Crash Course Timeline, No. 40: Tommy Dorsey, aka, The Angry One

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:

Crash Course Timeline, No. 39: Jimmy Dorsey, the Nice One

A man and his (signature) horn.

My favorite story about either of the Dorsey Brothers is the one about their famous split. From their Wikipedia page:

“The band performed live mainly in the New England area, with acrimony between the brothers steadily building up, until a definitive falling out between Tommy and Jimmy over the tempo of ‘I'll Never Say Never Again Again’ in May 1935, after which Tommy walked off the stage.”

That brotherly feud didn’t formally end for 18 years. Over tempo. Related, because I placed this chapter in the late 1930s/1940s, I decided to write about each Dorsey as they played and functioned for all those years, i.e., separately. From what I gather, Jimmy, the older brother and the subject of this post, was the nicer of the two. Then again, I’ve only really read his side so far.

James Francis Dorsey was born in 1904 in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. His father worked as a coal miner at the time of his birth, but moved to teaching music at local schools and leading his own marching band shortly after. Both Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey played, and well, from a very young age, as demonstrated by the fact Jimmy started playing in his dad’s band by age seven. He started on trumpet and had the chops to play with a New York-based group called J. Carson McGee’s King Trumpeters by age nine, but he switched to the instrument that made him famous, the alto saxophone, by the time he turned 11. (Just to note it, he played clarinet as well, using the Albert system.)

It's fair to call both brothers precocious: as early as 1920, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey formed a third of their first band together, the Dorsey’s Novelty Six, a name they later changed to Dorsey’s Wild Canaries. They had some success with this group, even landed some airtime on the radio as “one of the first jazz bands to broadcast.” [Ed. - I can’t document it, but that doesn’t sound right.] With so much experience under their belts, and at such a young age, both Dorseys moved to New York to work as professional, full-time musicians.

Neither of them struggled for work. They played live, worked recording sessions, and did radio work throughout the 1920s, a lot of that time with decade’s best (e.g., the Paul Whiteman Orchestra). Jimmy, at least, played every orchestra of the 1920s I’ve ever heard of; he even recorded “the iconic 1927 jazz standard” “Singin’ the Blues” with the Frankie Trumbauer opposite the half-legendary Bix Beiderbecke. Before long, the Dorseys, some friends, peers and competitor built on what they learned playing in the ever-expanding orchestras of the late 1920s/early 1930s to create (white, mainstream) popular music’s next big thing. To name one early partner, Glenn Miller co-wrote, arranged and played trombone on a couple of collaborations with the Dorseys at the tail-end of the 1920s - e.g., “Annie's Cousin Fanny,” “Tomorrow’s Another Day,” and “Dese Dem Dose.”