Tommy Dorsey

During the swing period spanning 1935 to 1945, Tommy Dorsey emerged as the era’s most consistently favored bandleader, even when Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, or Harry James temporarily outranked him at particular moments. The orchestra’s signature sound came from his own exceptionally lyrical trombone work, yet he balanced the hotter and sweeter strains of swing by blending ballads with novelty numbers. Vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Jo Stafford received prominent features, while arrangers including Sy Oliver and Bill Finegan supplied inventive charts. Until Elvis Presley arrived, Dorsey held the title of RCA Victor Records’ all-time biggest seller among the major labels; Presley received his first national television exposure on the program Dorsey hosted alongside brother Jimmy in the 1950s.

Jimmy preceded Tommy by 21 months as the elder son of music teacher and band director Thomas Francis Dorsey, Sr., and Theresa Langton Dorsey. Both sons studied under their father, with Tommy concentrating on trombone while also handling trumpet, especially in his earliest professional years. The brothers began in local ensembles before launching Dorsey’s Novelty Six in 1920. By 1922, when they appeared at a Baltimore amusement park and made their radio debut, the group had become Dorsey’s Wild Canaries. Throughout the early and middle 1920s they worked with outfits such as the Scranton Sirens, the California Ramblers, and the orchestras of Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman, sometimes separately but more often together. They eventually settled in New York as session musicians. In 1927 they began cutting sides for OKeh Records as the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra with pickup personnel, first reaching the charts in June 1928 with “Coquette.” The following spring they scored a Top Ten entry with “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” featuring Bing Crosby on vocals.

The brothers formed a permanent unit and moved to Decca Records in 1934. With Bing Crosby’s younger brother Bob Crosby handling vocals, they reached the Top Ten in late winter 1935 with “I Believe in Miracles,” soon followed by “Tiny Little Fingerprints” (Kay Weber vocal) and “Night Wind” (Bob Crosby vocal). Two successive number-one records arrived next: “Lullaby of Broadway” (Bob Crosby vocal) and “Chasing Shadows” (Bob Eberly vocal, replacing Bob Crosby). Positioned for national dominance in spring 1935, the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra might have been credited with igniting the swing era, yet at the end of May the famously volatile siblings quarreled and Tommy departed, though the band still managed another Top Ten hit that summer with “Every Little Movement.” Jimmy continued leading the ensemble, later billed as Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra and achieving substantial success. While the Dorseys faltered momentarily, Benny Goodman captured national attention and earned the title “the King of Swing.”

In fall 1935 Tommy assumed leadership of the remaining Joe Haymes musicians to create his own orchestra. Signed to RCA Victor, he immediately succeeded with “On Treasure Island” (Edythe Wright vocal), which topped the charts in December 1935 and became one of four Top Ten records before year’s end. He returned to number one in January 1936 with “The Music Goes Round and Round” (Edythe Wright vocal) and again in February with “Alone” (Cliff Weston vocal). “You” (Edythe Wright vocal) supplied a third chart-topper that year, accompanied by eight additional Top Ten entries. Success intensified in 1937, yielding 18 Top Ten hits that included the leaders “Marie” (Jack Leonard vocal), “Satan Takes a Holiday” (instrumental), “The Big Apple,” “Once in a While,” and “The Dipsy Doodle” (Edythe Wright vocal). He obtained his own radio series, which ran nearly three years. Fifteen Top Ten records appeared in 1938, among them the number-one “Music, Maestro, Please” (Edythe Wright vocal), while 1939 brought eleven more, highlighted by the chart-topping “Our Love” (Jack Leonard vocal).

Despite strong sales, Dorsey enacted major personnel shifts late in 1939. Jack Leonard exited in November; Frank Sinatra arrived from Harry James. Edythe Wright also left, replaced by Connie Haines, and the vocal quartet the Pied Pipers, with Jo Stafford, joined as well. The refreshed lineup sustained momentum: ten Top Ten hits arrived in 1940, among them the leaders “Indian Summer” and “All the Things You Are” (both Leonard vocals) plus “I’ll Never Smile Again” (Sinatra and the Pied Pipers vocals). For the year Dorsey placed second only to Glenn Miller among recording artists. He slipped to third behind Miller and Jimmy in 1941, yet posted ten more Top Ten entries, eight featuring Sinatra, including the number-one “Dolores” from the March release Las Vegas Nights, in which the band performed.

World War II, declared by the United States in December 1941, complicated operations for big bands through personnel turnover and travel restrictions. The American Federation of Musicians strike began on 1 August 1942, barring studio work. Sinatra departed in September to pursue a solo career, and the Pied Pipers exited by year’s end. Dorsey persisted, placing the band in its second motion picture, Ship Ahoy, which opened in June, and securing four Top Ten hits that, together with other chart entries, ranked him fifth among 1942’s top recording artists. He matched that position in the transitional year 1943 despite the recording ban, achieving four additional Top Ten records that included the chart-toppers “There Are Such Things” and “In the Blue of the Evening,” both cut with Sinatra before his exit. Dorsey turned to film roles for continued visibility, appearing in Presenting Lily Mars, DuBarry Was a Lady, and Girl Crazy, all released in 1943.

RCA Victor exhausted its backlog of unreleased Dorsey masters by 1944 and turned to reissues, scoring Top Ten success with the 1938 instrumental “Boogie Woogie” and the 1940 Sinatra vocal “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Dorsey remained in Hollywood for Broadway Rhythm, which opened in April. Once the musicians’ union strike ended in the fall, he resumed studio activity and collected six Top Ten hits in 1945; the new album chart also registered Getting Sentimental. He appeared in the May release Thrill of a Romance. Another Top Ten album, Show Boat, drawn from the Broadway musical, entered the charts in February 1946.

Big bands were waning, and Dorsey disbanded in December 1946. Nevertheless, All-Time Hits reached the album-chart Top Ten in February 1947, and “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” (Stuart Foster vocal) became a Top Ten single in March. He reorganized the orchestra, portrayed himself in the largely fictionalized May 1947 film The Fabulous Dorseys, and saw Clambake Seven, a small-group album, reach the Top Ten in October 1948, the same month he appeared in A Song Is Born. The following month “Until” (Harry Prime vocal) returned him to the singles Top Ten. Spring 1949 brought a double-sided Top Ten hit with “The Hucklebuck” (Charlie Shavers vocal)/“Again” (Marcy Lutes vocal). And the Band Sings Too entered the album-chart Top Ten in September, followed by Tommy Dorsey Plays Cole Porter in April 1950. His final screen appearance occurred in Disc Jockey in September 1951.

He moved to Decca Records and continued touring with the band in the early 1950s. In May 1953 Jimmy disbanded his own group and joined as a featured soloist; the ensemble soon regained the billing Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. While resident at New York’s Statler Hilton Hotel, the brothers introduced the summer-replacement television series Stage Show in 1954. It returned sporadically during the 1954–1955 season and then aired weekly through 1955–1956. Elvis Presley made six consecutive appearances beginning in January 1956, marking his first national broadcasts. Sedated by sleeping pills after a heavy meal, Dorsey died accidentally at age 51. Jimmy briefly led the band afterward but passed away in 1957. The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra nevertheless persisted on record and stage; under Warren Covington it achieved a final million-selling Top Ten hit in November 1958 with “Tea for Two Cha Cha.”

Known as “the sentimental gentleman of swing,” Tommy Dorsey fused the hotter and sweeter elements of swing while maintaining a band that ranked among the nation’s top two or three orchestras from the mid-1930s through the mid-1940s. Major jazz instrumentalists such as Bunny Berigan, Ziggy Elman, Pee Wee Erwin, Max Kaminsky, Buddy Rich, Charlie Shavers, and Dave Tough passed through the ranks, as did arrangers Sy Oliver and Paul Weston and singers including Frank Sinatra and Jo Stafford, many of whom shaped popular music in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Dorsey himself remained a first-rate trombonist whose distinctive tone defined the ensemble’s output. The majority of those recordings were made for RCA Victor, with later sessions appearing on Decca and Columbia; numerous airchecks further enlarge the discography.