The Dorsey Brothers

Green Eyes brought down the house. The kids had danced dreamily through I Hear A Rhapsody and clapped loud and long for Tangerine, but when the band swung into Green Eyes, with the male vocalist handling the first ballad chorus, a pert blonde singing the familiar jump version on the second, the whole place rocked. The little man in front of the orchestra was Jimmy Dorsey and these were the wonderful numbers that had made him famous.

One might have expected more JD standards in the next set, but the band opened up with I'll Never Smile Again, then turned their brass loose on Song of India and Marie. There was another fellow up front now, blowing a familiar, sentimental horn, and even the squares who'd wandered into the ballroom without reading the signs outside could guess that Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey were playing together again, though they might not have known it was the first time in nearly eighteen years.

The original Dorsey Brothers Band of '34 and '35 is one of the most famous in jazz history. But it's probably remembered best because of the phenomenal success each of the brothers achieved separately in the years that followed.

The Dorseys began their professional careers in 1922, when Jimmy, then eighteen, signed to play clarinet and sax with a little jazz group called the Sacramento Sirens. Jimmy talked the leader into hiring his younger brother Tommy to play trombone and both brothers were on their way. After a stint with the California Ramblers, a popular recording band of the day, they landed with Jean Goldkette.

It was with Goldkette and later with Paul Whiteman that the boys picked up polish, changing from eager, steamed-up jazz men to accomplished musicians. Goldkette and Whiteman knew how to take the raw flavor and excitement of jazz and make it commercially acceptable. They made good popular music pay, and the brothers learned lessons from them that they've never forgotten.

In 1927 with Whiteman, the Dorseys were moving among the great, playing and hob-nobbing with men like Eddy Lang, Bix Beiderbecke, Matty Melneck, Joe Venuti and Frankie Trumbauer. Just three years before, Whiteman had played his famous New York jazz concert introducing George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue. Jazz had become a national craze and its exponents national celebrities.

After a year the Dorseys quit Whiteman to pick up some of the big money to be had in radio and recording dates in New York. They backed up Bing Crosby, The Boswell Sisters, Ruth Etting, Rudy Vallee and Rubinoff. The first record they made under their own names was a semi-concert piece cut in '27. The label read: "The Dorsey Brothers' Concert Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy Conducting."

In 1933 Jimmy and Tommy formed the original Dorsey Brothers Band. They weren't planning to create anything new in jazz; it was a commercial unit for dance dates. The band was small, with three saxes, four brass, and four rhythm. They had Ray McKinley on drums, Bob Crosby on vocals, and a young man named Glenn Miller doing their arranging.

The first Dorsey Brothers Band only lasted a few months. The brothers parted company in the winter of 1933. They were playing a dance date at the Glen Island Casino -- Tommy was up front, beating the time for the number. "That's too fast," Jimmy called from the sax section. Tommy glared at him, snatched up his trombone and stalked off the bandstand. The New York World Telegram reported, "Personal acrimony crept in, but musical differences were the real cause of the quarrel that split the Dorseys."

Whether music or temperament caused the rift, it was one of the luckiest disagreements in jazz history. The boys went their separate ways and produced two of the biggest bands of the wonderful Big Band Era that followed.

In the late thirties and early forties, America rediscovered its feet. We'd just come out of a depression and we felt like dancing. Phonographs, almost put out of business by radio, were suddenly bigger sellers than ever before. Swing was king. The music of Goodman, Miller, Herman, Shaw, James, and the Dorseys filled the airways.

Jimmy featured a "Contrasts in Music" style and vocalists Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connel doing numbers like Tangerine, Amapola, and Green Eyes.

Tommy offered star instrumentalists Ziggy Elman, Bunny Berigan, Buddy Rich, Charlie Spivak, Ray Bauduc, and vocalists Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Connie Haines, Jack Leonard and The Pied Pipers, playing and singing pop classics like Boogie Woogie, Stardust, Song of India, I'll Never Smile Again, There Are Such Things, and Marie. Jimmy Dorsey sold 40 million records; Tommy Dorsey, 70 million.

After the war, the bottom dropped out of the dance band business. Progressives Kenton and Herman took jazz into the concert halls and the biggest selling records were vocals with fancy orchestral backgrounds -- Sinatra and Stordahl setting the pace.

Some believe the day of the big dance band is gone forever. There are signs that suggest otherwise, however. Several of the record companies have formed new dance-type bands in the last few months with very encouraging results. RCA Victor has built two recording groups -- one fronted by Ralph Flanagan, a Sammy Kaye arranger, the other by Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan, ex-arrangers for Goodman and Miller. Both have done remarkably well on records and are now meeting with success in dance-dates around the country. Capitol has done the same thing, with equally encouraging results, with Billy May, an ex-Glenn Miller trumpet player. And Columbia has Goodman, who last spring organized a forty-city tour with a group including Ziggy Elman, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson and Helen Ward. It was primarily a concert-hall thing, but they included several dances on their itinerary and went over big everywhere they appeared, even though BG became ill early in the tour and was unable to continue with the group.

The new Dorsey Brothers Band has been styled for dancing, playing dance-dates almost exclusively, and has been tremendously successful. If the new Dorsey Band can help bring back a time when the flick of a radio dial any evening brought you music like Miller's Serenade In Blue, Ellington's A Train, Frenesi by Shaw, and Boogie Woogie, Tangerine and Marie by the Dorseys themselves--then their reunion may be even more significant than their parting eighteen years ago.

A 1934 handbill plugged the first Dorsey Brothers Orchestra as "Radio's Next Name Band." Fame was just around the corner, but for two bands, not one.

Helen O'Connell and Bob Eberly supplied the vocals for the famous Jimmy Dorsey band. This was 1940 and both the Dorsey brothers were at the top of their popularity.