Tommy Dorsey: King of Swing/Dance Bands

TOMMY DORSEY: THE KING OF SWING/DANCE BANDS
by John Cooper

Tommy Dorsey has been overlooked lately for reasons not totally clear to me.

I keep looking for his recordings from his 1940-1946 bands, arguably his strongest bands with giant after giant in there--Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Dick Haymes, Buddy Rich, Ziggy Elman, Don Lodice, Chuck Peterson (it's Ziggy and Chuck on "Well, Git It"), Sy Oliver arranging, Charlie Shavers, Heinie Beau, Buddy de Franco. There are two great vocal groups that recorded with Dorsey as well: The Pied Pipers and "The Sentimentalists" aka The Clark Sisters (of "Chicago" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street" fame). And in front if it all, Mr. Tommy Dorsey himself, standing tall in a gleaming white suit with that shining trombone ready to go and looking after the needs of dancers and listeners 24/7.

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. Just one HELL of a band! Way past its due recognition from the current crop of Swing dancers and listeners.

Some random thoughts on Tommy Dorsey

"Well, Git It!" Great number! Great sidemen with great solos.
Sy Oliver : the man behind Lunceford and T. Dorsey!

You must hear the other choice Dorsey swing stuff from the 1940 - 1942 era. Powerful and swinging....even the pop tunes kick along. Buddy Rich did for Dorsey exactly what he had done for Shaw.
More Power!!!

3 HUGE egos (at least) in one band: Dorsey, Rich, and Sinatra with a big rivalry between Rich and Sinatra. I've read that if the band was playing a ballad that Sinatra was singing and that Rich thought was too slow, he would sit up there with his arms folded and not even play his drums! Oh, man!!! Well, they were both young and talented and Rich could also sing and dance very well. I guess they grew up a bit as the years went by (or when they didn't have to work with each other). There's another story of either Rich or Sinatra throwing a full glass pitcher of ice water at the other one's head and it smashed up against a pillar. Wow! Danger!

"Blues In the Night" with Dorsey and Jo Stafford. Yes, that's a smoky one! It's one of the few versions of BITN that I like almost all the way through. I like lots of versions of the tune, but I have never heard the definitive one (for me). The Tommy Dorsey/JoStafford comes the very closest. Did you know that that recording was never originally released on a 78 rpm Victor disc? It appears that the first issue was on that famous Reader's Digest ten LP set, "The Great Band Era" (an essential set, BTW, for anyone exploring the world of 1935 - 1945 pop and swing music hits by Victor artists). I think it's still available on CD from Reader's Digest. If not, the LP sets turn up all the time, fairly cheaply.

I was watching film clips tonight of the TD band and Rich is always up there swinging away with this cocky look on his face, even when he's wearing that Louis the XVI wig in "Du Barry Was a Lady". (Ziggy Elman in his wig and twentieth glasses is a riot!)

That was a kick ass band. Tommy was always punching someone out. His famous night club brawl with actor Jon Hall made all the newspapers. It takes that kind of extra edge and aggressiveness to make a really great and memorable band. Most of the leaders that musicians of those days badmouth for being tough or temperamental to work for, such as T. Dorsey, Goodman, Miller, Shaw, all had one thing in common: they had great bands that people still talk about and listen to today. And, essentially, all these men made their initial mark on Swing history in the space of just a few years.

My favorite Dorsey band on record is the band from 1940 - 1942. I think it is TD at his peak with great sidemen, great singers and great arrangements, great songs, great specialties, great spirit. However, it is one of the many odd things in the record business that RCA has never gotten around to doing a complete TD for that period. Their "Complete Tommy Dorsey" series on Bluebird LPs made it all the way to 1939...and then died! Collectors were groaning!!! 'They were just getting to the best stuff' was the general complaint. A fair amount of the material has made it out, but much has not. Naturally, all the Sinatra/TD sides were issued in that big box set and all the Pied Pipers sides with TD came out recently on a 2 CD set, but that still leaves all the hot numbers scattered here and there. All those barn burners featuring all his 'ride' men like Buddy Rich, Ziggy Elman, Don Lodice, Chuck Peterson, Heinie Beau and those raging Sy Oliver arrangements...sooooooooooo roaring and with such an edge and bite to them. Let me do some from memory as I don't feel like getting the discography off the shelf:

ANOTHER ONE OF THEM THINGS
SERENADE TO THE SPOT
WELL, GIT IT!
SWINGTIME UP IN HARLEM
BLUE SKIES
QUIET, PLEASE
NOT SO QUIET, PLEASE
DEEP RIVER
and lots more.

Also, the pop tunes are extremely good and very few of them go by w/o a good solo or two and some real kick from the band. Bottom line is, due to RCA's lapse of reissues of his best stuff, TD is falling into the 'legend' category; remembered for his name and a few hits, but forgotten for many other things. For me, TD had probably the best all around band of the time, since he could play everything and did...except junk tunes. The man had a 17 piece band, six singers and when he added that string section and a harp, he had it all. He was also in more Hollywood movies than any other bandleader with the possible exception of Harry James.

I think that TD made better use of his string section than any other big name and was a pre-war pioneer in that are, along with James and Shaw. After the war, quite a few bands had string sections, but by that time TD, Harry James and Artie Shaw had dropped theirs. I don't think that there is any Tommy Dorsey material that is shoddy or second rate, but by the late forties and into the fifties, the stuff isn't clicking any longer. His band of that period is beginning to turn into what Basie was to become in the 50s and 60s, a very smooth and skillful sounding studio band. Tommy's 1950s recordings are about the same, but more so. The ballads are very mellow, but more like 'easy listening' music. The swinging charts are still well played, but with what I feel is a lack of inner fire. I think perhaps that Tommy Dorsey was so 'in tune' with the tastes of younger listeners and dancers and really enjoyed playing to that crowd and 'fed off' them, that when the youth of America essentially vanished from the big band scene after the end of WW2, TD lost his 'soul mate', the American Swing and dance public. Heck, he even got one of those college guy flat top hair cuts in the fifties in order to stay current and all it did was to make him look older than he was. The passion was gone. There was still fine music from Mr. Dorsey, but he had to know it was over.

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