top 10 by the end of the year. Before long, Tommy Dorsey posted his first No. 1 single, “Music Goes Round and Round.” Things only got bigger from there. Tommy Dorsey had played without Jimmy countless times before - for instance, he played with the legendary Bix Beiderbecke on “Davenport Blues” and “Toddlin’ Blues” way back in 1925 - but he outstripped his older brothers band through the rest of the 1930s and would outlast all the others, and several strides ahead, through the early 1940s.
Most of the sources I checked - including Wikipedia (which contains large chunks of the Radio Swiss Jazz write-up verbatim) - puts the Dorsey’s choice to cut the “hot jazz” touches out of his act and to go for the “sweet,” dance sound on management. That makes enough sense, but this passage from Syncopated Times massages that into a fuller narrative:
“He had learned from observing Paul Whiteman and other bandleaders the importance of balancing swinging jazz with commercial material and of playing his music at danceable tempos. Although he loved freewheeling jazz and played Dixieland-oriented music as a contrast, Dorsey’s repertoire always contained plenty of ballads, vocalists, and new material.”
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| One is a household name. The other.... |
Dorsey led his bands from the beginning, but he fronted them with vocalists on most songs - and I think this was important. His first big hire was Edythe Wright (vocalist on “Music Goes Round and Round”); Jack Leonard joined in 1937. Wright checked out when Dorsey’s (then-)wife, Mildred “Toots” Kraft found out about his affair with Wright; I don’t know when Leonard checked out, but do know that Dorsey pinched a young Frank Sinatra from Harry James’ orchestra, and that they recorded 80 songs together from 1940-42, including hits like “In the Blue of the Evening,” “This Love of Mine,” “I’ll Be Seeing You” and “How About You?” The other big addition came in 1939 when Dorsey, deciding “his band lacked a jazz feeling,” hired an arranger named Sy Oliver away from Jimmie Lunceford’s Orchestra to remedy that. Oliver and Sinatra, between them, sent Dorsey’s orchestra roaring into the 1940s.
Due to the way musicians came and went out of Dorsey’s various orchestras, I’m going to direct anyone interested in picking through all that who’s who to the sources linked to above, but I wanted to name two because they get to the better side of Dorsey. He paired with the famously talented, famously drunk Bunny Berrigan for six weeks in 1937, who delivered the solos on “Marie” and “Song of India” that had people putting Dorsey on the same level as Benny Goodman, aka, the man credited for launching the Swing Era (and who also employed Berrigan). The other hire that stood out was the drummer Gene Krupa, who Dorsey took on in 1943, after Krupa’s arrest/scandal over marijuana possession. Much like Goodman, Dorsey hired anyone he knew could play. He also tolerated egos as whopping as his own, e.g., Buddy Rich, the drummer/famous asshole who succeeded Krupa, and who went out it with Sinatra for as long as both of them played under Dorsey (up to including one throwing a glass pitcher in anger at the other one’s head). Again, don’t let your grandparents fool you: the big bands were brawling things, up to, including, and possibly inspired by the bandleaders. Tommy Dorsey came out of all as the “Sentimental Gentleman of Swing” somehow. Might have been his theme song…
As noted above, Dorsey’s orchestra managed World War II better than any other big band - and his band was massive at its peak (“a 17-piece dance band plus 17 strings, harp, four French horns, tuba and oboe”; the string section came from Shaw’s orchestra, btw). With the help of Sinatra’s growing fame (Sinatra replaced Rudy Vallee as the main heartthrob for the teenybopper set), he got through the 1942-44 Musicians’ Strike - short version, a time when musicians refused to record anything but V-discs, but could still play live - by re-releasing previously recorded hits and getting in front of the public via concerts, radio and even the movies. (For anyone wondering, a short list of movies that featured the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra: Las Vegas Nights, Ship Ahoy, Presenting Lily Mars, Du Barry Was A Lady, Thrill Of A Romance, and A Song Is Born). And then the war ended. And so did the big band era:
“The big band era was ending, bebop (which Dorsey hated) and rhythm & blues were beginning to have an influence on the music scene, dance halls were closing, and swing was starting to be thought of as World War II nostalgia rather than fresh new music.”
Even Dorsey finally called it quits in 1946, only to get dragged back in when an RCA collection titled, All Time Hits, broke into the top 10 albums of 1947. That same year saw the Dorsey Brothers work together for the first time in 12 years with the making of the movie, The Fabulous Dorseys…which put their cleanest face forward and cut off before their famous falling out. With his own orchestra struggling, Jimmy rejoined his brother’s (also struggling) orchestra in the early ‘50s. Tommy led it, but Jimmy got billing as a co-leader and featured soloist. A stint on a Jackie Gleason special got them on TV, where they did well enough to land a show of their on, Stage Show, which ran from 1954 to 1956. Also, I feel obliged to note that Stage Show hosted “a regional country star” named Elvis Presley something like six times.
After coming into the world 21 months apart, the Dorseys left it separated by just six months. Tommy went first, suffocating in his sleep in November of 1956 due to “the combination of a heavy meal, alcohol, and sleeping pills.” Jimmy had already been diagnosed with cancer by then and passed from it in June of 1957.
The “brawling Dorseys” (actual nickname) carved out an odd path in Swing Era history. Both enjoyed success in their time as great as the bandleaders that more people seem to remember - Goodman and Glenn Miller; Tommy Dorsey even fronted Miller the money to start his orchestra (which Dorsey saw as a loan, Miller didn’t, Dorsey hired a band and arrangers to bury Miller, etc.) - and better in Tommy's case, but it’s possible both got lost in the shadows of singers they made famous (and vice versa), Bing Crosby for Jimmy and Sinatra for Tommy. Both Goodman and Miller had singers of their own, though none of them on remotely the same level, and maybe that saved their legacies. In some ways, those famous singers conspired with bebop and rhythm & blues to bury the big bands. In other words, the basic formula (e.g., person singing in front of a band) held up, but it changed at the same time (smaller, faster bands, plus the back beat versus swing’s shuffle rhythm). Hmm., maybe I’ll attempt a sub-chapter on big band economics after wrapping up little histories on Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Kay Kyser…
About the Sampler
It only took a couple minutes of gawking at the multiplicity of playlists on Spotify for me to immediately give up on “just listening” and to mine The Essential Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra collection, along with the hits listed in the sources. I whittled the final sampler down to 25 songs, some of which I’ve already linked to above. Here are the rest, first from that Sinatra collection (though, honestly, he’s all over Dorsey's catalog):
“Be Careful Its My Heart,” “Everything Happens to Me,” “Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread),” “There Are Such Things,” and “We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me).”
And, from other collections (and not in chronological order):
“All the Things You Are” (Jack Leonard, btw, 1940) “The Big Apple,” “Dolores,” “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” (the “theme” linked to above), “Once in a While,” “On Treasure Island" (another very early hit with Edythe Wright), “Satan Takes a Holiday,” “Stardust on the Moon,” “Trombonology,” “Well, Git It” and "Opus One" (both famous from the Sy Oliver era; even knew the second one), and, finally, “Yes Indeed!”
That’s it. Consider anything I forgot to link to a bonus track.
Due to the way musicians came and went out of Dorsey’s various orchestras, I’m going to direct anyone interested in picking through all that who’s who to the sources linked to above, but I wanted to name two because they get to the better side of Dorsey. He paired with the famously talented, famously drunk Bunny Berrigan for six weeks in 1937, who delivered the solos on “Marie” and “Song of India” that had people putting Dorsey on the same level as Benny Goodman, aka, the man credited for launching the Swing Era (and who also employed Berrigan). The other hire that stood out was the drummer Gene Krupa, who Dorsey took on in 1943, after Krupa’s arrest/scandal over marijuana possession. Much like Goodman, Dorsey hired anyone he knew could play. He also tolerated egos as whopping as his own, e.g., Buddy Rich, the drummer/famous asshole who succeeded Krupa, and who went out it with Sinatra for as long as both of them played under Dorsey (up to including one throwing a glass pitcher in anger at the other one’s head). Again, don’t let your grandparents fool you: the big bands were brawling things, up to, including, and possibly inspired by the bandleaders. Tommy Dorsey came out of all as the “Sentimental Gentleman of Swing” somehow. Might have been his theme song…
As noted above, Dorsey’s orchestra managed World War II better than any other big band - and his band was massive at its peak (“a 17-piece dance band plus 17 strings, harp, four French horns, tuba and oboe”; the string section came from Shaw’s orchestra, btw). With the help of Sinatra’s growing fame (Sinatra replaced Rudy Vallee as the main heartthrob for the teenybopper set), he got through the 1942-44 Musicians’ Strike - short version, a time when musicians refused to record anything but V-discs, but could still play live - by re-releasing previously recorded hits and getting in front of the public via concerts, radio and even the movies. (For anyone wondering, a short list of movies that featured the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra: Las Vegas Nights, Ship Ahoy, Presenting Lily Mars, Du Barry Was A Lady, Thrill Of A Romance, and A Song Is Born). And then the war ended. And so did the big band era:
“The big band era was ending, bebop (which Dorsey hated) and rhythm & blues were beginning to have an influence on the music scene, dance halls were closing, and swing was starting to be thought of as World War II nostalgia rather than fresh new music.”
Even Dorsey finally called it quits in 1946, only to get dragged back in when an RCA collection titled, All Time Hits, broke into the top 10 albums of 1947. That same year saw the Dorsey Brothers work together for the first time in 12 years with the making of the movie, The Fabulous Dorseys…which put their cleanest face forward and cut off before their famous falling out. With his own orchestra struggling, Jimmy rejoined his brother’s (also struggling) orchestra in the early ‘50s. Tommy led it, but Jimmy got billing as a co-leader and featured soloist. A stint on a Jackie Gleason special got them on TV, where they did well enough to land a show of their on, Stage Show, which ran from 1954 to 1956. Also, I feel obliged to note that Stage Show hosted “a regional country star” named Elvis Presley something like six times.
After coming into the world 21 months apart, the Dorseys left it separated by just six months. Tommy went first, suffocating in his sleep in November of 1956 due to “the combination of a heavy meal, alcohol, and sleeping pills.” Jimmy had already been diagnosed with cancer by then and passed from it in June of 1957.
The “brawling Dorseys” (actual nickname) carved out an odd path in Swing Era history. Both enjoyed success in their time as great as the bandleaders that more people seem to remember - Goodman and Glenn Miller; Tommy Dorsey even fronted Miller the money to start his orchestra (which Dorsey saw as a loan, Miller didn’t, Dorsey hired a band and arrangers to bury Miller, etc.) - and better in Tommy's case, but it’s possible both got lost in the shadows of singers they made famous (and vice versa), Bing Crosby for Jimmy and Sinatra for Tommy. Both Goodman and Miller had singers of their own, though none of them on remotely the same level, and maybe that saved their legacies. In some ways, those famous singers conspired with bebop and rhythm & blues to bury the big bands. In other words, the basic formula (e.g., person singing in front of a band) held up, but it changed at the same time (smaller, faster bands, plus the back beat versus swing’s shuffle rhythm). Hmm., maybe I’ll attempt a sub-chapter on big band economics after wrapping up little histories on Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Kay Kyser…
About the Sampler
It only took a couple minutes of gawking at the multiplicity of playlists on Spotify for me to immediately give up on “just listening” and to mine The Essential Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra collection, along with the hits listed in the sources. I whittled the final sampler down to 25 songs, some of which I’ve already linked to above. Here are the rest, first from that Sinatra collection (though, honestly, he’s all over Dorsey's catalog):
“Be Careful Its My Heart,” “Everything Happens to Me,” “Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread),” “There Are Such Things,” and “We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me).”
And, from other collections (and not in chronological order):
“All the Things You Are” (Jack Leonard, btw, 1940) “The Big Apple,” “Dolores,” “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” (the “theme” linked to above), “Once in a While,” “On Treasure Island" (another very early hit with Edythe Wright), “Satan Takes a Holiday,” “Stardust on the Moon,” “Trombonology,” “Well, Git It” and "Opus One" (both famous from the Sy Oliver era; even knew the second one), and, finally, “Yes Indeed!”
That’s it. Consider anything I forgot to link to a bonus track.
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