There are few more incredible stories than the one Tommy Dorsey wrote himself. In his short life this poor son of a Pennsylvania coal miner became world famous, amassed millions of dollars in record sales, made millions more in radio programming, appeared in movies, and most importantly, personally led theTommy Dorsey Orchestra with his trombone in dance halls and hotels all over America.

He hired, taught and bought Frank Sinatra’s future through an invalid contract that some speculate almost got Dorsey killed before he agreed to break it. His massive ego and overpowering presence shrinks Sinatra’s personality to withdrawn acolyte by comparison. Sinatra later said that only two people scared him during his life; his mother and Tommy Dorsey.

Dorsey would attend Benny Goodman’s gigs at major New York hotels and ask B.G.’s musicians, within earshot of Goodman, why they wanted to play with him? He would then offer them more money, in front of Goodman, to join his band.

He made drummer Buddy Rich a star again, and hired the beautiful art of vocalist Jo Stafford and her singing group, The Pied Pipers. He utilized his professional relationship with Glenn Miller, appointing him as his bands musical director, arranger and trombone section player until G.M. quit in the midst of the almost nightly rehearsal fist fight between Tommy and his older brother, saxophone star Jimmy Dorsey.

Tommy introduced Elvis Presley to America on his national television program, "Stage Show", before anyone else in television had heard of him. Presley made six appearances. Tommy privately predicted to his own drummer Louie Bellson that Presley would quickly become one of the biggest names in music.

He fired an entire band, in front of a paying audience, on several occasions, once because one trumpeter defied him, and showed up drunk. His own abstinence from alcohol while trying to get his band off of the ground was suddenly absent when he made it to the top. His life came to an unexpected and abrupt end at the relatively young age of 51. But there is so much more to Tommy than these glimpses. I’ll start at the beginning, and tell you the whole interesting story.

J.T.

With coal production low, Pennsylvania is no longer considered the spring of energy that it was in 1905, when Thomas Francis Dorsey was born in Shenandoah, Pa., one of the many mining towns in the Northeast part of that state. Anthracite coal was king, the chief energy provider of that time.

The mines made many of their owners rich. Their employee’s world was spent in dark, back-breaking conditions, earning less than ten dollars a week. Tommy Dorsey’s father was one of them. He worked in the tunnels for more than twenty years. Fortunately, he taught himself how to play the cornet while young.

There was some music in Tommy's mother’s background. Theresa Dorsey came from a family of self-taught musicians. Her father and six of her brothers played musical instruments.

Thomas Dorsey, Sr. always held on to his interest in music. In 1902, when there was a coal strike, he led a coal miner’s band in Williamsport, PA., and gave concerts for the unemployed miners to boost their spirits. He taught, coached, played in, and directed sixty eight area bands during his career.

A music store owner named Professor Wild who had heard of “Pop” Dorsey, as he was called, suggested that he move to the Brownville section of Shenandoah. He then worked as a collier, an above-ground job, where the coal was sized, cleaned and shipped. (1)

Dorsey, Sr. was serious about getting his sons out of the mines. He decided music could be that door. “Dad bought us some instruments and ordered us to “Learn how to play them.”, remembered Tommy many years later. (2) Between them they learned how to play 15 instruments. Their father made them practice two hours each day, then four. When his father gave Tommy a piece of music to sight read for the first time, he played it flawlessly. He then asked him to read and play it backward. He did.

Mr. Dorsey didn’t allow either son to play football, believing they might break a hand or injure their mouths, which would disable them as musicians. Tommy played baseball though, and through working jobs that required strength, he became a strong young man. But, he not only wore glasses, but played a musical instrument, and that set him up for bullying. His temperament was explosive however, and he fought back fast and hard with his fists. Tough kids grew afraid of him. He seemed fearless.

Jimmy was always his mother’s favorite. He was an easy-going child, who grew into a laid-back adult. Since Tommy was younger, clarinetist Artie Shaw noted that “Tommy had to prove his worth.” (3) The two would fight often, and they were nasty scraps. No one could separate them while fighting without both of them turning on the interloper.

Both sons knew that they wanted to become professional musicians. Jimmy dropped out of high school in his second year. Tommy didn’t make it through 7^th grade.  

Both brothers first appeared as members in one of their father’s Shenandoah bands, and then found work in other venues, such as local concerts given in the area by other bands passing through needing substitutes.

Their mother felt sorry about how hard they had been pushed by their Dad, and remembered Jimmy coming home one night with a few dollars he had earned playing. “I remember him saying to his father, when he was only nine years old, “I’m tired of playing for “this”, and he’d clap his hands, ‘It’s “this”- and he’d rub his fingers together to mean money- ‘that counts’’. (4)

In early 1920 the Dorsey family moved to Lansford, PA., about twenty miles from Shenandoah. A local grocer and clarinet player offered Mr. Dorsey, Sr. the Director position of the town band. This allowed him to count on a weekly music paycheck, as well as what he received teaching music in nearby towns. The boys got local music jobs as well in the area. They made the move to professional music by forming and co-leading “Dorsey’s Wild Canaries”, a name invented by the owner of a local amusement park where they performed. The park’s owner talked about them to another out of state park owner, and in 1921 the band traveled to Baltimore, Maryland to play a sixteen week engagement. The pay was $285.00 a week for the band.

The amusement park fortunately had a radio signal that broadcast the "Wild Canaries" for roughly sixty miles, which included parts of both Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Bill Lustig, a violinist and leader of the popular ‘Scranton Sirens’ in Easton, Pa., heard the Dorsey band at the Baltimore park.

When they returned to Lansford, the "Wild Canaries" broke up and Jimmy got a $90.00 a week chair with the ‘Scranton Sirens’. Trombonist Russ Morgan, another child coal miner, and future bandleader, left the "Sirens", and Jimmy suggested Tommy take his place. At his audition, Tommy was stopped and hired at bar eight.

Jimmy was seventeen and Tommy was fifteen when they joined the "Sirens", a widely known band. They began to meet members of other popular bands and their reputations grew.

The "Sirens" toured southern New York State and New Jersey in an open car. Their first recording was in 1923, on the OKeh label, but it was never released. Side A was “Three O’Clock in the Morning”, and side B was “Fate”.

Song plugger Sammy Collins of Remick Music was responsible for getting the "Sirens" to New York City. Collins had seen them in Scranton. They signed an enormous monetary contract and played in a show called “Dancing Carnival” at the St. Nicholas Arena on West 66^th Street. (5)

Established leaders such as Paul Whiteman, Ted Lewis, and Vincent Lopez heard the band. From New York City, the "Sirens" went directly to Atlantic City, where they played the ‘Beaux Arts Cabaret’ for the 1923 summer season. Both Dorseys became friends of guitarist Eddie Lang and jazz violinist Joe Venuti.

A few of Jimmy’s band mates from the "Sirens" headed out to Detroit, Michigan to join the very popular Jean Goldkette Orchestra. They recommended Jimmy for the band. Jimmy got a position for Tommy in the band in March of 1924. The Goldkette band was filled with talent. Clarinetist “Pee Wee” Russell, violinist Joe Venutti, Guitarist Eddie Lang, Frankie Traumbauer on “C” melody saxophone, both Dorsey’s and Bix Beiderbecke. They played arrangements by the early big band arranger Bill Challis, from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., one of the fathers of the big band sound with his advanced arrangements.

Chicago was then a center of jazz. Louis Armstrong was playing there with “King” Joe Oliver’s band, and Oliver was revered by young white musicians who stood outside of the club Oliver played, and became obsessed with the sound and style they heard. The freedom jazz represented to their generation was alluring. Several students who attended Austin High School in Chicago were particularly tuned in to jazz. They included clarinetist and saxophone player Frank Teschmacher, drummer Dave Tough, tenor saxophonist “Bud” Freeman, cornet players Jimmy McPartland and Muggsy Spanier, pianist Joe Sullivan, Banjo/Guitarist Eddie Condon, (although he later claimed never having attended Austin), drummer George Wettling, trombonist George Brunis, as well as non-Austin High players like drummer Ben Pollack and Benny Goodman. Goodman had already been playing pro since he was thirteen.

Of all the white musicians to emerge from the Chicago scene, Leon, “Bix” Beiderbecke is the most legendary. Leon was from a comfortable family that resided in Davenport, Iowa. The resentment of Leon’s father at his son’s pursuing jazz as a career was so deep that he refused to play any of the phonograph records that Bix proudly sent home. Mr. Beiderbecke placed all of them on a high shelf in a hall closet. There they sat unplayed for Leon’s lifetime.

His son’s death at twenty eight from Lobar Pneumonia, “a condition where one or more of the five lobes of the lungs, three in the right, two in the left, became solid…no air can enter an affected lobe,” was hastened by severe alcoholism. (6)

Although it sounds like a stretch, it’s alleged that Bix was inspired to play after hearing the trumpet of Armstrong passing by Davenport on a steamboat. He did, in fact, buy a beat-up cornet, and taught himself how to play it by imitating Armstrong.  In any case, musicians came to appreciate his profound talent, with its imaginative approach to harmony and brilliant original musical inspiration, that were at times, by some, compared to Debussy. Benny Goodman, hearing Beiderbecke play one of his compositions for the first time, asked “What planet is he from?”

Both Dorseys were friends of Bix, and fit in easily with the Chicago crowd with their late night drinking habits and enthusiastic jam session participation. Through their association with the respected Goldkette Orchestra, they found wider recognition. Even a young clarinetist from New Haven, CT. named Arthur Artshawsky, who became Artie Shaw, heard the Goldkette band play as a young musician, and years later pronounced that it was “…unbelievable, it swung like mad.”(7)

In their personal lives, Jimmy met and married Jane Porter, “Miss Detroit” of 1925, after a three year courtship. Tommy made the impulsive decision to marry seventeen year old Mildred Kraft, also from Detroit, whose nickname was “Toots”. Tommy was eighteen.

Tommy was five feet, ten inches tall, and stood ramrod straight, with slicked back black hair and steel framed glasses. He had a sharp sense of humor and an easy smile. He was not shy. Jimmy and Tommy habitually physically fought on and off bandstands. In one Detroit hotel ballroom, “Jim had a new saxophone, gold-plated on the bell. Tommy picked it up in front of the audience and threw it on the floor. Then he stomped on it. You can imagine what happened after that”, observed trombonist Bill Rank, who was seated next to Tommy. (8)

Bix Beiderbecke had joined the Goldkette band six months after the Dorsey brothers, on January 26, 1925. Soon Bix asked Tommy if he would play on the first recording sessions Bix was organizing for Genet Records. After they had gathered in the studio and were drinking gin, Bix pulled out an arrangement he had written without a name. Tommy suggested “Davenport Blues” after Bix’s home town. It became a jazz standard.

In the spring of 1925, Jimmy Dorsey had moved back to New York City, and was hired by Ed Kirkeby, who led a band called the ‘California Ramblers’. Kirkeby had noticed Jimmy from the last time J.D. was in New York with the ‘Scranton Sirens’. Jimmy got Tommy a position with the "Ramblers" too, and Tommy and Toots moved to City Island in the Bronx to be near the club that featured the "Ramblers" in Pelham, New York. On April 11^th, Toots gave birth to Pat Dorsey, their first child.

Tommy continued fighting with Jimmy on the stand. One time it was while they were playing an extra side job for Sam Lanin’s Roseland Orchestra.  Infuriated by a remark Jimmy made, Tommy trashed Jimmy’s new saxophone by jumping up and down on it, and Jimmy took Tommy’s trombone and “wrapped it around his knee, slide and all. Ruined it.” (9)

During the spring of 1926 Bix Beiderbecke was playing with Jean Goldkette’s band, and suggested to Goldkette that he offer Tommy a seat in the band. Tommy traveled to Chicago in December of that year, and joined the band. The white night clubs would close at two am, and then those club musicians would fan out in search of Joe Oliver’s band at The Plantation Club, or to the Sunset Club to hear Louis Armstrong. Tommy, Jimmy, Benny Goodman, Muggsy Spanier, Joe Sullivan and Jess Stacy were a few of the regular white jazz musicians who played with the black musicians. Tommy made a friend in Louis that lasted the rest of Tommy’s life.

Back on the Goldkette band stand, Tommy and the band played a date at the new Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, and one of the members of the Fisher family kept asking to hear “The Missouri Waltz”. Tommy told the young socialite “to f-off”, and Goldkette sent Tommy to one of his lower echelon bands. Not happy with the punishment, Tommy moved back to New York City. (10)

Bad behavior aside, in 1927 both Tommy and Jimmy joined Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra. The obese Whiteman had many hit records in a row, and was the number one band in the U.S. His records, such as “The Japanese Sandman”, “The Birth of the Blues”, “Wang Wang Blues”, “Ramona”, “Valencia”, and his personally commissioned piece “Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin, had catapulted Whiteman to great acclaim.

Only the best played with Whiteman during these years: Both Bix Beiderbecke and Bing Crosby were in the band. Like Bix, Crosby was known as a drinker, and Whiteman bailed him out of jail often. “Whiteman himself would drink from Wednesday night after the show, until the following Sunday, when the doctor would come and shore him up for the “Chesterfield Show” on the next Wednesday. If you didn’t drink in this band, you were an outcast.” (11)

The Dorsey’s last appearance with Whiteman was November 25, 1927 at a record date on which Crosby sang “Mary What Are You Waiting For?” The good times and close friendship enjoyed by both Dorseys with Bing Crosby would last for decades.

In 1927-28, Tommy Dorsey met both Duke Ellington and Jack Teagarden. Ellington’s band played “The Kentucky Club” and most of the Whiteman band would go listen. Again, the friendship forged between Tommy and Duke would prove fortuitous, when both men, much later in their careers, would appear on one another’s albums.

Jack Teagarden inspired Tommy. T.D. once told his big band’s guitarist, Carmen Mastren, that “I never played anything original in my life. Everything I play is Miff Mole… When it came to jazz, all he could talk about was Miff Mole and Jack Teagarden.” (12) Many thought that Tommy’s embouchure was inspired by Teagarden. Tommy never considered his own talent anywhere near “Big “T”, as Jack was called.

140 million records were sold in 1927. Whiteman made “Rhapsody in Blue” his theme, and its recording became a huge sales success. Music and bands were big business, and the Dorsey brothers were benefiting from their time with the best bands in the country.

It was a difficult life as far as having a family however, and Toots Dorsey was tired of Tommy being on the road all year with Whiteman. Both Dorseys were so well established by now that they no longer needed to travel with a band. They were in demand in the radio studios of New York, up to fifteen shows a week- and were recording records as well. The same year, 1927, movies became a source of revenue for musicians, as sound finally became a reality with “Talking Pictures”, which needed soundtrack music. Movie attendance in 1927 doubled with sound, up to 95 million tickets sold each week.

Even Eugene Ormandy, the late conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra, crossed paths with the busy Dorseys in his first job in the U.S ., conducting the Dorsey Brothers' pit band for “Earl Carroll’s Vanities” on Broadway. (13)

Tommy bought a home in Merrick, Long Island, and a big new Buick to drive himself into New York City. In 1929, his second child was born, Thomas Francis Dorsey III. 

T.D. was making big money too, $750.00 per week, at the bottom of the depression in 1930, when restaurants charged three dollars for a four course dinner.

                                  THE DORSEY BROTHER'S ORCHESTRA

By 1928, when the first Dorsey Brothers' Orchestra records were released on the popular Okeh label. The band, which was actually a group of studio musicians that they had been working with for years, also recorded for low-end labels such as Banner, Cameo, Domino, Jewel, Oriole and Perfect, as well as the better known Brunswick and Vocalian labels. 

Tommy brought in his friend Bing Crosby to sing two Glenn Miller arrangements, “She’s Funny That Way”, and “The Spell of the Blues”. The Dorsey Brother's Orchestra would record over 200 more releases before disbanding.

The American Oil Company signed the band to play on their radio show. Tommy asked African-American vocalist Ethel Waters to join the band. Five weeks into the program’s broadcasts in 1933, the sponsor asked Tommy if he could make the band sound more like George Olsen’s Band (another popular band). Boiling, Tommy hollered back, “If you like George Olsen, why don’t you get him?” The band was fired. (14)

Bix Beiderbecke and Glenn Miller were regulars in the Dorsey band. Artie Shaw played with the band on special dates, such as University dances. Other notable names in the line-up of the band were trumpeter Bunny Brigand, as well as singers Mildred Bailey, Lee Wiley, Ethel Waters, and the Boswell Sisters. Bing Crosby also sang, as the Dorsey’s had been recording with him while their band played on Crosby’s radio show. Tommy referred to Crosby, who was from the state of Washington, ‘The Groaner from Tacoma’.

Despite the business depression that began in 1929, the Dorsey Brothers' Band found itself immune to much of the economic calamity all around it. Joyfully, Prohibition was repealed in 1933, and the night clubs that replaced the ‘Speaks’ hired large dance orchestras. There were also growing numbers of large suburban ballrooms opening and looking for bands.

Having cultivated an audience through years of playing college dances, and with the corresponding record sales during those times which they were featured on, Tommy and Jimmy were in a lucrative spot to start cashing in. Tommy was not selfish about his prosperity.

At the bottom of the economic apocalypse, when the days had been tough, guitarist Eddie Condon, looking back from the 1960’s, remembered the larger than life personality of Tommy Dorsey, and what he had done for others out of work during those bleak times.

“Back in the early ‘30’s, when things were about as tough for jazz musicians as they are now for button-shoe manufacturers, Tommy was only a sideman working in various bands around New York. But whenever Tommy was eating, they ate too. Many a week he would load up a bunch of hungry musicians in a couple of cars and haul us there to Merrick, and we’d play ball and drink beer and eat as though we hadn’t eaten for a week, which in most cases was true. Those weekends made a lot of us feel that the weeks of looking for and never finding any work were actually worth it. Tommy was the greatest host I’ve ever known in my life.”(15)

In 1933, Dorsey collapsed at Plunkett’s, the musicians bar, and was taken to a hospital where an appendectomy was performed. He was convinced that too much alcohol had brought on the attack, and he did not drink for the next ten years. He had already recorded a total of 2000 records with various bands.

In 1934, the Dorsey Brothers were focused on business. They were signed by the well known Rockwell- O’Keefe Talent Agency, which was important to their success. Tommy Rockwell had signed Louis Armstrong to Columbia Records, and become his personal manager for a short period. Partner Francis O’Keefe started out with Jean Goldkette’s booking office, and knew Tommy from that period. O’Keefe brought the Casa Loma band to the musical forefront as their personal manager, and it was the first well known white big band, with great collegiate record sales numbers.

Glenn Miller was with the D.B.O. when it began. He was familiar with the Dorsey’s from the days when the three of them were freelance radio and recording musicians in N.Y.C. He was appointed the D.B.O,’s arranger, music director, and played in the trombone section.

Tommy and Jimmy were co-leaders of the band, but as their vocalist, Kay Weber noted, “If Jimmy wasn’t pleased with something, he would very quietly needle somebody. Tommy would yell. Tommy usually got his way. Tommy was the dynamic one of the duo. He had such charm and was so charismatic that when he walked into a room you knew he was there absolutely.”(16)

Glenn Miller quickly had enough of the brother’s arguments during rehearsals, and left to join Englishman Ray Noble’s Orchestra atop Rockefeller Center in its Rainbow Room. As its chief arranger and music director, his stormy time with the Noble band was capped by a notorious Miller-led walkout of the band for better pay.

Around this time comes a story about Tommy’s ego. One day while recording Duke Ellington’s “Solitude”, trumpeter Charlie Spivak’s solo was so superb it clearly overshadowed T.D.’s effort on his trombone. Tommy ordered another take, but this time sent Spivak out into the studio hallway to play his solo, which, of course muffled his horn and made Tommy’s sound more powerful. (17)

For another look at T.D.’s mental state at this stage, vocalist Kay Weber recalled, “Tommy very rarely rode with the band on the bus. Jimmy rode with us, and some of the wives would ride with us, too. Tommy always had to get there faster.  He always had to be number one. One day, around Altoona, Pennsylvania, while we were on our way to the Midwest, Tommy’s car zipped by us at probably eighty miles an hour and then pulled up in front of the bus, and the bus pulled to the side of the road. When the bus driver opened the door, Tommy strode onto the bus. He was crying like a baby, absolutely bawling, when he came in and said, “Everybody in this band hates my guts!” Everybody was so embarrassed, and so surprised. Drummer Ray McKinley was very articulate. He stood up and said, “Well, Tommy, nobody hates you, but we hate your behavior a lot of the time. When you organized this band, you led us to believe that you were picking people that were decent people as well as good musicians, and we expect to be treated as such. You have treated us in a very bad way at times, and it’s not that anyone hates you, but we don’t like your behavior.” Suddenly, Tommy stopped crying, and he was “I love you, Mac!” and all that kind of stuff. He was [suddenly] as happy as a clam. This happened when Jimmy was there. He didn’t say a word.” (18)

In other areas of D.B.O. life, the band’s vocalist had originally been Bob Crosby. He had sung on two 1935 hits recorded by the band on Decca, “Lullaby of Broadway, and “Chasing Shadows”. Still, Tommy resented the fact that Bing had suggested him. This made Tommy feel as if Bob had been “chosen” to sing with his band, and it didn’t set well. Rockwell-O’Keefe began calling Tommy, telling him to use Bob more often on the radio. At one swanky club rehearsal for an evening broadcast “(Tommy) began needling him…Tommy kept calling off names of tunes and saying, ‘Can you sing this one and that one?’, and Bob kept saying “No”, until George Thow, who was a Harvard graduate and never talked very much, called out from the back of the band, “Can you sing?!” It was cruel but it broke the tension, and even Tommy laughed. Bob was totally embarrassed.” (19)

The final straw broke at a recording session not long after when Tommy turned to Bob and said “Why did I have to pick the wrong Crosby?” (20)

Bob left to lead his own highly successful orchestra, using members of the recently disbanded Ben Pollack band in a ‘cooperative’ band, where players owned shares in the organization, like the Casa Loma band had done successfully. In hindsight, most of the records Bob made with the Dorseys, under terrible stress, are now literally interchangeable with the voice of his more accomplished brother, Bing.

Another glimpse of Tommy’s temperament as the band’s popularity kept rising played out at a distinguished night club during a show. Bobby Van Eps, the band’s pianist, became angry with Tommy, and while the relief band was playing between their sets, told him, “I’m just tired of your nonsense, Tommy. I’m giving you my notice right now…”Tommy leaped at him like a tiger. Bobby fell back against the backstage clothes rack where the chorus girls’ costumes were hung and became tangled up in it. Tommy screamed that he was going to kill him and kept pummeling him…Nevertheless, Van Eps stayed with the band. “Tommy had a way of sweet-talking musicians who wanted to leave, and often succeeded in getting them to change their mind,” vocalist Kay Weber noted. (21)

The tension continued between the brothers. Singer Bob Eberly, who the Dorsey’s heard and hired at a date in Troy, N.Y. in April of 1935, and who would go on to fame with Jimmy’s band, remembered: “Tommy was doing everything, leading the band, making up the radio programs and all the things a leader does. He resented Jimmy for several reasons. For one thing, Jimmy was drinking quite a lot, and Tommy, even though he may have wanted to, didn’t. That alone made him mad. But then Jimmy used to needle Tommy too. He’d just sit there in the saxes, and when Tommy was leading he’d make cracks like, “Smile, Mac!” and “You’re the big star!” and that sort of thing. Tommy just kept working harder. I remember how he used to drive himself. He never had more than five hours of sleep a night.” (22)

Also in April of 1935, Tommy bought a twenty acre estate named “Tall Oaks” in the horse country of Bernardsville, N.J. for $32,000. The house had nine bedrooms, seven fireplaces, a swimming pool, tennis courts, two staff apartments (there were six on the staff), and a wall around it topped with barbed wire. Tommy altered the top floor, making it into a dormitory with bunk beds and five showers for the band and guests. The large dining room contained a large block of Anthracite coal placed in a strategic location to remind him and all who entered where he was from. He told friends that he “never felt more relaxed than when he was just sitting on the spacious front porch of this mansion, hidden far back from the highway.”(23)

At the zenith of the Dorsey Brothers' Orchestra’s success, which happened around Memorial Day, 1935, Tommy quit the band. The group had been settling in for the summer season at the Glen Island Casino, in New Rochelle, N.Y.

At the start of a number, Jimmy said to him “Hey Mac, that’s a little fast, isn’t it?” Tommy looked at him sitting in the saxophone section and said “You want to take over? It’s yours.” He packed his horn and left the stage. He then took a vacation to Walled Lake, Michigan to hide, until the manager of the Glen Island Casino found him, and sent a message to Tommy demanding he return and finish his season contract, or face a disastrous law suit. He ambled back from his vacation in late July, finished the season without talking to Jimmy, and left again. Jimmy got the band. Tommy was on his own.

                                         THE TOMMY DORSEY ORCHESTRA

The first Tommy Dorsey Orchestra was built by a pianist named Joe Haymes, a cousin of the as yet unknown singer Dick Haymes. Joe was a brilliant arranger and a shrewd judge of talent, but couldn’t project himself as a leader. Tommy spotted the band at a Walled Lake dance hall, liked what he heard, but noticed the weak spot in leadership, and privately telephoned a mutual friend he and Haymes shared to bounce an idea around. Tommy wanted Haymes’ band, he said. The friend, understanding Tommy’s predatory nature, played defense for the absent Haymes. He listened and responded as such: Haymes would stay on as arranger, and would be paid $100.00 a week whether he produced work or not. Haymes was not to be fired. “If you fire him, the band goes or the music goes. [All of Haymes arrangements] Take your choice.” (24)

Tommy got the band. Haymes got his promise. The promise lasted six weeks, then Tommy fired him.

Tommy was not yet thirty when he took Joe Haymes' band to New York City. He hired a new manager, and contracted with Music Corporation of America’s Willard Alexander to book the band. He also signed a contract with RCA to record.

Tommy’s timing was perfect. His band opened at New York’s French Casino on September 1, 1935. Only one week earlier, twenty six year old Benny Goodman had made a big splash at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The stage was being set rapidly for what would become the ten year long big band era.

The band’s theme song, “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” had to be re-recorded ten times because of Tommy’s solo mistakes. He waited a month, and then recorded the famous version on October 18^th, 1935 without any more trombone errors, but with a slightly out of tune piano.

Right from the start, Tommy’s temperament was issue #1 within the band. Third trumpeter Sterling Bose, who T.D. immediately zeroed in on because he was always smoking pot and drinking heavily, played the ‘hot’ trumpet parts in the book. Tommy had stopped drinking, and he was thin-skinned with those who did. He came down hard on Bose one night as the band bus approached Boston in zero degree weather. Suddenly, smelling marijuana, Tommy bellowed “Who’s the Hop Man?!” Hop being what Pot was called then. “You guys think you’re playing better on that stuff, but you’re not.” (25) He ordered Bose off of the bus, ten miles from their destination. Tommy threatened to fire the whole band if Bose showed up drunk again. The next night Bose showed up drunk, and Tommy fired the whole band. He rehired them a few days later at the urging of his manager.

Two months later, Bose told Tommy he was going to quit the band to join Ray Noble’s more sedate orchestra atop Rockefeller Center in the Rainbow Room. Tommy said he wanted a month’s notice. Bose said no. Bose stayed up all night drinking in the back of the bus, honing his anger at Tommy. The next morning he began yelling at Tommy from the back of the bus. Tommy walked down the aisle of the bus in a loud torrent of profanity directed at Bose, “If you want to quit this outfit, I’ll show you how to leave!” (26) He picked up Bose by the shirt collar and the belt of his pants and carried him up the aisle and threw him out the bus door.

Between 1935 and 1940, over 250 musicians were hired and fired by Tommy. Trumpeter Max Kaminsky remarked “Working for Tommy Dorsey was like cooking on a hot stove that might explode at any moment, and always did…His temperament was so volcanic and his rages so explosive…no one was safe…he took pleasure in the fight for the sheer love of fighting, and as mad as you could get at him, it was hard to stay mad because he got over it so quickly, with no trace of animosity.” (27)

During a performance at Duke University the band was playing its soft theme song, “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”, and a new, young trombone player in the band was so nervous that he pushed the slide of his trombone right out of the horn, and it flew clanging into the footlights of the stage. The band broke into hysterical laughter. The trombonist sat frozen, wondering what would happen. Tommy fired him.

Tenor saxophone player Bud Freeman, a Chicago school of jazz legend in his own right, joined the band. He had known Tommy for many years, from when they freelanced together on gigs and recording dates. He too felt the heat of the Dorsey temper. One night, as the band was playing the Commodore Hotel in New York, Tommy became so mad at the band’s sound that he walked off of the bandstand and hid for several days. Freeman located Dorsey and telephoned him, calling him “a big f-----g baby.” (28) Dorsey remained silent. This was an unusual provocation, but it was from a friend. He came back to the bandstand smiling and moved on without mentioning it again. Freeman continued: “[Dorsey] would become angry, and we’d shout back and forth and he would say “You’re fired!” At the end of the night, he’d call my hotel and say, ‘Would you like to have a bite?” I’d join him… At other times I’d quit and he’d say, ‘Come on back!’ As it turned out, I was fired three times and quit four times because I had to be one up on him. The day I left Tommy I went down to his dressing room to say good-bye. No one had done that before because whenever anyone had left it had always ended in a big fight.” (29)

Tommy hired drummer Dave Tough to give the band a good grounding in rhythm. Tough was alcoholic, literary, and had been present for parts of the Paris Scene in the 1920’s. Although his intellect called him to writing, his obvious money making talent was in his natural rhythmic coordination. He had a superb sense of time and taste, the kind that boots a band into a cohesive tight, unit. In my essay on Woody Herman which follows this piece, I go into greater detail about Dave Tough.

In 1936, the T.D. band was becoming well known as one of the better bands to dance or listen to. Recordings by Tommy’s vocalist and mistress, Edythe Wright on “The Music goes Round and Round”, featuring his band within a band, “The Clambake Seven” reached #1 on the Billboard record sales chart. Even with all the sudden success, related trumpeter Max Kaminsky, there wasn’t a week that went by that Tommy wasn’t ready to shut down the band and quit touring. Tommy’s hair was turning gray with stress.

T.D. would hear Jimmy’s orchestra on the radio from Hollywood backing Bing Crosby on the “Kraft Music Hour” program, and he’d think of the nice California weather, while he found himself on a bus with musician’s literally lighting small fires on the aisle floor to keep warm, before they retired to sleep on hard wooden bus seats on overnight jumps.

Tommy resisted stopping the bus for bathroom breaks unless it was a true emergency. He would have the band push the bus out of snowdrifts and up slippery, hilly roads. When the bus broke down or collided with other vehicles, he was up and out of the bus like a commanding officer, hat pulled down over his eyes in the snow, barking commands to get the police and tending to any wounds.

And yet there was that other, generous side of Tommy. In cold weather, out of the blue, he would stop the bus and go into a small general store and buy enough ear muffs, scarves, coats, and sweaters to clothe the whole band. Then he himself would even assist the new owners of his largesse in donning their warm winter wear.

When the weather was warmer, he would pull the bus over next to a flat field and organize a baseball game for the band’s exercise.

He would often pay for every musician’s dinner in restaurants after they finished playing. These attempts to bond with his musicians often kept them confused about their feelings towards T.D.

Brown and Williams Tobacco Company sponsored the “The Tommy Dorsey Show” during the summer of 1937. Broadcasting from Rockefeller Center NBC Studios in New York, the band was making $250,000 a year. Tommy was titled “The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing” on this program, and with the popular vocals of Ms. Wright and Jack Leonard going out to a national audience, it seemed like the band had finally made it somewhere.

In March of 1938, Vocalists Leonard’s recording of “Marie” was the biggest hit in the U.S.A. T.D.’s “Song of India”, another hit, was on the “B” side. That disc sold 150,000 copies when 20,000 was considered a giant number. Those two songs took the Dorsey band to a level of pop prominence that few other bands could imagine.

A family friend of T.D.’s from coal days, who once had played with T.D.’s father, sent Tommy a song he had written called “Dancing with You”. T.D. had it arranged, played it at dances for a few years, then with no discernable reaction from the public, sent it to “The File”, as he called his shelved arrangements. That was usually the end of the tune. There was something about the song that Tommy liked, however, and he didn’t forget it. Bud Green, the later lyricist of the famous 1945  Les Brown/Doris Day hit “Sentimental Journey” , was asked to rewrite the lyric to “Dancing with You”, which he  retitled “Once in a While”. T.D. hit the jackpot with the reworked lyric. It became the ASCAP Prize Song of 1937, and enjoyed number one status on “Your Hit Parade”, longer than any other song in the history of that program. The following year, Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra grossed more than $600,000.

Through the years Dorsey shied away from soloing on records because of what he called his “strictly Civil War” playing. Dorsey’s later drummer Louis Bellson noticed that Tommy did like repetitive riff pieces more than most leaders. They were easy to swing and he kept a close eye on what easily got the public dancing.

He felt intimidated by trombonists such as Jack Teagarden when they were in the same studio on special record dates such as Metronome Magazine All-Star Band sessions. Coincidentally Glenn Miller came up short in the same improvisational area on his horn. But both Dorsey and Miller had compensating talents: Dorsey as a brilliant technician with his horn, and Miller as an extremely gifted musical technician with arranging abilities.

During the summer of 1939, as people came to see the New York World’s Fair, Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra was playing the Roof Garden of the Hotel Pennsylvania.  Air conditioning was still expensive, and on clear summer nights, hotels in many cities offered their roof-tops as cooler climates for dining and dancing. The Hotel Astor Roof on Times Square, the Hotel McAlpin Roof in Herald Square, and up in Boston, the roof of the Ritz Carlton on Arlington Street, were regularly used in those days. Connected by radio microphones to the late night listening nation, they were also coveted places by band booking offices because of their famous names.

The Hotel Pennsylvania at 34^th Street and 7^th Avenue, directly across from the enormous old Pennsylvania Railroad Station, would play a particularly prominent role during the band era. Its ‘Café Rouge’ downstairs was also a dance floor and restaurant, which successfully hosted the biggest name bands. See my separate essay on Glenn Miller further down the page for a detailed description of what was left of it in the late 1990’s.

On the roof of the Hotel Pennsylvania movie stars gathered with famous athletes and even the President’s son, F.D.R., Jr.  As all generations, they were attracted to the popular bands of their day.

Tommy Dorsey instinctively dressed the part of cultural icon. He owned sixty suits and sports jackets, most tailor-made, forty pairs of slacks and forty pairs of shoes. He wore matching neckties and socks “in every color imaginable”. (30)  

To keep a well-pressed look he always took off his coat and trousers first thing backstage. He put on a robe until the next show. Even his undershorts buttoned directly to his shirt so that the shirt would not wrinkle. His socks and undershorts were monogrammed with his initials. (31) His eldest daughter, Pat, remembered years later that “He would never allow himself to blow his nose on anything but a twenty-five dollar handkerchief.” (32) 

Tommy had hit his stride as a genuine star, and he loved it. He loved the money, adulation, signing autographs, and making deals. As his fame and power in the industry grew, so did his assuredness, particularly his appetite for subversion and sabotage. Just getting even with rival band leaders wasn’t good enough. His ‘raids’ on other bands, stealing their most talented members, were well known and expected. There was little his opponents could do when he offered not only much more money for their work, but a promise to make them bigger stars, and he delivered what he promised them.

Let’s look at Dorsey through the cautionary tale of his dealings with his old friend and employee, Glenn Miller.

In that same summer of 1939 as T.D. played the roof of the Hotel Pennsylvania, Miller hit it big for the first time up in New Rochelle, N.Y. at the Glen Island Casino, Dorsey had seen it coming. From the days back when Miller was still a bachelor and Tommy invited him to live at his estate in Bernardsville, N.J. with his wife and family, he was wary of the ambitious other trombonist he had once hired. Tommy seemed to be aware of the wisdom of “keeping your friends close, but your enemies even closer”. In 1937 he loaned Glenn five thousand dollars to keep his second orchestra alive. It was a life-saver loan for Miller, whose band was about to collapse financially- again. Both Glenn and his wife Helen were grateful for the loan, which was paid back soon, as Miller's popularity rose through 1938. Miller thought that was the end of it.

But that was not the way Tommy saw things. He felt that since he had kept the band alive, he owned a piece of the band’s fortunes in perpetuity. There was an angry dispute, and they parted ways, or so Glenn thought.

Tommy had loaned other leaders money when they were in trouble. But there is no record of Harry James, Artie Shaw or Larry Clinton feeling obligated to pay Tommy back anything more than what they had borrowed. Tommy’s long professional, personal and competitive relationship with Miller made his friend’s success hard to accept, and their parting edgy. Tommy immediately sought revenge.

During 1938, Tommy startled an unknown tenor saxophonist, Bob Chester, and asked him to front a new band. Chester happily obliged. Tommy wanted it to sound exactly like Miller. Using his clout, he had the unknown band signed with RCA’s Bluebird subsidiary label, the same one Miller recorded on. Then he hired several writers to produce musical arrangements that were indistinguishable from Miller’s own.

Bob Chester and his Orchestra became moderately successful. The public was unaware of who he was or where he came from, but they liked his Miller-like sound and bought his records. He was booked into the best hotels and dance halls to play, and to this day his name comes up on lists of that era’s noted second-tier leaders. But there was a ceiling on how much Chester could draw on Miller’s success, for Miller was extremely successful, and no one was going to catch him by 1941, no matter how hard they tried to sound like him.

While attending auditions for Chester’s vocalist in 1938, Dorsey crossed paths with twenty three year old Frank Sinatra. He had been singing in small clubs and on the radio when he could. He hadn’t been discovered by Harry James yet, and nothing much was happening in his career. When the day came for him to audition with the Chester band, Sinatra saw Tommy Dorsey sitting at a table in the rehearsal hall. He had a panic attack. When he approached the microphone he froze. He opened his mouth to sing, but nothing came out.

After Frank implored Chester to give him another audition, he sang well enough to be hired for at least a few dates with Chester’s band at the Hotel New Yorker, near Pennsylvania Station. A less inauspicious introduction of Dorsey to Sinatra is hard to imagine. But Tommy never forgot “That kid who couldn’t get a word out at his audition”.

That same year, while on an all-summer west coast stay that had Tommy’s band doubling at the Palomar Ballroom and broadcasting the Raleigh-Kool radio program, T.D. auditioned his most famous future female vocalist, Jo Stafford. She was singing in a group which originated at Long Beach High School calling itself “The Pied Pipers”. It consisted of seven young men and Jo. Tommy was impressed with the singing group’s close harmony backing Jo’s very fine vocals. He had no need of them at the moment, but would be back to hire them several months later.

Between August 16 and 22, 1938, the band recorded four songs for RCA. One of them used Howard “Pine Top” Smith’s boogie woogie piano style that got the normally more straight ahead band rocking. Tommy’s record, titled simply “Boogie Woogie” was his business attempt to outdo all of the other boogie woogie arrangements making a splash with the public that summer. The number is notable for Tommy’s inspired “blues” trombone solo at the end. It was released shortly thereafter, but nothing unusual in sales figures occurred. On its reissue in 1942 however, it sold over a million copies.

Tommy called the Pied Pipers to appear for five weeks on the Raleigh-Kool radio show in December of 1938. They drove to New York City from Los Angeles in two cars. They made a good impression on the program, finished out their five week gig, and were fired. Unemployed, they drove home to L.A.

After a less than marvelous review of his band in “Downbeat” jazz magazine, Tommy did what he always did when he was mad. He set out to beat his antagonist through competition. He started up “Bandstand”, a publication that featured real ‘inside’ articles on playing and the music scene written by musicians themselves. Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and many sidemen were given the opportunity to write about their music. The man he chose as Editor, Jack Egan, was picked because he had been doing publicity for Tommy. Egan knew how to garner attention for the band, and Tommy appreciated his hard work and success. But Egan realized how difficult it would be to be told what to do, what to say, and how to write it- by Tommy. The political fallout from Tommy’s editorial choices could also complicate Egan’s own professional options in the music business after Tommy was done with him. He turned down the job.

Even without Egan, the magazine grew within six months to a circulation of 180,000 copies per month. It’s operating cost of $65,000 to produce left Tommy wondering what he had created. Without true interest in journalism, nor the patience or ability to hire publishing professionals he would not antagonize, Tommy called it quits on “Bandstand” after six months.

In 1948, Jack Egan would accept the position as editor of “Downbeat” magazine.

Jimmie Lunceford’s band, which Metronome Magazine editor George Simon labeled “without a doubt the most exciting big band of all time.” (33) consistently drew far larger crowds than either the Duke Ellington or Count Basie bands. Because of the special attraction of Lunceford’s music, Tommy was soon going to conduct one of his most “out of the box” raids on another band’s talent to date. Lunceford’s band featured Willie Smith on the alto saxophone,  drummer Jimmy Crawford, and the gifted trombone playing vocalist Trummy Young. But what Tommy wanted was the key to its singular two-beat rocking swing. He wanted the band’s arranger, the self-taught musician who played trumpet for Lunceford, Melvin James “Sy” Oliver. He was nicknamed “Sy” because he had studied psychology in college. The two-beat swing  which he fashioned for Lunceford hits like “Dream of You”, “Swanee River”, “Margie”, “The Organ Grinders Swing”, “For Dancers Only”, (Lunceford’s theme song), and the famous ‘Taint Whacha Do”, sold so fast after they were released that the band at times had three hits on the Billboard Pop Charts at one time. (34)

Although Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra won the “Sweet Band” category award in 1939, and was playing exactly the kind of sentimental music he had sought to play in order to sell records and make money, Tommy was bored. He felt boxed-in, surrounded by famous, blasting swing bands, whose excitement and audience was growing along with their record sales. Even Glenn Miller was swinging more than Tommy. John Hammond, a voice not taken lightly in the music business, having discovered and promoted Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman and Count Basie, wrote that Dorsey’s band was “about the dullest big band on the market…[He] has let me and the rest of the public down with inferior musicianship and a basic lack of sincerity.” (35)

The biting words, especially his “sincerity” being called into question, moved Dorsey to quickly reach for the meticulous catalyst within the Lunceford band to re-tool his own band’s sound.

Tommy had been introduced to the Oliver two-beat concept while recording “Lonesome Road”, a composition by twenty two year old Bill Finegan. Finegan had been influenced by Oliver’s arrangements on Lunceford’s records. “Lonesome Road” ran long, and was released on both sides of an RCA disc, which despite the “pick it up and turn it over in the middle”, sold well.

T.D. was excited about approaching the swing-gap in his band’s music in a novel way- he told all of his musicians one night that instead of the usual rehearsal, he wanted all of them to go out and listen carefully to Jimmie Lunceford’s band at a nearby hotel in Manhattan.

As the summer of 1939 began, Dorsey spent a night at a hotel in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, for a reason lost to history. Sy Oliver, also in the NYC region at the time, had been approached by two musicians- mutual friends of both Oliver and Dorsey- and had been asked if he was at all interested in talking with Dorsey about becoming the band’s arranger. Oliver agreed to talk.

Oliver knocked on Tommy’s hotel room door. Tommy was shaving at the sink. Oliver entered and after a few words of greeting, Tommy asked, “How much is it gonna’ cost me to get you to come with my band?” “Five thousand a year more than Lunceford’s paying me,” Oliver immediately replied. (36) Dorsey agreed to the salary increase and finished shaving.

Tommy’s band manager, Bobby Burns, was the first to inform Dorsey that if he was going to have a swing band, he might ask the best available swing drummer to power it.

Given the green light, Burns approached Buddy Rich, who was then starring with Artie Shaw, at the pinnacle of his own success as a swing band leader, and asked Rich to think about joining the Dorsey band. Rich was unaware of the personnel changes underway in Dorsey’s band; for example the recruitment of well-known swing trumpeter Zeke Zarchy, and lead alto sax player Hymie Schertzer, and of course he didn’t have a clue that Sy Oliver would be arranging in a few months, or that Artie Shaw would walk off the stage at the Hotel Pennsylvania and quit the music business, leaving his band, including Rich, stranded on the stage as Shaw drove all night through a snowstorm toward Mexico. Rich dismissed Burns’ employment proposal with an appraisal of Dorsey’s band up until that time: “It’s strictly a dance band. It’s a society band, no jazz in it.”(37)

Fortunately, Shaw suggested Rich find another band to play with, not telling him he was about to quit himself. Shaw went about letting him go using psychology to allow Rich to make his own choice. In Shaw’s estimation, he stated to Rich, Buddy was too self-involved in his drumming. Shaw got Rich to admit that he was, in fact, playing more to “satisfy himself”, [than the band]. (38)

In November of 1939, Rich heard that Oliver had been hired by Dorsey. That changed his perception of the potential this new band might have. He was hired by Dorsey for $125.00 per week.

Rich brought with him an ‘attitude’ that would not stop, and if Dorsey himself was not directing the band for a set, “he would either write a letter on his snare drum, eat something from the hotel kitchen, or read a magazine” on the stand, recalled trumpeter Zarchy. (39)

Dorsey asked Oliver to write some arrangements to feature Rich, recognizing the amazing talent he had hired. Rich was a singular genius in his own way playing a drum set. Dorsey also realized the potential draw the powerhouse of visual and vocal enthusiasm Rich represented. B.R. not only propelled the band with rhythmic authority, but shouted out to the musicians around him, enjoying their solos and encouraging their best work.

Dorsey accepted the normally disqualifying fact that Rich could not read the drum parts, or any music. Tommy would have another drummer read and play new arrangements with the band while Buddy sat in front of the bandstand, and Rich, with his photographic memory, could play it back with the band after one hearing. This is how Rich would learn new arrangements for the rest of his life.

In the autumn of 1939, Jack Leonard, T.D.’s vocalist, quit the band because he was tired of Dorsey. Before leaving he’d asked T.D. if he had heard Harry James’ record of “All or Nothing at All”, sung by Frank Sinatra. Dorsey had not. The vocalist T.D. hired in Leonard’s absence didn’t work out, and Tommy sent him to sing with Bob Chester. A few weeks later, Tommy’s music industry friend Jimmy Hilliard again brought Dorsey’s attention to Sinatra, asking Tommy, “Have you heard the skinny kid who’s singing with Harry James? He’s not much to look at, but he’s got a sound! My back was to the bandstand, but when the kid started taking a chorus I had to turn around. I couldn’t resist going back the next night to hear him again. He’s got something besides problems with acne. Harry can’t be paying him much, maybe you can take him away.”(40) 

Both Dorsey and James were playing in Chicago soon after this conversation. Dorsey had his browbeaten, very young band manager, prodigy trombonist Bobby Burns, track down Sinatra. After locating the singer in a theater, Burns wasted no time. He tore the corner off of a brown paper bag and scribbled a note to be given to Sinatra when he came off of the stage where he was performing with James. The note told Sinatra to meet Dorsey in T.D.’s suite at the Palmer House the following afternoon.

Sinatra nervously knocked on Dorsey’s door the next day. After Sinatra introduced himself, Dorsey replied, “Yes, I remember that day you couldn’t get out the words.” (41)

Sinatra auditioned with the Dorsey band, and was hired for $125.00 per week. Harry James let Frank leave his band with best wishes, knowing that he could not offer Frank any more money. He even told Frank that if things didn’t pick up for his own band, he might join Dorsey too.

Inspired by the changes his new hires had already brought to his band, he called Jo Stafford in California in December of 1939 and told her that he wanted a singing unit within the band, but he did not want all eight of the Pied Pipers. Jo told him that her group was now down to three plus her now. They were hired and told to meet his band in Chicago at the Palmer House.

Jo Stafford first heard Sinatra sing at his first appearance with the Dorsey band in Milwaukee in January of 1940. “As Frank came up to the mic I thought, “Hmmm-kinda thin?”’ But by the end of eight bars I was thinking, ‘This is the greatest sound I’ve ever heard.’ (42) Vocalist Mel Torme, a close friend of Buddy Rich at the time, described Sinatra then as possessing “… a fresh, original sound, [with] astonishing breath control, perfect intonation, spotless enunciation, and a warm vocal quality that impressed the paying customers.”(43)

Despite the fact the Sinatra had left High School in Hoboken, N.J. after only 47 days, he was an avid reader, “which gave him a clearer understanding of the intrinsic meaning of both individual words and phrases, which in time led to his becoming a storyteller extraordinaire.”(44)

Tommy Dorsey introduced Frank Sinatra to Buddy Rich right away; “I want you to meet another pain in the ass”, recalled Sinatra in 1987. “That’s what we were in the band. Between Buddy complaining that the tempos were not quite proper and my saying that there weren’t enough ballads in the library, we drove the old man crazy.”(45)

Both of them were immediately in competition to be the biggest star in the band, which was impossible, because Tommy had to be the biggest star. Frank had the advantage of being the vocalist, which put him front and center with the audience. As he had done for Rich, Dorsey asked Oliver to write arrangements featuring Sinatra. The slim vocalist’s hair would sometimes fall down across his forehead, presenting the girls with a seductive lure to match the voice. At one show, after introducing Sinatra, Tommy saw Frank’s hair hanging across his forehead and stopped the band. “He bellowed loudly so that everyone on the stage could hear him, “Go back there and comb your G--Damn hair!”, remembered Burns’ assistant, Morris Diamond, “I was standing in the wings when Frank came to me and asked me to get him a comb, which I did, and after combing his hair he went back onstage.” (46)

On February 1, 1940 Sinatra entered a Chicago recording studio with the band, and made the first two of what would be a total of eighty-three records with Dorsey. During the next three years, twenty-three of those records reached the Top Ten on the Billboard Chart. (47)

“Tommy was a very lonely man,” Sinatra later recalled. “He was a strict disciplinarian with the band- we’d get fined if we were late- yet he craved company after the shows and never really got it…We all knew he was lonely, but we couldn’t ask him to eat and drink with us because it looked too much like shining teacher’s apple. Anyway one night two of us decided to hell with it, we’d ask him out to dinner. He came along and really appreciated it. After that he became almost like a father to me…I’d sit up playing cards with Tommy till maybe five-thirty every morning. He couldn’t sleep ever: he had less sleep than any man I’ve ever known.” (48)

In 1940, yet another vocalist joined Frank and Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers in the band; Connie Haines. Sinatra took an instant dislike to the competitor, but she was cute, could put a song over, and Tommy loved it. Frank and Connie made some smash hits together as a vocal duo with the band, the most famous being “Oh, Look at Me Now”.

Rich and Sinatra were becoming violent in their dislike for each other. According to Tommy Dorsey biographer Peter Levinson, “‘San Francisco Chronicle’ columnist Herb Caen came upon Rich trying to annihilate Sinatra backstage at the Golden Gate Theatre. He recalled Buddy was ramming Frank against the wall with his high F cymbal that you play with your foot. Frank was screaming and swinging at him. Finally, Tommy broke it up with the help of a couple of guys in the band.”(49) Rich was tired of using drum brushes at ballad tempos behind Sinatra. He used derogatory racial slurs when addressing Frank. Jo Stafford was sitting backstage at the Astor Roof writing a letter home on the waiter’s table. Suddenly, after being provoked by one of Rich’s remarks directed at him, Frank picked up a heavy pitcher of ice water and heaved it at Rich’s head. Rich ducked. The pitcher smashed into the wall so hard that it left shards of glass sticking out of the plaster. Rich lunged at Sinatra and pummeled him. Sinatra slugged back. Other musicians in the band separated the two. Dorsey showed up and said that he could do without a singer for a night, but he had to have a drummer. He sent Frank home.

A couple of nights later Buddy was walking to a nearby restaurant for a fast snack between sets. On the way back to the Astor, he felt a tap on the shoulder. He turned and was sucker punched and then beaten by two men.

He went back to the Astor in a daze and sat behind his drums. The September 1, 1940 front page of “Down Beat” magazine told the rest of the story:

                                  BUDDY RICH GETS FACE BASHED IN

New York- Buddy Rich’s face looked as if it had been smashed in with a shovel last week as Buddy sat behind the drums at the Astor Hotel.

No one was real sure what had happened except that Buddy had met up with someone who could use his dukes better than Rich. Members of the band- several of them “tickled” about the whole thing- said that Buddy “went out and asked for it.” (50)

Mel Torme relates in his book on Rich, “Buddy had a pretty good idea why the attack had taken place. Robbery was certainly not the motive; nothing had been taken. The beating had been coldly efficient and professional. That it was a “put-up job” was a certainty in his mind. And he thought he knew who had arranged it. He told me one night just before Sinatra left Dorsey (September 3, 1942) he quietly approached Frank and asked him point blank if the mugs who had flattened him two years before had done so at Frank’s request. “Hey, it’s water under the bridge,” Buddy assured Frank. “No hard feelings. I just want to know.” Sinatra hesitated, and then admitted that he had asked a favor of a couple of Hoboken pals. Rich laughed, shook hands with Frank, and wished him good luck on his solo career. (51) 

One day on the Dorsey bus, Buddy Rich had numerous band members mad at him, for all sorts of reasons. When the bus pulled into a dusty parking lot next to a dance hall that they were to play that night, the band members literally lined up to take him on, one at a time, next to the bus. Rich was holding his own, swinging punches and creating a dust storm rolling around on the ground with his attackers. Dorsey was inside the hall, talking to the manager about the night’s performance. When he heard the yelling and saw the dirt cloud near the bus, he ran outside hollering as loud as he could, “Take the f---- band jackets off! Take the f----- band jackets off! 

Trumpeter Bunny Berigan was with the band off and on until the 1940 season. His great trumpet sound was legendary, and he and T.D. went way back as friends. As beloved as he was, his undependable behavior due to too much alcohol finally forced Tommy to replace him with Benny Goodman alumnus Ziggy Elman. Ziggy was more discreet, filling a soft drink bottle with whiskey, slipping it into his jacket, and sipping it through a straw as he played on the stand. Among his most memorable contributions to the band was his trumpet soloing on “Hawaiian War Chant”, standing next to Buddy Rich, in one of the two spotlights provided for them at each stage show.

Tommy, meanwhile, although finally at the top of his career, had a few personal problems to distract him in 1941.

First, his wife Toots filed for divorce, due to Tommy's continuing romance with Edythe Wright.

Next, Bobby Burns, who had been hired as a high school trombone prodigy by Dorsey, and who Tommy had depended on as the band manager and problem shooter for many years, got tired of the hassles and quit. Tommy hired Benny Goodman’s manager, Leonard Vannerson, to replace him.

The band had already appeared in the film “Las Vegas Nights”, and now they were scheduled to perform in their second movie, “Ship Ahoy”. While in Los Angeles, they played an extended engagement at the “Palladium” dance hall, one of the largest in the U.S.

In February of 1942, Frank Sinatra let Dorsey know that he wanted to leave the band and have a solo career. Tommy told an interviewer, who knew how upset he was the night he found out about Frank’s plans, “Yeah, but he’s (Sinatra) such a damn fool. He’s a great singer, but ya know, you can’t make it without a band. Every singer has got a band behind him. Does he think he can go out on his own as good as he is?...It upsets me because he’s an important part of our band.”(52) 

Artie Shaw was the first well known band leader to enlist during the war. He chose the U.S. Navy, and formed a service band that island hopped all over the Pacific, playing for troops. Dorsey hired the string section Shaw left behind; seven violins, two violas, and a cello. Tommy added a harp. Sinatra sounded great at their next Paramount Theatre opening, and loved the strings behind him. Buddy Rich did not.

Bunny Berigan, Dorsey’s old friend and longtime trumpeter who T.D. had to let go in 1940, died at age 33 on June 2^nd, 1942. Tommy had been at his hospital bedside for several days before he died, and paid for the funeral. Along with Harry James, Berigan's fellow trumpeter in the famous Benny Goodman band of the late 1930's, he set up a trust fund for Berigan’s children.

On July 12, Tommy's father died, after suffering several strokes, at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. He was 70. He had been teaching music in Landsford, Pa. for nineteen years.

1942, was not a great year, with many setbacks and defeats for America in the Second World War. Dorsey, like everybody else whose future was at stake, made the war his focus. Having been born in 1904, he was too old to be of service to the armed forces, so instead he played free benefits to attract people to buy war bonds, which helped underwrite the cost of the conflict. He also recorded many “V” or Victory Discs, which were records made just for the soldiers, flown to them for their enjoyment and morale in battle zones. After finishing a very successful run at the Paramount in New York, T.D. donated his last week’s pay, $7,500 to the Navy Relief Fund. He took his band to play military hospitals around the country for the returning wounded veterans, and played at military camps for those shipping out. He also played U.S.O. hospital shows, which were broadcast on the global Armed Forces Radio Network, and at least a half dozen other military-aimed radio shows under various names from “Mail Call”, to “Coca-Cola’s Spotlight Bands”. He appeared 250 times on the latter show, the most of any band.

Dorsey’s other focus was to make it as tough as possible when it was time for Sinatra to leave the band. He had signed a three year contract with Tommy in January of 1940 that expired at the end of 1942. Sinatra could not even get Dorsey to talk with him about the subject. Frank recorded some of his most memorable songs during this rough period, such as “Street of Dreams”, with the Pied Pipers.

Then he bolted. He cut a fast deal with Dorsey that gave Tommy 33 1/3 % of his gross earnings for life and another 10% to Leonard Vannerson (This was a commission for Vannerson’s signing Sinatra to his new label, Columbia). On top of this Frank had to pay his new ‘corporate agent' agency (General Amusement Corporation) another 10% for signing him.

His new agent with GAC, Frank Cooper, could not believe the catastrophic contract he was reading when Frank showed it to him. “We can’t do this! This is crazy. You’ll be broke all your life because there’s a thing called income taxes on top of that." (53)

Frank stared at Cooper and said, “I wanted to get out. Don’t worry. I’m not paying him a quarter. He can do whatever he pleases”. (54)

                    THE RISE OF THE SINGERS AND DECLINE OF THE BANDS

In 1942, when he had an issue with record labels, imaginarily thinking that records were taking live jobs from musicians by recording them, tough Music Union chief Caesar Petrillo stopped all recording by union instrumentalists. Vocalists were exempt, and this black-out of any new popular instrumental music, tightened focus on the singers. They could harmonize back-ups for themselves with other vocal groups, not using any actual musical instrument to do so, and it was quite a loophole for performers like Frank Sinatra, now out on his own.

Dorsey had seen the strike coming and had been stockpiling recordings for the event. Hits such as “There Are Such Things”, with Sinatra and strings, was released during the ban, and became Dorsey’s third million-selling record. Another record was a double sided hit: Sinatra’s “It Started All Over Again”, with the instrumental “Mandy Make Up Your Mind” on the other side. Even the old 1938 recording of “Boogie Woogie” was released again and now became a million-seller. (55)

While all this was happening, the contract dispute with Sinatra went forward. Sinatra hired lawyer Henry Jaffe to represent him. In August of 1943 Jaffe and Dorsey’s lawyer, N. Joseph Ross, came to an agreement. Dorsey would get sixty thousand dollars. Thirty–five thousand of the settlement was paid by MCA, which now would manage him. More money was paid by Jules Stein to Tom Rockwell of General Amusement Corporation. And finally, Mannie Sachs got Columbia to pay the rest- “$25,000, as an advance against Sinatra’s future record royalties. (56)

1943 saw Dorsey’s loss of both trumpeter Ziggy Elman and drummer Buddy Rich. Elman was drafted and entered the Army Air Corps, and Rich enlisted in the Marines. During the war, no less than 42 of Tommy’s musicians were drafted.

In 1944 Dorsey hired a new singing group, “The Sentimentalists”, which replaced the Pied Pipers, who had left in 1942 after an argument between Clark Yocum, the band’s guitarist, (and also one of the Pied Pipers), with Dorsey after Yocum gave Dorsey the wrong train schedule. The Sentimentalists were the four Clark sisters, from Grand Forks, North Dakota. The sisters had already appeared on the radio version of “Amateur Hour” and in U.S.O. shows. (57) The Sentimentalists performed the Pied Pipers tunes, as well as some new hits. Their November, 1944 recording of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” shared a disc with “Opus #1” on the flip side.

Sy Oliver had written and arranged “Opus #1” in 1942, but it was played at a middle tempo infrequently. Now, with the quick drum and brass staccato introduction, which Dorsey specifically asked Rich to perform behind the opening notes-  right through to the bombastic finish, “Opus # 1” is one of those, for lack of a better word, “miracle” recordings where everything works.

Of the disc’s flip side, “Sunny Side of the Street”, Dorsey’s then guitarist Bob Bain“considers its introduction ‘one of the greatest ever written’, again, by Sy Oliver. At the bridge of the arrangement there is a memorable muted trombone chorus- played by the entire Dorsey trombone section- which restates the theme and serves to introduce the engaging four-part harmony of The Sentimentalists.”(58)

Dorsey’s featured clarinetist, Buddy DeFranco, whose spirited solo on the recording of “Opus #1” had made a splash, locked him into replaying it note for note, per Dorsey’s orders, every night on the road. One night DeFranco, who was young and Boppish, played a solo so far out that Tommy fired him. He then got a stay when Dorsey claimed he needed to have eight weeks to replace him because of the lack of musicians available. DeFranco left the band in February of 1945.

Tommy, like his friend Louis Armstrong, referred to Bebop as “Chinese Music”. Buddy Rich loved it and kept talking it up to the old man, but other than an admission by Charlie Parker that Jimmy Dorsey “had been one of his major influences on alto saxophone”, Bebop left Tommy cold. (59)  Dorsey’s musicians such as Dodo Marmarosa, Sid Cooper, and DeFranco loved how Parker played. They were young and hip, and open to all new sounds. Sid Cooper notated several arrangements of only Parker’s solos for the saxophones in the Dorsey band, (Think ‘Super Sax’ of the 1970’s) and they covertly played them when they weren’t performing on stage in theatre basements. One day Dorsey came upon them playing their experimental saxophone team arrangements, and told them to “Keep playing. I just wanted to hear what you guys were up to.” When they finished a few numbers, Tommy asked, “What is this stuff? I really like it.” When they explained to him that it was Bebop, he became angry and left the basement slamming the door. (60)   

Enjoying California more than any other place on his long tours, as well as the great crowds he enjoyed at Hollywood’s new Palladium, Dorsey wanted to buy his own ballroom in Los Angeles. The Palladium, as stunning as it was with its gigantic floor, radio wire, and wall to wall defense workers having fun after their shifts in the war factories, posed a problem. They wouldn’t pay Dorsey what he thought he deserved. If he owned a ballroom, he could set his own salary, and stay off the road as much as he wanted. With his new interest in staying around California, he sold his large estate in New Jersey in 1944.

He found a ballroom for sale in Ocean Park, California- now part of Santa Monica- and bought the “Casino Gardens” located on the Ocean Park Pier, for fifty thousand dollars. Both brother Jimmy, and to a lesser extent, trumpeter Harry James, agreed to be partners. They opened in September, 1944. The place was full every night. As usual, Tommy had it all — but no wife to share it with.

Two years after Tommy and Toots divorced, (“Toots was a nice lady,” said Tommy's friend Larry Barnet, “she was a homebody who loved to cook a meal for Tommy. She didn’t belong married to a show business person.”) (61)  Tommy, now 37, eloped to Las Vegas on April 8, 1943 and married 24 year old MGM starlet Pat Dane. At that time, Tommy was also under contract at MGM appearing in films with his band.

They both enjoyed life in Hollywood and made the most of it, seen everywhere together.

Sy Oliver was drafted in 1942. In 1944 he was a staff sergeant. He could only write for Dorsey when he had time, so Dorsey hired two new arrangers, the aforementioned Sid Cooper, and Nelson Riddle. Cooper also played in the band’s brass section. Both of them arranged for a growing, all female string section, and the band expanded to 46 musicians between December of 1944 and June of 1945. Dorsey told Riddle, “I like your writing, but you’re relying too heavily on the “mice”, which referred to the strings. You’re making them too important. I’m thinking of getting rid of them soon. They’re basically a tax deduction so I want to keep that flexibility, but when I get rid of them I want arrangements that the band can still play.” (62) The string section did, in fact, disappear when the war ended.

His friend Larry Barnett described Tommy’s emotional state at the time. “He had the uncanny ability to fall asleep momentarily during business meetings, only to regain consciousness and pick up where he left off. He laughed easily and had an abundance of charm. He willingly helped musicians in financial trouble and didn’t want anybody to know about it. And he couldn’t do enough for musicians whose work he admired…When alto saxophonist Hymie Schertzer told him he was planning on getting married, Dorsey had a jeweler bring over a tray full of rings to pick from and then insisted on paying for the wedding ring.”(63) Bill Finnegan referred to Dorsey as a “volatile character who generated an aura of excitement about himself. You got within three feet of him and there was electricity in the air...Anyone who got into a position of power after being around Tommy acted like Tommy.” (64)  And this ‘voltage’ from a man whose daughter stated, “If he didn’t have his glasses on, he couldn’t see the food that was put in front of him.”(65)  

In February of 1945 trumpeter Charlie Shavers was the first full time African-American member of the Dorsey band. He would leave and return to the band in the years ahead until the very end, and always had a complicated relationship with Dorsey. But Dorsey knew that there was no denying that he had one of the greatest trumpeters he’d ever hired, and recognizing this, he fired and hired him back time after time.

In the autumn of 1945 station WOR in New York City, the leading station of the powerful Mutual Radio Network paid Dorsey $300,000 a year to be its musical director and become a disc jockey on his own show, heard Monday through Friday. His commentary on his musical selections, and the ease with which he spoke over the air, made the show a hit, and he would go on the road with his band and broadcast from whatever city they happened to be appearing in.  

The level of skill a musician had to possess to be in the Dorsey band after the war was extreme. A new member was expected to know the book, over four hundred arrangements, within two weeks or he was fired.

“He gave everybody a bad time. ‘Cracking’ a note, splitting a note, or missing a note—that didn’t bother him. But coming in wrong, not paying attention— the guy didn’t miss anything. He had eyes in the back of his head", remembers trombonist Karle DeKarske, who was hired in March of 1945. (66) 

Between 1941 and 1946, a Saturday Evening Post article written by Richard English, estimated that the two Dorsey brothers' bands had grossed over $6 million dollars. One might assume that with figures like these, a movie devoted to just the Dorsey Brothers' story would be big at the box office.

“The Fabulous Dorseys”, a black and white alleged biopic of the brothers, starring themselves, got underway in July of 1946. Unless you have a taste for off-beat humor, the result is best forgotten. Perhaps the most memorable moment of the production, recalled trombone veteran Chauncey Welsch, (who was with Jimmy’s band at the time and also an expert on the history of the trombone), was when he found himself marveling “at the fact that at a pre-recording session for the film, Tommy couldn’t find his horn and somebody went out on a scavenger hunt and came back with a prop horn, which was an old Conn 6H. He put this piece of junk up to his face and sounded exactly the same as he always did. This was an amazing thing to witness.” (67)  

Tommy Dorsey, mentor to so many young stars, was aging out as a bandleader at the same time his musical era was closing. He found his own “mentor” to help him make this “unplanned” transition gradually. It was Jackie Gleason. They had met at the Texas State Fair in Dallas on October 5, 1946. Gleason was a small-time comedian with a lot of energy and talent who had the good fortune of being signed to Twentieth Century Fox, where he had played parts in movies with Harry James and Glenn Miller. Probably because of the “film music” connection, he and Dorsey had something in common. Gleason had play-acted in one of Glenn Miller’s two films as the band’s bassist for Trigger Alpert.

Gleason put those he felt had made it to the Big Time with their name in lights above all others. As a lonely, fatherless kid from Brooklyn, Gleason would cut school to go to Times Square and sit in the movie theaters to watch the big bands play between shows. He wanted to see his name in lights someday.

In late November of 1946, Tommy quit the band business. That same month, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Les Brown, Woody Herman, Jack Teagarden, and Benny Carter also disbanded. Never had a musical style that had been so integral to a society collapsed so quickly after only eleven years.

Tommy continued with his Mutual radio show on 450 stations each day. Bored and restless, by April of 1946 TD was ready to start over with a new band. He hired back Ziggy Elman, Charlie Shavers and lifted drummer Louis Bellson, at higher pay, from Benny Goodman’s new band.

He opened at his own Casino Garden ballroom, and using a series of gimmicks to get the kids to come back and dance, lowered himself to giving away slices of pizza on Thursday nights, as well as other prizes on other nights. On Sunday nights, he gave away six diamond rings each week. Even in this desperate time, he managed to gross fifteen thousand dollars a week.

July 3rd, 1946, wife Pat Dane filed for divorce, stating, “There was no home life. I couldn’t take the night life. Tommy, like all musicians, slept by day.”(68) They had been married for four years. They would continue to be lovers for many more years whenever their path’s crossed. 

Tommy met his last wife, Janie New, at the Casino Gardens. She was a 22 year old chorus girl.  Dorsey was 43. They married in Atlanta, Georgia in March of 1948. After the band’s first tour, they moved into Dorsey’s penthouse apartment at 73^rd St. and Park Avenue, in New York City.

Drummer Louis Bellson remembered that previous first tour clearly; “I think of all the bands I ever played with that [Dorsey] band was the hardest-working band of them all. We did five months of one-nighters in one stretch with no days off, five hundred miles on the bus a day. That meant we played a gig from nine to one, but he always played nine to one-thirty. He wanted to impress the promoter by playing an extra half hour. We’d pack up the bus, make a food stop, and then travel all night and get to the next stop about twelve noon. After sleeping on the bus during the night, we’d check into a motel and sleep for three or more hours, then get up, get ourselves ready, and have dinner on the gig. Now you worked three hours on the gig without stopping from nine to twelve midnight. Then you took about a twenty minute break and played until one-thirty. If he was mad at the guys- which he pretty often was- the cutoff would be the downbeat for the next tune. In other words, you’re playing straight through without a break; you’ve actually kept going. And he’d be playing right along with you. I looked back at the trumpet section- Doc Severinsen was there, Charlie Shavers, and Ziggy Elman were on the band together for a while- and they were bleeding from their lips. That’s how hard they were playing! And Tommy was saying, “C’mon you guys! What’s the matter with you?” But one thing about him, you knew what he was getting mad at- it was always for a good reason, and it was very obvious. Dorsey would sometimes turn crimson, foam at the corners of his mouth, and then would suddenly cool off and laugh at himself. He wanted you to come on stage dressed right. You couldn’t wear a tuxedo and white socks; otherwise back in the dressing room and get straight. And he wanted you to play your best every night.”(69)  On the flip side of the Dorsey personality was his complicated relationship with clarinetist Buddy De Franco. “If you were sick and needed help, Dorsey would take care of you. I had asthma in those days. It wasn’t until I went in for therapy that I got rid of it. He would tolerate my asthmatic seizures. I would go away for four or five days or go to the hospital…I never got fired for that…I once had a terrible strep throat. He had his doctor flown down from New York…He was that kind of guy. In spite of his tremendous ego, he really was sensible and humble.”(70)

There has often been talk by musicians of the lack of growth in Dorsey’s music during his career- that it was rarely creative or innovative. Music professor and big band leader Loren Schoenberg disagrees.

“Let’s put it this way. If you take the recordings that Tommy Dorsey made at the beginning of his bandleading career…like 1935, and then if you contrast them with the later Decca’s or, let’s say, even the last Bill Finegan things he recorded in 1953- “Blue Room”…and ‘Comin through the Rye’- with the content of what Tommy Dorsey was when he began, I think there’s a greater amount of growth in the music that he did than the music that Benny [Goodman] did…Look who was in Tommy Dorsey’s band. Listen to the records now, and then make your judgments, just from the music…What I’m talking about [is] the rhythm and the harmony and the melody… [no one] had half of the craft and the sophistication of orchestration and composition that Bill Finegan did.”(71) 

One might listen to Finegan’s “Pussy Willow”, or his arrangements of Cole Porter’s “It’s Delovely” or “I Get a Kick out of You”, as examples. Buddy DeFranco summed up the Dorsey aversion to Bop by saying that “Bebop was a listening kind of music, and Tommy [had] a dance band”. (72)    

After all his investment in time, money and gimmicks, in 1949 Dorsey closed the doors on the Casino Gardens Ballroom. He sold it for $150,000. He had paid $50,000 for it five years earlier. Dorsey would be spending a lot more time on the road to make a living again.

In 1950, Tino Barzie, formerly a clarinetist and saxophonist with the post-war “Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra”, wanted to be a band manager. He had already met with Gene Krupa, who was about to hire him, when Dorsey heard about the good interview. He immediately called Barzie up to try him out in the same job with his band. Dorsey wanted him to be in Canton, Ohio, the next day. First Dorsey explained the terms of the contracts of upcoming engagements. The next day Barzie was sitting in Dorsey’s Cadillac convertible while Tommy drove to the next town- Akron, Ohio. “This guy drove like a maniac…He was going seventy-five miles an hour. He plugged his electric shaver into the cigarette lighter with one hand and begins shaving. He’s driving with the other!...At the date in Akron, he asks me how I liked the band. I told him it was great. Then he tells me to give notice to a trombonist, a saxophonist, and two trumpeters- and to get them out of there. I asked him if he had some replacements coming in. ‘No, you get them.’ He said. I got it done, and that impressed him. At the end of two weeks, I showed him all the receipts. Then he said, “You’re not going to leave. You’re going to stay here.” “What about Gene?” I asked. “I’ll straighten that out.” He called the intermediary who was working on getting Barzie the job with Gene and said, “I’m keeping this guy. Tell Gene I owe him one.’” (73) 

On July 11, 1950, Dorsey recorded his last records with RCA Victor. Since 1935, he had recorded three hundred single records for them. Seventeen records reached #1. In all, he had sold 37 million records for RCA; thirteen million of them between 1945 and 1950- after the big band era was over. (74)  The Dorsey band played in Havana, Cuba in 1950, and in 1951 took off on a two month long tour of Brazil. Dorsey insisted that his own six steamer trunks for his wardrobe, be put on the plane or the tour was off. There wasn’t enough space in the DC-4’s cargo space, so the airline bumped 10 passengers, took out the seats, and loaded the trunks in the cabin. Tommy took his new wife, Janie, baby daughter Susan, and a nurse along with him. Because of the down-time for the reconfiguration of the cabin, the plane missed the first take off time and the band was held in Miami airport’s quarantine room overnight. Late in the afternoon of the next day, the plane was so heavy that it had to take off on cruise power, which resulted in an altitude of only 300 feet over the sand of Miami Beach. The plane reached an altitude of 10,000 feet, but then began a descent, leveling at 200 feet over the open ocean. The pilot then announced to the passengers that after 8pm, any aircraft entering Venezuelan airspace would be shot down.

The plane landed first in Santo Domingo, where there was a jam session with local musicians until 5:30 am, then they flew to Trinidad, and then on for a safe, “officially scheduled” refueling stop in Venezuela, and finally to Benem and Rio, in Brazil.

The band first played in Recife in the North for an extended four week stay, also performing a daily radio broadcast. Three other weekdays they flew from Belem around the north of Brazil for dance engagements in other cities.

Dorsey did not enjoy himself in Brazil. He could not communicate. No one in his band spoke Portuguese. Very few Brazilian’s spoke English. His little daughter was constantly ill, his wife was extremely upset.

Worst of all, the band had received no payment for the next four weeks in advance, which was in the contract. Dorsey stayed one week longer, and then flew with his family to Miami. He abandoned all of his own musicians—who were stranded without pay. The Brazilian government angrily took away the band’s instruments, and then gave them back.

The hotel that the band had been booked into in Rio was generous enough to let the musicians sign for anything they needed to survive. Tino Barzie told the band that they would all be paid when they got back to New York. “After about a week, two truckloads of militia escorted us to the airport. We left on a C-46 for Miami”. (75) 

“When I got back to Miami, I had a dollar seventy-five in my pocket,” said trumpeter Buddy Childers. “Phil, another musician from the band, and I slept on the beach in Miami that night. The airline that sponsored the tour brought us back to New York. I had a dime left when I got there.” (76)  

Trying to analyze Tommy, in spite of the Brazilian disaster over money, clarinetist Sal Libero, who had been with Les Brown for nine years after playing in the Glenn Miller Air Force Band, put it this way: “Glenn was a decent guy. To him music was more of a business-type thing. To Tommy the music was more important.” (77) Perhaps neither money or music could have kept Dorsey in Brazil.  

Tommy was aware that there was more “fire” in many of the new bands around him, and his melancholy was apparent when he would ask musicians to compare his band to other bands. Dorsey admitted, “That’s what happens when your personnel is more intact and it’s been [so] since the beginning.”) (78) There had been too much turnover in his band from the start, due to his tempement. By 1953 he had been leading his orchestra for 18 years. He was looking tired and had let his hair go gray, although he did have it crew cut, which was the fashion at that moment. He also did something very unusual in 1953. The year before the first medical articles in magazines that linked illness to tobacco, he quit smoking, putting out his last cigarette after smoking two packs a day for about 25 years.

Although the 1950’s were perceived by the general American public as “quiet”, they were just as tempestuous as any other time. Although outwardly peaceful years passed under the calm President Eisenhower’s administration, the Soviet Atom Bomb scared people, and Senator Joe McCarthy, was creating a paranoia among the public by stating before TV cameras from the U.S. Senate that just about everybody from General George Marshall on down the chain of command in the U.S military was a Communist. This in turn led to anxiety and confusion in the national culture, and a longing for an imaginary time that never existed before or during the Second World War. They wanted the world as they thought they had understood it, back. The big bands were a part of that.

Most of the “live” big bands were gone, but then RCA’s two separate releases in the early 1950’s of Glenn Miller’s music from radio airchecks on Long Play records in albums of 10 records each stunned the recording industry. 

With essayist George Frazier’s long, sentimental introductions in both albums, one bound between solid white heavy covers and the other between gold covers with the famous Glenn Miller Autograph embossed on each set, the albums sold so well, at a very high price, that there was no doubt that the desire for music such as Miller’s and Dorsey’s was still very popular and profitable.

Among the more mundane cultural woes that intruded into the quiet, anxious lives of people who had lived into their thirties: Much of popular music had moved from the melodic and lyrical big bands, into more simple and repetitive Rhythm and Blues, and on to Rock and Roll with electricity powering the instruments, not human breath.

Alongside and in the mix of early 1950’s Rhythm and Blues were the surviving former big band vocalists of the previous era, such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Shore and Perry Como. Younger jazz vocalists such as Chris Connor and June Christy sold well too. Musically faddish transitional voices, with their own unique niche among the young- Frankie Laine and Eddie Fisher, had millions of their own fans on the new-sized, higher fidelity “unbreakable” vinyl 45 RPM discs.

Besides Bebop, led by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and their exponents such as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, among many others, jazz varied from West Coast Cool (Gerry Mulligan) to New Orleans Dixieland, and still sold plenty of tickets to the few remaining touring large bands such as Duke Ellington’s, Lionel Hampton’s and Woody Herman’s. Count Basie’s band, with modern swinging charts by Ernie Wilkins, was the gold standard of contemporary bands now, alongside lesser but very commercially successful bands such as those led by swinging trumpeter Ray Anthony and the laid-back sophisticated Les Elgart. Smaller jazz “groups” such as the Oscar Peterson Trio and George Shearing Quartet, the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the Modern Jazz Quartet found solid financial ground on which to experiment with new directions in jazz.

Much attention and airplay was given to Bill Haley and his Comets when they hit the floundering Rhythm and Blues music market and converted it into a new form labeled Rock and Roll. Haley led the first white group to take black Rhythm and Blues to a large 45 RPM record market of white teenagers.

Tommy’s band still attracted young adults to his new semi-permanent gig at the New York Statler, which was previously known as the Hotel Pennsylvania. Jackie Gleason, now at the zenith of his popularity at CBS, kept the Dorsey brothers in the spotlight. It couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment. For the first time Tommy was beginning to fully realize the changing culture of American music, and he was alarmed and slightly depressed. Though great friends, Tommy was acutely aware that Gleason was involved more and more in the control and direction of Tommy's career.

Head of CBS Programming at the time, Mike Dann related:“Tommy was an idol in Gleason’s eyes because of his importance in music. He felt that Tommy Dorsey was the greatest bandleader of the 1930’s and 1940’s, and that there was no one like him. Since Gleason really did have nine lives, if he came back as a musician, he would have been Tommy Dorsey- there’s no doubt about it.”(79)

Soon after hearing rumors of a reunion band of the Dorsey brothers, Gleason planned a television program to showcase them. He would call it “The Fabulous Dorseys.”

Urgency required that everybody move fast, for Jimmy had recently divorced and hit bottom, living in New York’s Warwick Hotel, spending his days drinking, chain smoking, growing a beard, and bankrupt on account of his manager’s larceny. He had apparently given up on the band business, and could barely function, personally.

Tommy dispatched Tino Barzie to pick up Jimmy at the hotel, pay his bills, fly with him to Atlanta, Georgia, and join Tommy’s band, which was on the road playing comfortable gigs. Jimmy’s outlook immediately improved.

Gleason reunited the brothers officially in April of 1953 at the University of Virginia’s “Easters” weekend, which was a big celebratory party weekend each year. Tommy had played U.V.A. for three years straight, and the school presented him with a plaque as the “Most Favorite Bandleader” to ever play the campus.

The brothers were reunited again, with Tommy integrating Jimmy’s band’s arrangements with his own. Tommy paid Jimmy $500.00 a week, then upped it to $1,200 a week, but Jimmy did not receive a cut of the gross earnings. Jimmy would lead the band with his own old hits for 30 minutes, and then Tommy would stride out into the spotlights and lead for the rest of the evening with his own band’s arrangements.

Gleason worked the Dorsey brothers into one of his “Honeymooner” skits on “The Jackie Gleason Show”, playing themselves. (Plot: Ralph hired Tommy’s band to play the bus driver’s benefit ball, and Alice had hired Jimmy’s for the same event.)

The reunited Dorsey Brothers orchestra continued to tour very successfully until the next Gleason show appearance, in which Alice Kramden found Tommy’s briefcase on a bus. The Dorseys show up at the Kramden apartment to pick it up, and as a reward they are invited to the Dorseys New Year’s Eve show at the Statler Hotel.

Gleason’s next move for the Dorseys, was as the stars of his summer replacement show, “Stage Show”, in 1954.

The show was booked with guest stars of the Dorsey’s, such as Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, The McGuire Sisters, and The Four Aces. They both played solos with Armstrong on the Louis program, and that episode and its ratings brought the show stature.

Around this time, an MCA agent named Eddie Collins had this take on Tommy’s personality: “Tommy would have been a great Irish politician. He could talk to people and charm them. When you walked into a restaurant with Tommy he knew so many people, and he knew all their names. When he walked into a room, you knew he was there—he had that kind of personality. People liked Tommy, and they should have. I never saw the mean side of him. I found him very humorous. Tommy was a good dancer. He was also a gentleman. He would get up when a woman came to the table, and right away he’d pull a chair out so she could sit down”. (80) 

Each time Gleason took a vacation, the Dorseys would fill in with “Stage Show”, with guests such as Duke Ellington, popular singer Johnny Ray, and Patti Page, who was one of the top female Pop recording stars of the 1950’s.

Tommy had an unerring sense for new talent. As they started their careers, Bobby Darin, Della Reese and Connie Francis all got a boost from Tommy’s “Stage Show”.

The Dorsey band still toured when not appearing at the Statler in New York. The television exposure Gleason provided had given Tommy a renewed vigor, and again he was a large contemporary name in entertainment. Trumpeter Lee Castle remembers arriving in a cab in front of the T.V. studio with Tommy at that time:

“We sat in the cab. I noticed Tommy putting hundred-dollar bills in his fingers. All of his cronies, guys you hadn’t seen in years, who had seen hard times, would wait there for him. Tommy would shake hands with each of one of them and give him one of his one-hundred dollar bills He did that all the time. Sinatra did the same thing. It had rubbed off from Tommy. At Christmastime, I would go with him to send food and clothes to a lot of people. He used to say to me, “If word of this leaks out about this, I’ll know it’s you. You keep your mouth shut!” The hard years in Shenandoah and his memories of the Great Depression were never far from his thoughts.” (81)  

In February of 1956, it was reported in “Downbeat Magazine” that Dorsey had signed a contract worth a million with the Statler Hotel in New York. The contract called for the Dorseys to play at the hotel for six months each year until 1960. Tommy and Jimmy were also guaranteed seven thousand dollars a week and a large cut of the cover charge percentage. They had Jackie Gleason to thank for this. Their television appearances had convinced the hotel of the economic viability of their orchestra.

In the winter of 1956, Tino Barzie was looking for new talent for “Stage Show”. “I started looking around for new acts—like some country-and-western people. Somebody [Steve Yates], a country music agent turned me on to an act handled by [Colonel] Tom Parker. I asked, “What’s his name?” “It’s Elvis Presley.” I said “Elvis? What kind of a name is that?” I tracked Presley down in New Orleans [where he was headlining “The Louisiana Hayride”] and spoke to Tom Parker. I told him we’d like to use Elvis on several shows. He was thrilled to death. I booked Elvis for the following Saturday. I bought him for three shows for a total of five thousand dollars…” (82) 

At the first rehearsal Presley “Showed a great respect toward Dorsey”, said Barzie. But Gleason made it clear, “I don’t like this guy.” Tino Barzie remembered Tommy’s response, “I like his kisser [his face]. Don’t worry about him.” (83)  The other musicians in Tommy’s band didn’t know what to make of him. They laughed at him. They thought he needed a haircut and a bath. When the rehearsal ended, Dorsey turned to drummer Louis Bellson and said, “You see that guy Elvis Presley—he’s going to be one of the biggest names in show business in a short time”(84) Elvis quickly went on to appear on “Stage Show” six times. His first songs were Joe Turner originals: “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, followed by “Flip, Flop and Fly”. In his second program appearance, he sang “Tutti Frutti” and “Baby Let’s Play House”. The third show with the Dorseys had him belting “Heartbreak Hotel” with Tommy’s band blasting behind him with sharp stop and start blues riffs. The William Morris Agency, which had negotiated the contract, wrote in an option for two more shows if the first four proved successful. Col. Parker asked for a higher pay rate of $1,500 each for the last two programs. For the last to next appearance, Tommy introduced him; “His entertaining and provocative style has kicked up a storm all around the country. Here is the one and only Elvis Presley!”(85)  

After the Dorsey shows, everybody wanted Elvis. He appeared on the most popular show on television, The Milton Berle Show, and then the late night Steve Allen Show. Only after these three programs, beginning with the six original Dorsey shows, did he appear on the Ed Sullivan show, the man given credit for bringing him to the public.

Until Elvis Presley started selling records, Tommy had sold more records for RCA than any other artist. Once again, just as he had done for Sinatra, Tommy had found, and was promoting, a vocalist who would become much larger than Tommy himself in popular music.

Sinatra had the Number One selling album in the country while Elvis was appearing on the Dorsey Show. Tino Barzie remembered, “Every night, when he would get into the car, the first thing Tommy did was to play with the radio.”(86)  He wanted to hear Frank’s latest album, which was entitled “Songs For Swingin’ Lovers”.

Nelson Riddle, once Dorsey’s arranger and now the Sinatra hit album’s arranger, had pulled together the relaxed swinging bounce of Sy Oliver, the sharp Dorsey band brass attacks, and of course Frank, who had learned how to sing and phrase from Tommy himself. When Tommy would find a station playing the album, he’d listen and say, “That son of a bitch is the greatest singer ever! He knows exactly where to go and what to do. The little bastard used to look at me and watch what I was doing when I was playing and he’d ask me, “How do you hold those notes so long? How do you hold that phrase so long?”(87) Tommy agreed to appear with his band backing Frank at the Paramount Theater in New York for a week while the album was at the top. Tommy’s depression was beginning to surface more. He dreaded returning to the Paramount, the place where he had launched Frank’s career, and now he’d just be leading the band, not the star. Perhaps he was feeling how difficult the ups and downs of the music business were when you weren’t young and Number One. But his drive and ego would not let him slow down. Besides the Statler gig, he was still sitting on a bus on the road for part of the year playing one-nighters. Frank was a mega-star, taking it easy, making movies, and working where and when he chose in only the finest clubs.

In accepting the offer to work with Sinatra for a week at the Paramount for terrific money, Dorsey stipulated in the contract that “I conduct the orchestra. It’s my orchestra.”(87)

He confided in a depressed state to Nelson Riddle, “Nelson, I don’t want Frank to come to rehearsal and give me orders or cast aspersions on me or embarrass me in front of my boys. I couldn’t stand that.”(88) Frank gave Tommy equal billing. Jimmy appeared also, and received half of Tommy’s salary.

On the second night of the Paramount shows, Frank came down with a cold and was replaced with the entertainers Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton and Ed Sullivan, who must have brought along some of his variety show acts.

Despite his depression at age 51, Tommy had his wife, Janie, two small children, and an estate they called home located in Greenwich, Connecticut.

But the marriage was not working. There was alleged infidelity on both sides.

He still pursued money in the stock market, buying one day and selling the next. He put some money in a company that produced buttons for well-known clothes companies. He invested in E-Z Pop, a product that made popping corn easy for almost anyone. He invested in a company whose drinking straws were manufactured in different flavors.

Although he owned two lucrative music publishing companies, as well as the orchestra under contract to the Statler to perform well into the future, old friends such as former Music Corporation of America agent, Larry Barnett recalled later, “I think he began to hate the music business. He wanted to be a successful businessman. I also think he would have liked to be a producer of motion pictures. He liked talking about finances and making money. I suggested that he buy bonds and tax free bonds that were very cheap and you wouldn’t pay taxes on, but he wanted to outsmart everybody else.” (89)  

“Stage Show” ended its run on September 22, 1956. One night a few weeks later, Dorsey, Tino Barzie, and a retired MGM film producer Doug Laurence, who had played with Tommy’s band twice, sat in “Hamburger Heaven”, one of Tommy’s favorite late night haunts in New York City. Doug Laurence remembered, “It was the first time in my entire life [since Doug was a teenager] I had ever seen Tommy suffering. He was a fallen hero. God, he was down. He discussed his upcoming divorce…[Janie] was the first woman in the world, I think, who ever told him that he was too old for her.”(90) 

Janie New filed for divorce on October 24, 1956. The judge suggested that they sleep in separate locked bedrooms in the Greenwich house.

On Thanksgiving weekend of 1956, Saturday night’s Statler Hotel broadcast fell on November 24^th. Afterward, Tommy began the drive home to Greenwich, with his old friend, trumpeter Lee Castle. They had arranged to stop at one of Tommy’s favorite Italian restaurants in the Bronx where they would eat dinner with Vince Carbone, who was helping book the band at the time, and Carbone’s brother. They all left the restaurant for their own homes at 5:30 am.

Arising from bed the next afternoon, Tommy went outside and played with his children and then worked in the garden.

That evening’s dinner consisted of Veal Scaloppini and steak. Tommy had brought the food home from the Italian restaurant the previous night, as he often did for Janie, who enjoyed its cuisine. He had two glasses of wine with dinner and then retired to his bedroom at 8:30 pm to watch television.

Carbone, Tommy’s booking agent, received a call from Tommy around 9pm, and Carbone thought that Tommy was incoherently drunk. Carbone called Janie’s phone in the house and told her to check on Tommy. After she knocked on the door and asked if he was alright, she heard him reply that he was on the phone with Carbone. Janie called Carbone and gave him the update on Tommy’s status. Carbone hung up.

Janie tried calling Dorsey on his private house line once more. Tommy told her he was about to go to sleep. Later, Janie tried the door to Tommy’s bedroom and found it locked. She could hear the Television and Tommy snoring. She called Carbone at 11:30pm to give him an update.

At 10am Monday morning Carbone arrived at his office in the basement of the Dorsey house for his booking work for the band. Janie said Tommy was still sleeping. At 2:00pm that day, Janie tried to open Tommy’s bedroom door, but found it locked. Carbone looked through the keyhole; he could see Tommy lying on his bed. He called Tino Barzie, who told him to break in. Barzie got on a train from New York to Greenwich.

Carbone used a ladder propped against the house and climbed up to the second floor and entered the house through an unlocked window in Tommy’s dressing room. He found Tommy in his bed, fully dressed, with blankets pulled up to his chest. No sign of life.

Carbone quickly called the Greenwich Hospital and the town police. The police found “A gold pillbox with the initials TD inscribed on it. It had a slide drawer with two compartments, which contained both neutral and greenish-colored pills.”(91) 

Dorsey’s body was taken to the Greenwich Hospital morgue. The examiner determined that “Dorsey had died somewhere between 2 and 4 A.M. that morning”. (92)  A few days later it was clarified in the report “That the death was caused by Dorsey’s being anesthetized by barbiturates when he choked to death [on regurgitated food]. (93)

Newspapers across the country headlined the death. The entire front page of the New York Daily News blasted “TOMMY DORSEY FOUND DEAD IN LOCKED ROOM”.

The viewing was held at the Frank Campbell Funeral Home on Madison Avenue in New York. Neither Frank Sinatra nor Buddy Rich attended, although Frank’s mother Dolly Sinatra came over from Weehawken, N.J. to say goodbye to Tommy, a friend she had always enjoyed talking with since Frank had started singing with the Dorsey band. The Campbell home was full with over 300 people both on the main floor and in the gallery. An organist kept repeating Tommy’s theme song, “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”, with the wrong chord changes each time. Some of Tommy’s musicians were seated together and one of them said to the rest, “If the Old Man [Dorsey] doesn’t climb out of that box and kick the s--t out of that guy, then I know he’s really dead.”(94) 

Twenty three limousines drove to the Westchester County town of Valhalla where Tommy was interred surrounded by two stones. One vertical that simply had DORSEY inscribed on it, and another horizontally placed with the inscription “Thomas F. Dorsey, Jr. 1905-1956” and below that “Tommy” and then, “November 19, 1905 and November 26, 1956”, and then were etched the first four bars of “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.” Below the score was an engraved bell of a trombone with the inscription “The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing.”(95) Jackie Gleason paid for the funeral, plot and stones.

Jimmy Dorsey died of lung cancer on June 12^th,1957, after recording one last huge hit, “So Rare”. Arranged by Neil Hefti, and recorded only two weeks before Tommy died, it infuriated Tommy after he heard a test copy because of its Rock and Roll sound. He threatened to buy and burn every disc.

Together, the Dorsey brothers, in an age when mass-marketing was non-existent, had a total of 286 top-forty Billboard Pop Chart hits. Combined they had sold 110 million records.

Tommy left no will and $15,000 in the bank. Janie sold the heavily mortgaged Greenwich house for $90,000, and moved with her children to an apartment. Tino Barzie sued Tommy’s estate and won $22,000 for an unpaid loan that had never been paid back when he managed the band.

Janie sold the lucrative Dorsey music publishing companies and tapes that Tommy had made of the band over the past couple of years to CBS, which released an album called “Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey in Hi-Fi”. It made her some money in 1958 as it rose to #8 on the Billboard Chart.

Janie owned the rights to Tommy’s library of music. She decided to support herself and her children by forming a new Tommy Dorsey Band with trombonist Warren Covington as its leader. The band, under many leaders since, continues to tour.

Tess Dorsey, Tommy’s mother, moved back to the area of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and died at the age of 93 on June 22^nd 1968. She was always proud of what her sons had achieved and the happiness it had brought to so many people.

Trumpeter Ziggy Elman passed away on June 26, 1968. He was 54. His own orchestra had failed after he left Dorsey in the late 1940’s. He became a studio musician in Los Angeles, but always found it difficult to make the transition from being on the road, to random studio calls for recording sessions. By 1968, he was very ill and teaching occasional trumpet lessons.

After a decade in the 1950's of freelancing, playing with the Harry James band, forming big and small groups of his own for recording, Buddy Rich re-joined Harry James in 1962, and then in 1966 started his own popular big band. Johnny Carson, the host of America’s “Tonight Show” (and a drummer), invited Buddy on his program 59 times. Rich opened a swank night club in New York in the 1970’s called “Buddy’s Place”. The call of the road, which he had been on his entire life, being the highest paid child star in vaudeville, proved too strong, and he toured the world with his big band until his death from brain cancer on April 2^nd, 1987. He was 69.

Sy Oliver went from Tommy’s band to a rewarding career at Decca Records, going on to become an independent recording producer. By the 1970’s and 1980’s he was leading small groups at the Rainbow Grill at Rockefeller Center. He also assembled big bands for Carnegie Hall performances that played the hits from his Lunceford and Dorsey years. He was 77 when he passed away in New York on May 28^th, 1988.

Frank Sinatra continued to sing concerts until 1994. Vince Carbone was his personal manager. Frank Sinatra, Jr. led the band. Frank Sinatra Sr. died in Los Angeles, California of a heart attack on May 14, 1998. He was 82.

One opinion of the Tommy Dorsey band, surely debatable, was put forth by composer Gunther Schuller in 1989, who wrote, “Always a traditionalist, Dorsey would in his last years permit a Neal Hefti  to bring a more modern orchestral and phrasing style to his band, or a allow a Bill  Finegan to introduce a few bi-tonal harmonies and modern chord substitutions. But these were essentially cosmetic changes, never affecting the Dorsey orchestra’s basic traditional stance. Ultimately this was primarily a matter of repertory, for Dorsey…never understood the fundamental truth that jazz is first and foremost a creative music. Dorsey could never think of jazz in creative terms or as instantaneous creative composing, equating it instead narrowly with Dixieland, already an anachronistic style when Dorsey started his orchestra…Except for Sy Oliver’s work in the 1940’s Dorsey never came in contact with jazz as jazz or in terms of jazz repertory, but was quite content to linger forever in a world of popular songs dressed in semi-jazz attire…With all the difficulties, personal and professional, of Dorsey’s late years, he maintained his trombone-playing at an uncommonly high level to the very end. And although he could not make the transition to the modern era, his superb trombone playing, in itself an artistic statement, will be remembered for generations to come.”(96)

When Sy Oliver was told that Dorsey had died, he said. “They say no one is irreplaceable, but I’d like to see someone replace Tommy.”(97)

References (1) p. 4 Peter J. Levinson; “Tommy Dorsey: Livin’ In a Great Big Way”, 2005. Da Capo Press, Cambridge, Mass. (2) ibid. p.4 (3) p. 6 (4) p.8 (5) pp. 14-15 (6) p. 99 Frederick J. Spencer, M.D. “Jazz and Death”, 2002. University of Mississippi Press. (7) p.17, Levinson. (8) ibid. p.21 (9) p.24 (10) p.25 (11) p. 27 (12) p.31 (13) p. 34 (14) p. 41 (15) p. 44 (16) p. 55 (17) p. 56 (18) p.57 (19) p. 51 (20) p. 51 (21) pp. 54-55 (22) pp. 59-60 (23) pp. 60-61 (24) p.69 (25) p. 77 (26) p. 78 (27) p. 78 (28) p. 80 (29) p. 80 (30) p. 91 (31) p. 92 (32) p. 92 (33) p.105 (34) p.105 (35) p. 105 (36) p. 106 (37) p. 109 (38) p.109 (39) p.109 (40) p.110 (41) p.111 (42) p.114 (43) p. 52 Mel Torme; "Traps  the Drum Wonder, The Life of Buddy Rich", 1991. Oxford University Press. New York, London. (44) Levinson, p. 117 (45) Torme, P. 53 (46) Levinson, P. 116 (47) Ibid. p. 115 (48) p.101 James Kaplan, "Frank, The Voice"; 2010, Random House, Doubleday. New York, Toronto. (49) Levinson p. 150 (50) Torme, pp. 62-63 (51) Ibid. p. 63 (52) Levinson, P. 152 (53) Ibid. p.156) (54) p.156) (55) p.160 (56) P. 164) (57) p.174) (58) p.186) (59 p.187 (60) p.188 (61) p.169 (62) p.176 (63) pp. 179-180 (64)p.180 (65) p.180 (66) p.198 (67) pp. 202-203 (68) p.211(69) pp.216-217 (70) p.220 (71) pp. 226-227 (72) p.228 (73) p.236 (74) p.236 (75) p. 243 (76) p.243 (77) p.250 (78) p.250 (79) p. 258 (80) p. 273) (81) p. 284 (82) p. 288) (83) p.288) (84) p. 288) (85) p. 290 (86) p. 292 (87) p. 293) (88) p. 294) (89) p. 296 (90) p. 298. (91) p. 300) (92)  p.300) (93) p.300 (94) 303 (95) p. 303) (96) Gunther Schuller,"The Swing Era";1989; Oxford University Press. New York, Oxford. pp.691-692) (97) Levinson p. 30

Jazzsight Profile: Harry James 
'The Man With The Horn'

For insight into the life of big band trumpeter Harry James, it helps to understand how a personality develops amid the constant travel of a circus. His youngest years were spent moving, sometimes daily, between out of town farm fields on the pre-interstate highway days of roads that were often unpaved. After the big circus parade into town the tents would be set up in a field on the outskirts.

Unlike many children who spend their youth in a steady home and the order of the classroom, Harry had no permanent address until his father settled in Beaumont, Texas when he was a teenager.

He had a natural feel for music, and a demanding trumpet coach of a father. He was given the responsibility, and respect, to lead a musical unit of the circus band when he was only 12. His mind was free of the normal constraints of childhood. He already had an audience for his work each day.

Harry grew up caught in the  thunderstorms which blew in across the flat plains ripping tents and scattering circus crowds, and in Spring mud which forced the circus crew to trudge a mile into town to find breakfast. He played to crowds beneath blue skies of high summer and nights lit with incandescent lights on the white way. This was the backdrop of life that formed Harry's personality.

Harry James was born on March 15, 1916 in Albany Georgia at the St. Nicholas Hotel. Both of his parents worked in a popular touring circus, "The Mighty Hagg Shows". Harry's father, Everette Robert James (1884-1955) was born in New Orleans and was a cornetist, trumpeter, and leader of the circus' 15-piece band. Harry's mother, Maybelle Stewart Clark James (1891-1941) was a trapeze artist and aerialist noted for her ability to "lift 500 pounds with her teeth" while performing her "iron jaw" trick suspended above the ring. Both parents toured with the circus for twenty years. (1)

Harry was 11 days old when his parents carried him on stage. Like child vaudeville drummer Buddy Rich a few years later, Harry started in show business by banging out march-time on a drum bigger than him, at age one. He began playing on a set of drums at three, and was featured with the band and took over the drummer's chair entirely at age four, when the drummer became sick. He was able to play two, hour-and-forty-minute shows each day.

His mother taught him the many tricks of the circus trade, including contortion movements from her own act, and he became known in the show as the “Human Eel".

Harry began playing the cornet at eight years old. Skinny Goe, a trumpeter in the Christy Bros. Circus taught Harry the rudiments of the horn. His father, Everette, recognized his ability. By 11, he was playing fourth chair in the circus band, and shortly afterward he became First Cornetist.

By 12 Harry was given leadership of the show's Second Unit Band, and his name first appeared in Billboard Magazine as the “youngest circus bandleader in the world.”

Harry’s dad used W.C. Handy’s compositions in the circus music repertoire, and Harry's ability to play the blues began to develop. “Memphis Blues”, “St. Louis Blues” as well as standards of the day like “Tiger Rag, “Milenberg Joys” and “Wolverine Blues” were also played daily. (2) Harry even copied his father’s stance on the bandstand, which stayed with him all of his life. As a pre-teen, he would practice the Arban Trumpet exercise book between 2 and 6 hours a day under his father's tutelage.

When the family quit the circus and settled in Beaumont Texas, Harry was already 13. As a seventh grader in 1929, he was asked to join the Beaumont High School Band. He had already found his way to the only jazz club in Beaumont, and was playing there with Vic Isirillo’s band.

His Dad kept his son's passion for playing baseball second to trumpet practice. He was only allowed to go outside and play when he had mastered each day's music exercise. This was a great motivational method, he later admitted, for it got him outside faster than if he had had a set practice time period. If he could do it right, he could go out. “Whatever success I may have had was due to my father sitting me down and really making me practice and practice and practice.” (3)

The business depression of the 1930’s shut down a lot of small travelling shows, and Everette James decided to stay in Beaumont because the Spindle Top Oil Company was still solvent, and employing locals. The company also had a 24-piece band, and it asked Everette to lead it. Harry, of course, was a featured player. At this time, Harry also started to play baseball on the Island Park American Legion Team. A sharp-eyed scout for the Detroit Tigers noticed his fielding talent and hitting skills, and he nearly joined the Tiger’s Beaumont Farm Team. But then something happened that changed his life.

In 1931 Harry entered the Texas Band Teacher’s Association Annual Eastern Division Contest. He won first place performing Herbert Clark’s “Neptune’s Court”. One of the high school musicians present, Bill Abel, remembered: “It was so outstanding. To hear a kid that young play so excellently, so perfectly, was just earthshaking. There were a lot of good trumpet players in High School, but none of them like that- so completely above every other musician in the whole state contest. He astounded the judges so much that they wanted to give him 100%, but they said they had never been able to do that, so they gave him a 98%. I knew Harry was headed for big things”. (4)

Harry decided to pursue music as a living. His education ended with his graduation from Jr. High School. He started to play in local dance bands. His father made it clear he did not want him becoming a jazz musician. A trumpet student of Everette’s, Tom Jenkins, recalled “The older guys would sneak Harry out at night to play jobs that the old man didn’t like.” (5)  Another musician from Beaumont, Jack McGee, a bassist, said “Harry was such a talent he didn’t stay long around here... he could sight-read a trumpet part from 100 feet.” (6)

Everette James was not making the money he was used to making in his circus days. Knowing this, Harry asked to go out on his own, play trumpet, and help the family financially. He first attempted to sit-in with the band of Anson Weeks in Port Arthur, Texas, but wasn’t allowed. Next came a nervous audition with Lawrence Welk at the Baker Hotel in Dallas. According to James, “Welk asked me what else I could play and I told him the drums. But that wasn’t enough. He wanted guys who could play at least 4 or 5 instruments, so I didn’t get the job." (7)

Harry then auditioned for violinist Joe Gill and his “Phillips Flyers”, who were based in St. Louis, but were playing a date in Beaumont. Harry easily played the band's "St. Louis Blues" chart, which was the most difficult arrangement in the book. He was familiar with the song from playing it regularly in his circus days, and Gill was impressed with his technical skill and musical intuition. He was hired. In a few days he joined up with the Gill Band in Galveston, Texas. He was paid $60.00 a week until the band ran out of gigs and he then returned to Beaumont and joined some other local working bands playing Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana spots.

Next, he found employment with Art Hick's Orchestra. Hicks featured a vocalist named Louise Tobin during the band's 3-month stay at the Sylvan Club in Arlington, Texas. Harry and Louise began to date. Art Hick's band was featured as "America's Newest Dance Sensation" and both Harry and Louise were prominent on the band's posters. They were married a few months later, May 25, 1936, by a Justice of the Peace in Millerton, N.Y.

When the Hicks band's bookings began to slow, Harry was asked to take a pay cut, and he quit the band. He joined the Herman Waldron band, which specialized in quiet, dinner music. He began to lose his strong embouchure, playing 3rd trumpet with this band, while being paid $55.00 a week.

Well known jazz drummer Ben Pollack heard about Harry's talent and hired him for $75.00 a week. Pollack encouraged him by letting him play the jazz trumpet chair. Pollack himself was recognized as one of the first popular jazz drummers to play four beats each measure on the bass drum.

During the previous decade Pollack's band had been the first stop in the big leagues of music for Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. In 1928 it was known by other musicians as the "only white big band playing real jazz." (8)

By 1934, Pollack's fiancée, Doris Robbins, became the center of things in the band. Pollack wanted to make her a singing star, and the rest of the band took a back seat. Eventually, they all quit and left to form another group under the direction of Bob Crosby, Bing's younger brother. Harry stayed with Ben, playing and driving the band bus. With Pollack, James began a recording career, starting with "Song of the Islands" and "Jimtown Blues", recorded on September 15th and 16th, 1936.

Metronome Magazine's George Simon met Harry the same month. Simon wrote: "I found him to be a very enthusiastic guy with a great deal of understanding of life in general as... young as he was...He was quite mature because of his circus upbringing...travelling around the country so much and never settling down. He had learned to fend for himself." (9) 

Tommy Dorsey, attempting one of his regular raids on another band's talents, tried to get James away from Pollack to join his band, but his offer was refused.

Benny Goodman's brother, Irving, a trumpeter in Benny's band, wanted to leave the group for another job. He suggested Harry as a replacement. When Benny heard James on the radio, he immediately called and hired him for $150.00 per week. Benny told him to come to New York City and begin playing with the band at the Hotel Pennsylvania. Harry left Pollack on good terms, and never forgot what Pollack had done for him. He remained supportive of Ben in his future varied careers as musician, restaurant owner, and later, small-time producer.

After the three-day train ride from Los Angeles to New York, Harry said, “I was so nervous I was shaking. I was so excited to go with Goodman.” (10) Benny was playing a benefit with pianist Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa when Harry first showed up on the bandstand at the Pennsylvania. The band was playing “A Fine Romance” with Lionel Hampton leading from the drums. Harry’s turn at taking a chorus of the song came up, and Harry remembered later: “Lionel called out, “‘Pop’s’, play another!” Then he called out “Play another!” again, and the next thing you know I’m playing 6 choruses in a row. At the dinner set, Benny finally came in, and after the set I was standing in back, but I could hear Lionel saying excitedly to Benny, “Hey, Hey, Hey! Pops! This guy can play!” (11)  A few nights later, an irritated Goodman asked brother Irving, (who admitted he had heard James a year earlier) “Why didn’t you tell me he was so great!"

James' first recordings with Benny Goodman were “Never Should Have Told You”, “You Can Tell She Comes From Dixie”, “This Year’s Kisses” and “He Ain’t Got Rhythm”, on December 30, 1936. The recording sessions often took place at 9:00AM, after the band had just finished a long, late-night gig at the hotel.

Lionel Hampton said of Harry’s joining the band: “Having a trumpet player from Texas gave us …juice. Harry had something of his own to contribute and he sure could hit those high “C’s” and “F’s”. He had a black sound, and it was obvious he had been raised musically around black musicians. He was completely different from any other white trumpet player of his day. When Harry came he enthused the section and gave it some real style. He played “gut bucket”. The band didn’t have that fire or expression till he came along.” (12)

In analyzing his own style, James explained, “Personally I like and play a rolling style in the two-or-four-bar phrases. To play this rolling style, or lots of notes style, you must have a basic knowledge of chords and progression and perfect control of your instrument…when you make a good, clean entrance and a “planted” exit, your playing has acquired polish. It’s only natural that a good beginning will enable you to create ideas more freely.” (13)

James' alter ego in Goodman's trumpet section was Harry Finkelman, known as Ziggy Elman. Ziggy had also played baritone sax, piano, trombone and vibraphone in the Alex Bartha Band that made its home on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.  Arthur Rollini’s wife, Eva, heard him there, and recommended him to Benny Goodman. As a section, the trumpets with Goodman played a tad sharp in order to add brightness to the overall section sound.

Goodman trumpeter Jim Maxwell, said "Sometimes I think that after Bunny (Berigan) left Goodman's band the brass section lost the really beautiful tone quality it had had. The guys who followed, Harry James, Ziggy Elman, and the rest, they used Selmer trumpets and shallow mouthpieces and got that very bright, brittle sound. It was exciting, yes, but for me something had been lost." (14) Goodman trumpeter Chris Griffin noted, “Harry once said to me, “I’ve never heard anything in my head that I couldn’t play on the trumpet.” (15) Griffin couldn’t imagine being able to do that.

Benny Goodman’s band played a famous engagement at the Paramount Theater in March of 1937. The band opened each show with the furious “Bugle Call Rag” featuring Harry’s full-blast, high-speed trumpet lead off chorus of “Reveille”, and the teenagers, who had cut school and sat through the stodgy movie “Maid of Salem” starring Claudette Colbert and Frederick March, went berserk. That day, in fact there were 21,000 admissions to the theater. For the first time, black teenagers came down to the Paramount in huge numbers to see the band, which featured Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson. (16)

The work schedule for the Goodman band was one only the young could survive. At the Paramount, they performed 5 shows a day- one after each screening of the movie, seven days a week. At the same time they were playing at the Hotel Pennsylvania between the hours of 7pm and 1:30am each night except Sunday. The Pennsylvania job also called for 3 radio broadcasts each night. The band also had its own radio show, the Camel (cigarette) Caravan each Tuesday night, and this required rehearsing on Thursday nights until 4AM, after finishing the all-day-and-night Paramount and Pennsylvania jobs. Leaving New York after this hectic period, the band went west and appeared in its second film entitled "Hollywood Hotel". (It's first film appearance being in "The Big Broadcast of 1937"). This band was captured at its best on the Columbia CD "Benny Goodman On The Air 1937-38"

One of the important musical collaborations that James had in the B.G. band was with Teddy Wilson. A Wilson recording date provided what some claim to be James’ best jazz record. The titles were "Just a Mood I & II (Blue Mood)".  Jazz critic James Collier Lincoln observed of the piece, "His phrasing; his tone, are flawless- masterful trumpeting..." (17)

Besides Wilson and James, the group consisted of Red Norvo on xylophone and John Simmons on bass. On December 1, 1937 James recorded his first sides as a leader (while still under contract with B.G.). Producer John Hammond organized the record dates, and asked Ziggy Elman, Dave Tough, Harry Carney, Buck Clayton, Jo Jones, Jess Stacy and vocalist Helen Humes to join them. Out of these first sessions came James' first hit records, the instrumental "One O'clock Jump", and "It's The Dreamer In Me", with Humes doing the vocal. These two numbers reached Billboard's Top 10 for 8 weeks. Harry won the 1937 Down Beat poll as the "trumpeter of the year". He also won the Metronome Magazine poll. Reading the results, he asked quizzically, "How can they possibly vote for me when Louis is in the same contest?" (18)

The next major event in James' career was his performance at Benny Goodman's famous Carnegie Hall Concert on January 16, 1938. Just before walking on stage, Harry turned to the other musicians and said "I feel like a whore in church." (19) Enough has already been written about that night, and Harry's part in the performance of "Sing, Sing, Sing". It was remarkable.

The Carnegie Hall event was the summit of Benny Goodman's career as a bandleader. Shortly afterwards Krupa quit by walking off the stage in Philadelphia, and the band was never the same. James continued on with Goodman, now being paid $200.00 a week. He and Louise Tobin lived simply in inexpensive New York apartments.

An interesting and direct explanation of James' leaving B.G. was once told by Harry himself: "I was going through a real mental thing, and it was all built up around "Sing, Sing, Sing" I'd been sick and they gave me some experimental pills- sulphur pills- only they weren't very refined yet. Well, they wigged me out, and it happened the first time just as I was supposed to get up and play my chorus on "Sing, Sing, Sing". I just couldn't make it. I fell back in my chair. Ziggy said to me, "Get up!", but I couldn't. So when he saw what was happening, he got up and played my solo. I was completely out of my mind. It had happened another time too, and so every time the band played "Sing, Sing, Sing", I'd get bugged and scared it would all start over again. You know- that Stravinsky-type thing that the trombones and then the trumpets play just before the chorus? Well, that would really set me off. I tried to explain it to Benny, and I'd even ask him to play "Sing, Sing, Sing" early in the evening, so I could relax the rest of the night, but of course, that was his big number, and I couldn't blame him...Finally, I just left the band. I couldn't trust myself anymore." (20)

Benny was loath to lose Harry. The Krupa loss had been a disaster, and he now had become reliant on Harry not only as his star trumpeter, but also needed him to count off tempos for the band on radio shows. Benny had trouble reading scripted lines and counting off tempos simultaneously, and the radio audience would have to listen to silence for a few moments between the song's intro and the performance. Benny also began using James as a fill-in bandleader when he left the bandstand. He also asked Harry to drum when Lionel Hampton was at the vibes.

When Harry told Benny he wanted to start his own band, Benny at first agreed- then reneged and said Harry would have to fulfill the rest of his current contract- 6 more months. This didn't sit well with James, but as he only had $400.00 in the bank, he was not in a position go out on his own.

Benny Goodman saw Harry James for what he was- a talented artist with a future. He could not let an opportunity pass him by. Sensing Harry's impatience to start his own group, he urged him to sign a contract with MCA. Unknown to James, Benny had arranged to receive 5% of all the commissions MCA would earn on Harry as his reward for getting James to sign.

Short of money to start his own band, James also signed a start-up contract with Goodman, which allowed him access to $7,000 from Benny during his band's first year. The loan was to be paid back in full within 2 years. Benny, in turn, was entitled to 1/3 of Harry's net earnings over the next 10 years. In only 90 days, Benny could start taking his allotted share of Harry's earnings. A relaxed Harry told Metronome Magazine editor George Simon the formula that he used to guide his band: “We’re emphasizing middle tempos. They can swing as much and they’re certainly more danceable.” (21)

James credits a switch to the Parduba #28 mouthpiece to revolutionizing his playing control when he was Goodman. He used it for the rest of his career. The Parduba #28 is a difficult mouthpiece for many players. It is a shallow piece, but inside there are two cups. Too much pressure creates nothing but air out of the bell, and too little pressure gets the same result. A player cannot get his lips inside the shallow piece, to create sound pressure that way, and so it requires a strong embouchure, with all muscle control against the piece, and no lip inside. Harry always believed in breathing as the whole game in trumpet work. No one ever saw any red circle on his lip, because they were so taut against the Parduba #28.  "If you breathe correctly, you can blow correctly", Harry always said.(22) He never required any warm up with this combination of mouthpiece and breathing. To demonstrate his diaphragm control, he would let a person punch him in the stomach hard, and his abdomen was like a wall.

As the new band began to operate, first in the Philadelphia and New York areas, Harry sent his own earnings home to his Dad to deposit for him. Music critic George Simon hailed the new band's strong beat, but even at Roseland in Manhattan, the management asked Harry to mix up the jump tunes with some rumba's and waltzes.

When the band left New York and headed west, it was scheduled to play the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, which burned down while they were en route. As a substitute venue, the upscale Beverly Hills restaurant Victor Hugo was selected, but the manager found the band too loud and he "ordered the brass section to muffle its sound with handkerchiefs, mutes and felt hats and had a canopy built around the bandstand." (23)

The band’s first record date was held on February 20, 1939 for Brunswick in New York. They recorded “Two O'clock Jump”. In short order he auditioned Marie Antoinette JaMais, a vocalist from Florida, and hired her, renaming her Connie Haines.

Knowing Harry was searching for a male singer, his wife Louise woke Harry up one night to hear a late remote broadcast from the Rustic Cabin, a roadhouse on Rt. 9W just north of the George Washington Bridge. The fellow singing that evening was working with the band of Harold Arden.

The next night Harry drove out to have a look at the singer and meet him. The two hit it off well, and Harry asked him to change his name to Frankie Satin and join his band. The singer refused the name change, and after arguing about it for two days, James relented and let Frank Sinatra use his own name and join the band for $75.00 wk. At the time, Harry told Downbeat Magazine of his new singer: “He (Sinatra) considers himself the greatest vocalist in the business. Get that! No one ever heard of him. He’s never had a hit record. He looks like a wet rag, but he says he’s the greatest!” (24)

Frank’s first hit with James was “All Or Nothing At All”. Recorded in the summer of 1939 and not released for a year, it then sold 8,000 copies. Three years later it was re-released during a recording ban and it sold 100,000 copies. By then everyone knew Sinatra. The most unusual thing about this early Sinatra record is the amount of time he spends actually singing. In a period when vocalists were given a chorus or two and then the band took the rest of the song, Sinatra was given time to tell a whole story. More than any other record with Harry James, this one created Sinatra’s image as a great performer.

Harry later observed of Frank: “When Frank joined the band he was always thinking of the lyrics, the melody was secondary. If it was a delicate or pretty word, he would try to phrase it with a prettier, softer type of voice. He still does that. The feeling he has for the words is just beautiful. He could sing the wrong melody, and it would still be pretty”. (25)

With all of this going on, John Hammond heard Louise Tobin singing at a New York club. He told Benny Goodman how great she was and Benny offered her a job right after auditioning her, not having a clue she was married to Harry James. Louise sang the blues with great skill, and Benny featured her often.

By 1940 Tommy Dorsey had heard enough Sinatra records and radio shows with the James band to know he wanted to hire him. At the same time, the popular Jack Leonard, who had sung with Dorsey for years, was quitting the band to begin his own singing career. Dorsey had his manager slip Sinatra a note on a torn-off corner of a shopping bag, asking him to meet TD at the Palmer House the next day. Dorsey offered Sinatra 125.00/wk. He was being paid $75.00/wk by James. He took the job.

When he told James later that day, James told him to take it, adding that if things didn't pick up soon with his own band, he might be looking for a job with TD too. January 26th, 1940 was Sinatra's last day with the James band in Buffalo, New York.

Sinatra later remembered that after the show, "The bus pulled out with the rest of the guys after midnight. I'd said goodbye to them all and it was snowing. I remember there was nobody around, and I stood there with my suitcase in the snow and watched the taillights of the bus disappear. Then the tears started, and I tried to run after the bus. There was such spirit and enthusiasm in that band. I hated leaving it." (26)

That same week Harry hired Dick Haymes as a new vocalist. Haymes, the son of a Scottish Argentine cattle rancher, had actually been auditioning some of his original songs and singing them while he accompanied himself on piano, but Harry instantly recognized a fine, trained voice.

Because of poor record sales, the James band was dropped by Columbia in the winter of 1940. It was transferred to the Varsity label, a much smaller company. In the autumn of 1940, Mannie Sachs, a Columbia executive, was promoted, and since he was a believer in Harry's band, and in its future revenue potential, he re-signed the band to Columbia. Dick Haymes then had a Top Ten hit with "Lament For Love" in August of 1940. He also recorded "I'll Get By" that year, which became a #1 hit when it was re-released in June of 1944. Haymes left James for Benny Goodman's band in December of 1941. He then joined Tommy Dorsey, again replacing the departing Sinatra in September of 1942. After Haymes left Dorsey, he began his own career as a recording artist, starring in motion pictures and appearing regularly on radio.

But that was the future, and life continued to be rough on the road for the 1940 James band. While paying his musicians $75.00/wk, Harry was losing up to $1,500 /wk. Long distances on a bus to play at ballrooms with broken microphones and out-of-tune pianos was taking morale down. The Greyhound Bus Company was aggressively pursuing James on overdue bus rental bills, and would usually be waiting for the band on the outskirts of a town to repossess the vehicle. Harry would have his manager negotiate to stave off doom, and the band would continue on to the next city. Only a few record royalties kept the band going financially.

James had been kicking around the idea of adding a string quartet to the orchestra- 3 violins and a viola. On March 20, 1941 the band with strings recorded "You Made Me Love You", which Al Jolson had made famous in 1914, and Judy Garland had reprised in 1938. This sentimentally performed ballad transformed James' reputation from Swing star to ballad master. Jazz critics jumped on him for selling out and playing what was labeled as "Schmaltz", a German word defined as meaning "sentimental or florid music or art". (27)

In fact, James continued to be a stratospheric jazz trumpeter the rest of his life. (In July of 1974 he was asked to play the Newport in New York Jazz Festival, where he performed at Carnegie Hall. He was followed that night on the program by the quartet of Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Milt Hinton, and Buddy Rich). (28)  He hadn't played there since 1964, when he performed with Buddy Rich and Ruth Price.

But in 1941, some of his fans did not understand the business decisions which were made to survive in the unpredictable pop music market. What James had done was play a song the way he felt it should be played, and it was popular because it was a love song played very emotionally. Whatever the critics thought, James was now a star. The sheet music sales alone of the song passed 1 million copies.

Mort Sahl, who grew up closely watching and working with the West Coast Stan Kenton band as an emcee, observed of Harry James, "Harry realized that strings are neutral, and they will amplify anything you want people to feel. He made commercial use of them to convey romanticism. The band looked good on stage and played well. Let's face it, the way Harry played ballads- he was the home office. Look how good the music was. It had a logic; it was so simple and yet it was stretched out. These renditions were like what Frank Sinatra did; they both made them into a mini-drama. Standing up there playing with the trumpet section and then coming out in front to play his solos gave his performance both drama and power. Sure, he was playing commercial music, but he had chops, and he was committed when he was playing a ballad. He wasn't a businessman waving a wand."(29)

In the autumn of 1941, Pee Wee Monte, who had been working for Goodman's band, took over management of Harry's band. James was $43,000 in debt at the time. Monte cut out the 500-mile overnight jumps between gigs. He recorded each monetary transaction, imposed a budget, and in the first 9 gigs after he took over, the band became slightly profitable.

Helen Forrest joined the band at that time for $85.00/wk. She had previously sung with the bands of Goodman and Artie Shaw. A 16-year-old saxophone player named Corky Corcoran also joined the band that season, and James adopted him and became his legal guardian. Corcoran called James "Pop" and stayed with the band on and off until his death in 1979.

At the end of that autumn, James played the Brooklyn Paramount. There was a long line outside the theater waiting when the bus pulled up. Harry approached someone in line and asked "What's wrong?", the answer was "We're waiting to see Harry James." James responded, "You're kidding!" (30)

As soon as the band's financial situation stabilized, Pee Wee loaned Harry the money to buy back Goodman's investment contract. James paid Goodman almost $20,000 to get out of the deal they had made. Harry had only used $4,500 of the $7,000 loan in three years. Goodman's timing was off, because James was about to make a fast fortune.

In 1942 James was playing at the Hollywood Canteen for members of the military service on leave in Los Angeles. Film star Betty Grable was also working there. They struck up a friendship, and then a romance.

On January 16, 1943, the song "I've Heard That Song Before", with Helen Forrest singing, reached #1 for 13 weeks. It was Columbia's best-selling record in history. Due to war supply restrictions, Columbia ran out of shellac and had to stop manufacturing the disc. In the first six months of 1943, the band made $3,500,000 in record sales. (31) The same year James made $750,000 from movie appearances, records and dance halls.
 
In 1943, the band had 27 musicians, including 4 violins, 2 violas, a cello, a bass, and 2 French horns. Trombonist Bill Abel, who had known Harry since 1931 and joined the band in 1942, summed up Harry's leadership style at this point, "Harry was probably the best leader as far as treatment of the band that I'd ever worked with. Anytime he ever corrected you or corrected the section, he did it with precise instructions, and he'd say, "That's the way I want it played.' That's all you'd hear; he wouldn't rant and rave." (32)

On April 21, 1943 the James band opened at the Paramount in Manhattan. 7,500 fans were in line to see the band at 9AM. A plate glass window was smashed by the crowd and a policeman seriously injured. During that first week, attendance was 163,000 and gross receipts were $105,000. The Paramount contained 3,664 seats and added another show each day. (33) James became ill during the gig, and one of the band's trumpeters, Jimmy Campbell, took over the solos he usually played. Frank Sinatra came back temporarily to take over direction of the band. James returned as soon as he could.

Harry wasn't drafted because of his 3-A status. He was still married to Louise Tobin and was the sole support of a family. After he proposed marriage to Betty Grable in the summer of 1943 and Louise Tobin granted him a divorce, James was immediately reclassified 1-A for the draft. The movie studio where he was working requested a draft deferment to the Beaumont, Texas draft board until he finished shooting a movie. The Beaumont draft board obliged, writing him to report for an induction exam when the film was complete. It was noted at exam time that a mastoid condition, which had affected him from childhood, had caused a punctured eardrum. He was now classified as 4-F, or unfit for duty. (34)

Harry and Betty's married social life consisted mainly of going out to baseball games, golfing, bowling, and riding horses. Eventually horse racing took most their time. They began to buy, breed and race horses. At one point they owned 28 horses and 2 ranches.

As an indicator of how far James had come financially, note that he had paid only $25.00 in federal income taxes in 1941, but paid $620,000 in 1943. By 1946, Harry and Betty James would be the wealthiest couple in the entertainment business.

Staying commercially viable in the music business wasn't an easy act during WWII. Musicians were drafted, and a recording ban, called by the Musicians Union on August 1, 1942, didn't end until November 11, 1944. The strike was called in order to negotiate higher royalties for musicians on jukebox record play. For those years, no recording was allowed, other than vocalists backed by other vocalists. Some bands hurriedly recorded what they could before the shut down took effect to have songs to release during the ban. Record companies re-released songs, such as the James/Sinatra cut of "All or Nothing At All".

It was a near fatal blow to the big bands, both commercially and artistically. The only recorded music that survived from this period was recorded on V-Discs, which were records to be distributed to the troops and broadcast for morale. The period coincided with the changeover to Bebop and vocalists as the new musical vanguard.

Helen Forrest left the band in December of 1943 for a solo career. She could record on her own without the band and sidestep the ban. She had made two gold records ("I Had The Craziest Dream" & "I've Heard That Song Before") with James and had a total of 8 hits with him. Because of her work with Shaw, Goodman and James, she's remembered as one of the most memorable vocalists of that era.

James hired Kitty Kallen in November of 1944, when the ban expired. The Philadelphia native had already sung in Jack Teagarden's band. Jack had given her good, simple advice when he told her the priorities of a vocalist: "Sing the melody, read the lyric, and tell the story." (35) She put this to good use with Harry's band, recording with him for two years. On her first session, November 21, 1944 she sang an extremely fine version of Ellington's instrumental, "I'm Beginning To See The Light". Harry James and Don George wrote the lyrics to the Ellington piece. Kitty's other big hit was "It's Been A Long, Long Time". Both hit #1 on the charts.

Trombonist Juan Tizol and altoist Willie Smith were in the band at this time. Willie contributed outstanding solos on "Cherry", "Long, Long Time" and "The Man With The Horn". (36) During the summer of 1946 Willie's record of "Who Sorry Now?" with the band went to #2 over an 18-week period. When a ballroom owner told James that Willie could not go on stage with the rest of the band, Harry would offer to give back the money and leave town. Usually the band got its way and stayed to play the gig. Juan Tizol, the composer of the jazz standard "Perdido" among others, played with the band from 1944-1951. Harry used Juan's fine directing skill and let him lead the band when he couldn't be present himself. Tizol would return regularly to the band on and off for years.

Ray Coniff wrote arrangements for Harry after leaving the service. He had previously written for Artie Shaw. Comparing the two leaders approach to music, Coniff said: "Harry was a little bit different than Artie in that he wanted the arrangements to be really musician-type arrangements. He also wanted them to be a little more complicated than Artie did. Artie was more interested in commercialism, and selling records; Harry was interested in having a ball with the music, and for the boys in the band to love the chart. He didn't care if the people out front really understood that much, but amazingly, he was very successful by doing it that way." (37)

James appeared in 15 major studio movies. His post-war film career continued with appearances in "Do You Love Me?" and "If I'm Lucky". Neither was a critical success. 20th Century Fox did not renew his contract. This, combined with the severe drop-off in the band business as vocalists took center stage, caused the disbanding of many bands in December of 1946. They included, besides James, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Les Brown, Woody Herman and Jack Teagarden. (38)

Starting on February 13, 1948, Harry appeared for 26 weeks on the popular radio show "Call For Music", and took note of the popular Bebop big bands of Herman and Kenton. To Harry the new music was truly a natural progression. When Harry started a Bebop-based big band with Neil Hefti arrangements, he was comfortable playing the new sound. His affinity for Bop is obvious in his band's recordings from that period. Of James' Bop strength as a player, Louise Barringer, a trumpeter in a much later James band remarked, "He's playing high "G's" or "F's,...which in the late '40's was unheard of. When Maynard Ferguson started doing that everyone thought it was incredible. And they're big notes- he's not squeaking it out, he's playing up there. You hear him playing jazz and it's easy for him. And the end of a solo he blows a high "G" as big as a house. He could have capitalized on that- his chops and his technical ability- but the public wanted him to play "You Made Me Love You...I guess when you become a personality sometimes it detracts from your art."" (39)

Bebop drummer Kenny Washington adds…"Most of the swing era trumpet players stayed there except for Roy Eldridge and a few others. But Harry was very open to it rhythmically and harmonically. He was able to adapt to Bebop and handling those changes. He wasn't just playing half notes and whole notes, he's playing lines." (40)

The Harry James band was still packing them in at the Steel Pier in the spring of 1949. On Easter Sunday, 27,000 people visited the pier and Marine Ballroom, which was located "Half a Mile At Sea". Drummer Louis Bellson remembers playing with Harry for 3,000 people at a time at the Hollywood Palladium around the same time. The band would also often perform for 14,000 to 15,000 service personnel at each concert at Navy and Air Force bases in the U.S. (41)

A memorable gig at the Band Box club in New York during the Flu season of 1953 was going so well that when three band members came down with the flu, Harry called in a doctor to have the entire band inoculated. Someone had left a side door open to the back stage and the audience sat and watched each member of the James band take off his red band jacket, roll up his sleeve, receive an injection, then roll down their sleeve, put back on their band jacket, and casually walk out another door on to the stage. (42) 

At this time, Harry was listening closely to Miles Davis, who had been featured with the Charlie Parker band at Birdland. Davis had admired James' records while he grew up, once commenting, "I just loved the way he played. I almost broke my teeth trying to get that big vibrato sound that Harry had." (43)

Also at the Bandbox that year, Harry hooked up again with drummer Buddy Rich, and signed him to a $35,000 /yr contract with featured billing. They became close friends and Harry served as best man at Buddy's wedding later that year.

In July of 1953 Betty Grable finished her contract with Fox. To boost their income, Harry and Betty went on a theater tour together, making $45,000 in the first two shows. An idea of the draw they both still commanded was clarified by their joint appearances on two early Chrysler television programs, for which they were paid $80,000.

Harry began recording in High Fidelity and reprised many of the hits which had earned him 70 Billboard pop chart hits over the previous 15 years. (44)  Harry took 1956 off, and bought a horse trainers license. He noticed the success that the Count Basie band was having with a fresh modern big band sound. He hired Ernie Wilkins, who was writing for Basie, and told him to write as much as he could for a new Harry James band.

In 1958 Harry started playing Vegas' Driftwood Lounge. He moved his family to Las Vegas in 1960. The 5 nightly sets would begin at 9:45PM. He loved his life in Vegas. He could perform, gamble all he wanted, and play golf all day. He was 42 years old. Other clubs, including the ones in Reno, signed the band up for shows too. He led the new band on successful concert tours of Europe and Japan. Drummer Jack Perciful remembered that in Japan "They treated him and Buddy Rich like deities...the fans would clap short and fast so as not to interfere with the listening..."(45)

In October of 1965, Grable and James divorced after 22 years. Betty decided to take a version of "Hello Dolly" on the road, and it played very well. Buddy Rich left the James band in 1966 to begin his own successful big band. With the music scene changing rapidly, the last Las Vegas club he played regularly let Harry's contract lapse in 1970.

Betty Grable died of cancer on July 2, 1973, at age 57. In his last years, James played colleges, country clubs, high schools, and cruise ships. He still had the stamina to play 49 one-nighters in a row one late season. He played at the White House twice, and went on tours of Argentina, Brazil and the U.K. In July of 1978 he brought his band to the Newport Jazz Festival at Saratoga New York, and was followed that night by the big bands of Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Maynard Ferguson, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band. "It was more big band music in one dose than anyone could remember," said festival producer George Wein. (46)

With a long distinguished career behind him and very sick with lymphatic cancer, he told bassist Red Kelly that he wasn't afraid of death. "I figure I've lived five lifetimes already."(47)

He was still performing on stage with the band only 9 days before he died on July 5, 1983 at age 67.  His old friend Frank Sinatra delivered the eulogy.


References

(1) P.4 Peter J. Levinson; "Trumpet Blues, The Life of Harry James", 1999. Oxford University Press. New York. (2) ibid. P.9 (3) P.11 (4) P.13 (5) P. 14 (6) P.14 (7) P.15 (8) P.23 (9) P.28 (10) P.35 (11) P.36 (12) P.39 (13) P.39 (14) P.500 Richard M. Sudhalter; "Lost Chords", 1999. Oxford University Press. New York. (15) Levinson; P.40 (16) ibid. P.42 (17) ibid. P.48 (18) ibid. P.50 (19) ibid. P.51 (20) ibid. PP.55-56 (21) ibid.P.63 (22) ibid. P.144 (23) PP.234-235 Ross Firestone; "Swing, Swing, Swing, The Life and Times of Benny Goodman", 1993. W.W. Norton. New York. (24) Levinson; P. 71 (25) ibid. P.70 (26) ibid. P.79 (27) ibid. P.94 (28) P.402 George Wein, "Myself Among Others, A Life in Music" with Nate Chinen. 2003. Da Capo Press. Cambridge, Mass. (29) Levinson; P.97 (30) ibid. P.103 (31) ibid.P.130 (32) ibid. P.127 (33)ibid. P. 129 (34) ibid. P.133 (35) ibid. P.150 (36) ibid. P.155 (37) ibid. P.159 (38) ibid. P.162 (39) ibid. P.171 (40) ibid. P.172 (41) ibid. P.173 (42) ibid. P.183 (43) ibid. P.183 (44) ibid. P.188 (45) ibid. P.227 (46) Wein; P.423 (47) Levinson; P. 281

Selected Discography & Filmography of Harry James

James' Top Ten Hits 1941-46

1941
"Music Makers"
"Lament For Love"  Vocal, Dick Haymes
"You Made Me Love You"

1942
"I Don't Want To Walk Without You" Vocal, Helen Forrest
"Sleepy Lagoon"
"One Dozen Roses" Vocal, Jimmy Saunders
"Strictly Instrumental"
"He's My Guy" Vocal, Helen Forrest
"Mister Five By Five" Vocal, Helen Forrest
"Manhattan Serenade" Vocal, Helen Forrest

1943
"I Had The Craziest Dream" Vocal, Helen Forrest,  #1, February
"I've Heard That Song Before" Vocal, Helen Forrest, #1, March
"Velvet Moon"
"All Or Nothing At All"(1939) Re-released Spring, 1943. Vocal, Frank Sinatra
"I Heard You Cried Last Night" Vocal, Helen Forrest

1944
"Cherry" Recorded 1942 Top 5
"I'll Get By" Recorded 1940. Vocal, Dick Haymes  #1 June

1945
"I'm Beginning To See The Light" Vocal, Kitty Kallen #1
"I Don't Care Who Knows It" Vocal, Kitty Kallen
"If I Loved You" Vocal, Buddy DeVito
"11:60 PM" Vocal, Kitty Kallen
"I'll Buy That Dream" Vocal, Kitty Kallen
"It's Been A Long, Long Time" Vocal, Kitty Kallen
"Waitin' For The Train To Come In" Vocal, Kitty Kallen

1946
"I Can't Begin To Tell You" Vocal, Betty Grable
"I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" Vocal, Buddy DeVito
"This Is Always" Vocal, Buddy Devito

Harry James Filmography

"Syncopation" May 1942
"Private Buckaroo" June 1942
"Springtime In The Rockies" Nov. 1942
"Best Foot Forward" June 1943
"Two Girls & A Sailor" June 1944
"Bathing Beauty" June 1944
"Do You Love Me?" May 1946
"If I'm Lucky" Sept. 1946
"Carnegie Hall" May 1947
"A Miracle Can Happen" Feb. 1948
"Young Man With A Horn" (Soundtrack) 1950
"The Benny Goodman Story" 1955
"The Opposite Sex" Nov. 1956
"The Big Beat" June 1958
"The Ladies Man" July 1961

Duke Ellington with Billy Strayhorn

"He would sit down and write music like he was writing a letter."

Billy Strayhorn:"Portrait of a Silk Thread"

By John Twomey 

Copyright 2004 by John Twomey. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this article or parts thereof in any form.

He moved into 'The Masters' fairly late in his short life, and although he had lived in the building's vicinity for decades, the sturdy walls that purposefully dampened the noise of other practicing artists offered the sanctuary he needed to live out the days and nights of his life- much as he had described them in his 1936 composition, "Lush Life". If a person ever dispensed a psychological blueprint of his life early on, Strayhorn did. Nothing, it seemed, could separate him from the destiny he deftly described back in Pittsburgh, before he had ever met Duke Ellington:

Thirty years later, he would be stretched out reading a book on the backseat of an open black Impala convertible, as his friends Dr. Martin and Marian Logan drove the sunny roads through the Catskills, stopping at country stores and vegetable stands along the way. Most of the time, Billy would be oblivious to the passing scenery, engrossed in a book and a gin cocktail below the window level of the seat. "Arthur would be looking at the countryside and say, 'Strays, there's a beautiful farmhouse,' or whatever. Strays would say, "Wonderful, Arturo, wonderful! Please describe it to me, won't you?" and he'd keep reading and sipping on his cocktail." (1) 

Billy Strayhorn was born on November 29, 1915, in Dayton, Ohio. He was the fourth child of Lillian and James Strayhorn. An older sister, Sadie had been born prematurely, and hadn't survived. A second child, James Jr. was doing fine. A second son, Leslie, died of convulsions after falling while learning to walk. After Billy was born, a sister, Georgia, was born, and then another boy, John, in 1924. Theodore in 1926, then premature twins in 1928, Samuel and Harry, both of who died shortly after birth.

Billy's parents, Lillian and James, had both been raised in comfortable, working-family environments. Lillian, from North Carolina, graduated from Shaw University. She was soft-spoken and used elegant wording as she spoke.

James was a descendant of the family that founded the first whiskey distillery down south after the Civil War. He was brought up comfortably. His mother had played the piano, and appreciated music and fine art. 

After moving his family around to a string of unsuccessful jobs that led nowhere, Billy's father "became a bitter person and a drinker", said his daughter Lillian. "My father shouldn't have been born when he was born- that was his first mistake…He was bright and had a lot of personality, and he probably would have done very well years later. But back then, who needed a bright black man with personality? That goes against the grain when you have to put your head down and have a family to raise. So, being blessed with a sharp tongue and a temper- he became a bitter person- a bitter person with a lot of frustration." (2)

When he drank, he beat the children, said family friend Robert Conaway. (3) Billy's mother looked out for him as best she could, and they remained close throughout their lives. 

The family settled in Pittsburgh, taking vacations in Hillsborough, N.C., where Billy would visit the Victorian house that his grandparents lived in. He "found himself" there, getting some attention and affection. He was encouraged to play the piano by his grandmother, picking out songs he remembered from church.

In Pittsburgh, Billy remembered, "During grade school I had no music, except what one ordinarily gets in grade school…group singing and that's about all. One thing I wanted was to play the piano. You can't learn to play the piano if you haven't got one."(4)

He started selling papers to earn money. The corner he chose to sell was occupied by the Pennfield Drug Store, in the upper middle class Jewish district. The druggist hired him to work behind the soda fountain counter, and as a delivery boy after school.

"I finally bought myself a piano and started to play it. I started to study, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to learn…It wasn't all that easy, but I guess if you want something hard enough it just gets done…I got that piano." (5) He also earned money to pay for sheet music and lessons taught by Charlotte Catlin, a black woman who worked in a popular music store in Pittsburgh. 

At age eleven, Billy made a friend by the name of Harry Herforth, an eleven-year old white boy from a different street in the neighborhood. Both of them were more interested in music than sports. Both were readers, and compared the books they read. They treated the local library almost reverently. Billy also liked Frick Park, which covered 340 acres in Pittsburgh, on which grew 135 varieties of trees. He and Harry would walk the trails and "talked about composers, authors, playwrights…" (6)

When Harry visited Billy's home, the only conversation was a "Hello" to Billy's mother, and one in return. Billy's father would ignore them. They both went on to attend Westinghouse High School, which had an enrollment of 400. On the music faculty was Carl McVicker, who encouraged all the students to play musical instruments. 

"Mr. McVicker instilled self respect in those of us who were his students, because he respected us regardless of our background", said Fritz Jones, one of his students better known as Ahmad Jamal. (7)

 McVicker said of Billy, "I never heard a student play that way before or after", referring to a Strayhorn performance of Grieg's "Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 16." (8)

McVicker said Strayhorn was "earnest, hardworking…an intellectual. He had a broad base of knowledge of academics, although he learned everything we could teach him about music…He didn't play in the swing band. He wasn't interested. He was a serious pianist and concentrated strictly on the concert repertoire." (9)

By June of 1934, however, Billy had already heard Duke Ellington's Orchestra at a one- night stopover in Pittsburgh. What struck Billy the most during the entire performance was one chord. "…That's what really got me. He had a chord, which I have never discovered. I haven't heard it since. I couldn't figure this chord out. I went home after going to see this show at the Penn Theater in Pittsburgh, and I couldn't figure out what was in that chord, it was just wonderful." (10) 

Another music teacher named Jane Patton Alexander taught him both piano and harmony instruction. Around this time in High School, Harry Herforth joined with Strayhorn to form a trumpet and piano duet for school meetings and functions.

Westinghouse High School also featured an "Orchestra Club" of 25 players, picked from the larger high school orchestra, which played classical music. Strayhorn was the only black member. This band played some of Pittsburgh's downtown hotels.

At his high school graduation in the winter of 1934, Strayhorn publicly premiered his first extended composition, "Concerto For Piano And Percussion". The percussionist on the piece, Mickey Scrima, later went on to become a well-known swing drummer with trumpeter Harry James. "The audience loved it", said Scrima. "It was a lot of fun…I don't know how much they understood it, mind you- if they realized how sophisticated this piece was, and how extraordinary it was that this kid in their school had written it". (11) 

Classmate Dorothy Ford Gardin remembered, "Well, Strayhorn, he was…a genius. He was very much to himself. Some might have called him a little oddball or something, because he didn't socialize much. But he was too busy with his work…" (12)

Billy studied French and dressed well. He became president of the Westinghouse High School Pen Club, and had a subscription to The New Yorker. He used fine diction when he spoke, using an extensive vocabulary. Scrima recalled that "All he did day and night was concentrate on the only thing he cared about, the only thing he wanted- to go on doing what he did on the day of our graduation: be a classical concert pianist." (13)

Lacking financial aid to attend college, he continued working at Pennfield Drugs behind the counter, mixing sodas and making deliveries. He wanted to have enough money to pay his own tuition when he found a school that he liked. 

Harry Herforth, who received a scholarship to attend The New England Conservatory of Music, recalled that Billy had shown interest in several colleges "But was discouraged because of his race and could not get the necessary financial aid. The very idea of a black concert pianist was considered unthinkable." (14) Harry himself later played first assistant chair with the Boston Symphony.

A year after graduating, Billy agreed to write the words and music for the Westinghouse High School Class of 1935's Annual Revue, which that year was entitled "Fantastic Rhythm". The show premiered on May 23.

Mixing bits of Gershwin-style composition with his own style as exhibited in "Concerto for Piano and Percussion", the musical was a hit with the locals. In fact everyone in town who saw it was talking about how great it was. Technically, it was as good as most things produced professionally on Broadway at that time.

The main organizing force behind the show from the start was a Westinghouse band mate of Billy's, Boggy (pronounced Bogie) Fowler. A natural showman, Fowler knew a good show when he saw one, and after witnessing the enthusiasm of the high school crowd, he decided to take the show public. Fowler organized the cast, handling the publicity and getting two investors to put up $500.00. Strayhorn handled the production, and recalled:

"…In those early days, what I was doing was arranging, composing, and lyric writing, but I thought nothing of it- I was just doing it to try and make the show a success." (15) Fred Staton, who worked on the show, recalled the genius with which Strayhorn was writing. "…he would sit down and write music like he was writing a letter…whole scores!" (16) There is hardly any surviving music from the show.

But in his in-depth study of Strayhorn, "Something to Live for", Walter van de Leur technically describes the piece "Ugly Ducklin'", which Billy wrote for a dance orchestra in this same time frame. (It is) "…a surprisingly hip and harmonically advanced piece, with a haunting, chromatic circling melody. To underscore the tune, Strayhorn turned to a harmonic concept that had been present in the verses of virtually all of his pre-1939 songs (including Lush Life): a two-chord ostinato in lieu of the expected traditional chord sequence. The ostinato consists of a tonic chord and its altered dominant over a two-bar bass line. Most striking is the anticipation of the dominant, which comes a beat and a half "too early": pure bebop language…Strayhorn gives the bass the flatted fifth of the altered dominant, which causes the chord to sound as its tritone-related dominant. The ostinato stops only to yield to one-bar interjections at the end of each ten-bar phrase and finally to give way to a more regular bridge built on a rhythmically placed chord sequence." (17)  

In the publicity for "Fantastic Rhythm", Strayhorn added an "e" to the end of "horn", so that it would more closely resemble the spelling of one of Pittsburgh's most prominent black families, the Horne's, from which Lena came.

The show was well received, and moved out from Pittsburgh to other theaters in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh's Billy Eckstine joined the evolving cast in 1937. Strayhorn dropped out of sight after the first few performances, replaced by the young Errol Garner, another local Pittsburgh pianist.  

After six years at the drug store, he had put away enough money to attend the Pittsburgh Musical Institute. He began studying with a music theory class in 1936. His teacher, Charles N. Boyd, was an impressive musician, and a friend of Albert Schweitzer. When Strayhorn was in his second term at the school, Boyd died of a heart attack while playing the organ in his home. Boyd had, in his short time with Strayhorn, been a tremendous influence. His sophistication as a mentor was everything that Billy had missed with his own father. "He was so wonderful that I didn't think there was anyone else there who could teach me. So I didn't stay," said Billy. (18)

Billy stayed away from his home as much as he could. His father's drinking had turned the Strayhorn house into a chaotic terror zone, but Billy did stay close to his mother.

At this time he began hanging out with drummer Mickey Scrima and another young man named Bill Esch. Scrima said of Esch,"…If you wanted to know about any band in the country…he knew about every band that ever played a note of music." (19)

Esch and Scrima bought Billy an Art Tatum solo on a 78 record, which soon had to be replaced because Billy wore it out listening to it so often. Scrima remembers, "What he realized…was that everything he loved about classical music was there, in one form or another, in jazz- and here was a place he could apply himself." (20)

Billy, now 23, soon formed a jazz trio with clarinetist Jerry Eisner and drummer Calvin Dort. "They were a fine, professional little band, no amateur act." Remembered Pittsburgh trumpeter Billy May. (21) Early in 1938 the group became a quintet, adding bassist Bob Yagella and vibes player "Buzzy" Mayer. In March of 1938 the trio made three demo sides. That summer they were the featured entertainment at Rakuen Lakes, a summer resort nearby. The next gig that autumn, over the state line in West Virginia, was a disaster. The band was well received until a patron made a racist remark about Billy loud enough for drummer Calvin Dort to hear. Dort was so enraged that he kicked his entire drum set at the person who made the remark, and chaos resulted. The band escaped in a truck back to Pennsylvania.  

Billy took a gig at a bar playing piano in the East Liberty part of town. The club was where both black and white musicians hung out. Through clarinetist Eisner, Billy hooked up with drummer Bill Ludwig (no relation to the drum maker) to provide arrangements for Ludwigs's12-piece band.

His reputation as a great arranger had spread among the musicians of Pittsburgh, and he was writing more scores for a variety of Swing bands. He still worked at the drug store, and was often asked to play piano at the delivery destinations for an extra tip. 

David Pearlman, a young pharmacy student who met Billy at the Pennfield Drug store, was aware of Billy's extraordinary talent. Pearlman was studying at the University of Pittsburgh's College of Pharmacy. In class, Pearlman sat next to George Greenlee, who was the Pharmacy school's first black student.

Greenlee's uncle, a wealthy man, who it was said had made his fortune hijacking beer trucks and running numbers rackets, owned Pittsburgh's Negro League baseball team, "The Crawfords". He also owned the ballpark, Greenlee Field, as well as two of Pittsburgh's best and busiest nightclubs, the Crawford Grill One and Crawford Grill Two. 

Pearlman asked Greenlee if he would ask his uncle to introduce Billy to some big name musicians. Greenlee remembers"…I had never met this fellow Billy or heard him play. So I said, 'David, are you sure this guy is that good?' He said, 'Believe me'…it turned out that my uncle was having a big party that night for the band that was opening in town the following evening. I could set everything up at the party for this guy to meet the incoming bandleader, Duke Ellington. Otherwise, I'd have to wait a week and introduce him to the next bandleader, Basie." (22)

As soon as George Greenlee was introduced to Ellington, he alluded to Strayhorn; "Duke, a good friend of mine has written some songs, and we would like for you to hear them…(23)

Duke told him to come backstage with his friend after the first show the following day.

Ellington and Strayhorn
 

George and Billy met at the theater the next day and went up to Ellington's large dressing room, which included a piano. Duke was reclining in a chair, while someone styled his hair. As the pair approached and introduced themselves, Duke never opened his eyes. He asked Billy to sit down at the piano and play.

Strayhorn sat down and announced in a calm voice that he would play a piece that Ellington had just performed in the show. He duped it perfectly, note for note.

When he finished, he said just as calmly, "Now this is how I would play it." When he was finished, Ellington was standing behind him staring over his shoulder at the keyboard. Ellington asked his valet to go get Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges and Ivie Anderson. As the trio of Ellington veterans stood behind Billy at the keyboard, Duke asked him questions about his education and background.

Not quite sure what to do with him, Ellington "...had an idea for a lyric. He said: You go home and write a lyric for this,' and I did." (24) According to van de Leur in his book "Something to Live For, The Music of Billy Strayhorn", "The lyric he referred to may be the one Strayhorn set to an earlier instrumental work credited to Ellington, T.T. on Toast,… recorded by the orchestra December 19, 1938, twelve days after the two composers first met." (25) 

In his own account of the day, Leonard Feather reported that Strayhorn "ran over a few original tunes at the piano [at his first meeting with Ellington]. He couldn't leave them with Duke as they had never been written down. Duke was sufficiently impressed to invite Strayhorn to arrange one of them for the band." (26)

Billy returned the following night with the completed work. He then penned arrangements of "Lonely Again" and later, wrote arrangements for his own tunes, "Lush Life" and "Something to Live For". His writing style is noticeably different from Ellington's, but he wrote with the personalities of the band in mind, writing the names of the band's soloists on the manuscripts. His Pittsburgh writing for such local bands as the "Moonlight Harbor Band" and Rex Edward's Orchestra had provided him with enough knowledge to seamlessly infuse his ideas into Ellington Orchestra arrangements. He wrote with the familiar Ellington concepts in mind, yet the music was his: unique, distinct, and appearing 'out of the blue' to the seasoned Ellington band. Billy also penned an arrangement of the standard "Two Sleepy People", for which he was given twenty dollars. When he later brought it to the theatre, Ellington looked it over and then walked it right out on to the stage where it was performed. The enthusiastic response from the audience was another step in convincing Duke that he should hire Strayhorn. 

Duke wrote down his address in New York City and gave it to Billy. Then the Ellington band left on a road tour. Billy went back to Pittsburgh, and the drug store counter. A month passed. Billy wrote Duke but received no reply.

Bill Esch had to make a trip to New York, and suggested Billy come along with him. Before leaving Pittsburgh, Billy looked at Duke's directions to his home in Harlem, and composed the song "Take the "A" Train" based on Dukes written instructions. He intended the song to be a greeting gift for Duke.  

As they were preparing to leave for New York, Billy received a note form one of Duke's staff. He told Billy to meet up with the band in Philadelphia. He missed the band there, but caught up with it on its next stop in Newark, N.J. Billy went in through the stage door. He was taken to Duke, who was about to walk on stage for the next show. Ellington was standing in the wings.

"…He had about five or seven minutes before he went on, so we talked. Actually, he didn't say too much, and I didn't say too much. We were just kind of looking at each other. I was scared to death, and he wasn't, of course…Finally he said, "Well, it's really something that you arrived at this moment. Yes, because I just sent Jack Boyd (his manager) upstairs to look for your address and send for you.'"

"You don't have to, here I am." Strayhorn replied.

"I don't have any position for you", said Ellington, "You'll do whatever you feel like doing." (27)

Ellington called on his son Mercer to arrange for Billy to stay at the local YMCA. Duke would pay his $5.00 a day tab.

Billy went back to Pittsburgh to say goodbye to his friends and family, telling them about his new employer. He told his friend Ralph Koger that he was going to work for Duke, "I played that tune "'A' Train" for him, and he liked it." (28) 

Soon he was back in New York, but after only one night at the YMCA, Billy called Mercer and asked if he could come over to the seven-room Ellington apartment about a half mile away to learn more about Duke. Duke was out on tour at the time.

Ellington lived at 409 Edgecomb Ave. in the Sugar Hill district of Harlem. The building was atop a seven-story bluff overlooking the rest of the neighborhood and the Harlem River below. Duke lived with his sister Ruth, a biology student at Columbia, his lover Mildred Dixon, and son Mercer. Billy left the "Y" and walked over to the Ellington's 

After dinner they sat around comfortably talking and playing records. When it was time to go to sleep, everyone went to their rooms except Billy, who said he would just sleep on the couch. After that, Billy went back to the YMCA only to change clothes, and he finally just moved into Duke's apartment.

Mercer Ellington said, "My father didn't take me under his wing the way he did Strayhorn." (29)

Billy's first orders came on the night of February 26, 1939. Duke called him up and told him to arrange two songs for the next morning and have them ready by 10:00 am. Billy stayed up all night writing. Duke looked the manuscripts over, and changed nothing. He was very pleased with the work. After that initial hurdle, Billy did the arranging for all the small groups Duke recorded from within the orchestra. That May, Ellington let Strayhorn begin to play the piano during the last sets of his shows. 

Living in New York City for a year before he moved out of Ellington's apartment and into his own, Billy became accustomed to the sophisticated life of his Manhattan orbit. One of his friends, Haywood Williams, recalled "I'd pick up the phone and Billy would say, 'Allez-y!" That would be the signal, and we'd be off." (30) Billy would hire a limo and have a tray of martini's ready for his friends in the backseat as they rode around Central Park.

Charlie Barnet's arranger Ralph Burns remembers parties at Billy's own apartment: "Billy loved to play host and make sure everybody was eating. That's the kind of party he liked to have. It would be great, because a lot of us had so much in common- a lot of us were in the music business, and we were gay, of course- not that we would stand there and talk about being gay. That wasn't it. It was just really good to be in each other's company. Billy would put these parties together, and they were just a great, easy natural good time." (31) 

Herb Jeffries, the Ellington band's vocalist recalled: "We both spoke French, so we loved to go to the very Chicest French restaurants around New York. There was a tremendous amount of discrimination, and you could show a certain amount of sophistication by the mere fact that you could speak a language that the next white person couldn't." (32)

Dizzy Gillespie remembered seeing Strayhorn showing up at Minton's, the birthplace of Bebop,"Strayhorn was on the scene, and he played with the best of them. He never made a big deal out of it or looked for any attention. One night he and Bud Powell decided to cut, and man, I'm telling you, he turned that piano inside out." (33) 

Bill Paterson, married and a psychology student at NYU, was part of Billy's inner circle too. "Billy wasn't delicate or soft at all. He had an extraordinary presence. You got the distinct feeling that he was functioning from a place that's different from where the rest of us come from, and from that place within himself, he seemed to be able to see people in a different way than a lot of people get seen or most of us see people. He listened. He actually listened to you. He was always present. (34)

Billy's work for Duke was part of their easygoing relationship. Duke would casually say, "I want you to finish this thing for me." (35) In quick order, Strayhorn's own works, "Your Love Has Faded", "Day Dream", and "Something To Live For" had been rehearsed and recorded by the band, even though Ellington is credited as being a co-composer. 

One of the bizarre music industry interruptions that became quite common in the 1940's began in December of 1940. Radio stations refused to play ASCAP songs because of a hike in per-play prices. Broadcast Music Inc. was formed by the radio stations to compete with ASCAP. Ellington's entire "book" was ASCAP, so in order to be heard on radio, he needed to write a whole new "book".

Strayhorn and Mercer Ellington were asked to accomplish this task quickly. With a bottle of blackberry wine between them, and a couple of cartons of cigarettes, they began writing furiously. Mercer wrote "Jumpin' Pumpkins", and Billy wrote "After All", "Clementine", "Chelsea Bridge", "Johnny Come Lately", "Rain Check", "A Flower is a Lovesome Thing", and "Passion Flower". During this writing marathon, Mercer noticed a crumpled manuscript in the garbage can. It was Billy's arrangement of "Take The "A" Train". He had thrown it away thinking it sounded too much like Fletcher Henderson's formula. Mercer rescued it, and it was recorded in February of 1941 in Hollywood. It stayed on the charts for 7 weeks during that summer. 

Strayhorn's arrangement of the beautiful but forgotten Ted Grouya song "Flamingo" began what Ellington described as "The renaissance of vocal orchestration…before then, an orchestration for a singer was usually something pretty tepid, and it was just background- that's about all. But now, this had real ornamentation, fittingly done, supporting the singer and also embellishing the entire performance of both the singer and the band." (36) Again, Ralph Burns: "Billy took Big Band music and moved it up a couple of steps musically. He was really writing classical music for the Duke Ellington Orchestra." (37)

Claude Thornhill's young arranger, Gil Evans, remembers hearing "Chelsea Bridge" in the early 1940's, and later said, "From the moment I first heard 'Chelsea Bridge', I set out to try to do that. That's all I did- that's all I ever did- try to do what Billy Strayhorn did." (38)  

One of Glenn Miller's arrangers, Bill Finnegan thought, "It didn't take a thing away from Duke to recognize that Strayhorn, like Duke, was an original. There was so much all-around musical knowledge in those things he did, and always something original, the element of surprise." (39)

Some of Strayhorn's music reflects the experiences of his troubled life as a youth, Mickey Scrima recalled:

"The guy went through a lot of s--- in his life, from his father right on through school. The kids calling him a sissy…He kept it all in and put on a big front that everything was fine, nothing bothered him, then he sat down and wrote all that music with all that emotion. All his feelings came out in music. That's what made his stuff so incredible and different from Duke's." (40)

Billy was joined in the orchestra by Ben Webster on tenor  saxophone. Webster was Ellington's first full-time tenor saxophone player, and he played with a strength and precision that brought the Ellington band up to the level of Basie's aggregation, which featured Lester Young on tenor saxophone. 

A Strayhorn discovery, Jimmy Blanton, joined the band on bass. Blanton exploited the potential that the string bass held as no other bassist before him. Until Blanton, the instrument had been seen primarily as a "stringed tuba".

With all of the talent to support him, Ellington began to write with a renewed zest, penning "Cottontail", "Main Stem", "Ko-Ko" and "Harlem Air Shaft".  

Strayhorn, Blanton and Webster stuck together off the stand, too. They saw themselves as the "new guys" in the band. Piano player Jimmy Rowles, who in 1941 was studying at Spokane's Gonzaga University, remembers going to a small club in Seattle one night that spring, and seeing the trio of Blanton, Strayhorn and Webster play together after their Ellington band gig had ended someplace else in town. "I came into town to hear Ellington and went out that night, and in walked the three of them. It was amazing- the most beautiful trio I'd ever heard in my life. They had perfect taste. Every note was just right. And they could swing. I mean, they really swung." (41)

While writing and working on the Ellington musical show "Jump for Joy", which was inspired one evening at the Hollywood home of writer Sid Kuller, Billy met Lena Horne. Duke had actually assigned Billy to chaperon her, because he knew that Billy was "safe". They met at a theater to see the show, and spent the next several weeks together, doing the restaurant and nightclub scene together.  

"I had always been a lonely person until I met Billy. We went to museums; we went out at night to hear the blues. He was the one I wanted to be with all the time…I never met another man like him. He liked to stop and look at a tree…He was brilliant but gentle and loving. He never made you feel dumb. He was very sure of himself and decisive in his thinking…If I could have had him, I would have taken him. He was the only man I ever loved." (42)

Billy and Lena were having drinks at her apartment when the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor was announced on the radio. "Billy turned to me, and he said, 'It's all over.' We thought that was the end of the world." (43) 

Billy worked through the war with the Ellington band. He was classified 4-F for his myopic eyesight. Ellington wasn't drafted because he was already 42 years old. The band played its regular tunes and recorded often. It added free army base shows to its road tour.

Strayhorn worked on Ellington's first Broadway musical effort, an adaptation of "The Three Penny Opera", entitled "Beggar's Holiday". Although he almost single-handedly wrote the music, it was credited to Duke. The show only had a 16-week run at the Broadway Theater on West 53rd St. It closed in the last week of March 1947.  

Although Ellington occasionally referred to Strayhorn on stage as "Our writing and arranging companion", copyright issues concerning Strayhorn's work had become confused.

Billy met with writer Leonard Feather for some background instruction on how the music business operated. When Feather saw him a few weeks later he asked Billy if the primer had been useful, Billy replied: "Oh yes. Thank you very much. I've found the skeletons. They give their regards". (44) 

The fact was that Ellington had been supporting Billy since his arrival in New York. Duke had paid for his "rent and living expenses, his vast wardrobe, the finest food and drink, travel…" (45) No one could have asked for more. But Billy wanted his artistic freedom. He was so tied to Ellington he felt trapped.

He confronted Duke about the many Strayhorn compositions that Duke had been receiving the royalties for. Duke's publishing company, Tempo Music, set up during the ASCAP music ban, was the most delicate intertwining of their work. Clearly, Duke had taken the credit for composing "'C' Jam Blues", "The Mood to be Wooed", "Tonight I Shall Sleep", and the "Sugar Hill Penthouse" part of Duke's masterwork, "Black, Brown, and Beige". There were other compositions that blurred or crossed the true composer's ID. 

Duke knew first hand what it felt like, and didn't let it trouble him too much. It was widely known in the music business that Ellington himself had been ripped off by Irving Mills, the music publisher, on some of his most famous works, including, "In a Sentimental Mood", "Prelude to a Kiss", "Solitude", "Mood Indigo", and "Sophisticated Lady".

But nobody ever thought that Irving Mills was an actual composer- even though he took the credit. All of this unexpectedly bothered Strayhorn, however, for he was a composer.  

On His Own
 

On the opening night of "Beggar's Holiday", Billy Strayhorn attended the cast party. From a distance, he watched as Ellington soaked up the applause and attention for writing the score. Luther Henderson, a life-long friend of Duke's asked: "What credit could be given? Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn? Uh-uh. This was supposed to be a Duke Ellington show. 'Billy Strayhorn'- who was he?…You couldn't sell it." (46) 

Billy watched the adoration of Duke, then turned to the production's set designer, Oliver Smith, and said, "Let's get out of here." Smith replied "But the party's just starting."

"Not for me it isn't", said Strayhorn walking out into the night. (47)

For the first time, Billy became somewhat estranged from Ellington, and spent a lot of time with Lena Horne and her music-arranging husband Lennie Hayton on the West Coast.

Ellington called him in the Spring of 1950 to write the music for an Orson Welles musical of "Faust" in Paris. Welles lived up to his billing as one of the most difficult people to work with. He wrote lyrics to only one of several Strayhorn pieces, and they were awful. "It was terrible," said cast member Eartha Kitt. "The music might have been good. But nobody could tell. The whole show was a disaster. Incoherent." (48)

In 1953 Strayhorn worked completely independent of Duke on a new stage production of "Cabin In The Sky". While working with Herbert Machiz, who had also worked in Paris on the Welles fiasco, they began to discuss new directions for the theater in New York. Herbert wanted to "start a new kind of theater, bring together theater people and fine artists." (49) That same year, Machiz founded the Artists Theater. It turned out to be the forerunner of Off Broadway. 

Strayhorn worked on a production called "Don Perlimplin", which was a smash by the standards of Non-Broadway Theater of that time. Set designer Alfred Leslie:

"I'm not exaggerating, it was like he knew exactly what they needed to bring out the character and the scene. You know how you can't really sing, but one day, one day you sing in a certain time and place and all of a sudden you sound great? Just that one time in your life you sound fantastic? That's what Strayhorn did. He made everybody better." (50)

In the summer of 1954, Strayhorn teamed up with his formally trained friend Luther Henderson, and the two collaborated on a production that was to be entitled "Rose Colored Glasses". 

The two had fun working on the surreal plot that involved a character names Brother Big Eyes, a lense grinder in the "Land of "Ool-ya-coo". Brother roamed the land grinding glasses for people. A huge set of horn-rimmed glasses comprised the set.

One night Henderson and Strayhorn went out to hear Ram Ramirez, the pianist who composed "Lover Man". They were both drinking "Zombies", which contained over 6 ounces of alcohol per drink. After consuming five Zombies each, "We were feeling pretty fantastic," said Henderson. "One of us said to Ram, 'Hey Ram, Man, how about letting us do a number?" And he said, 'Sure'. You know, we were Billy Strayhorn and Luther Henderson…We sat down at the piano bench…we were inspired. We were way out- avant-garde- countermelodies, relative keys, two different tempos at the same time. It was genius…we finished the number with great flourish, and we stood up, and everybody in the place was just staring at us…the next morning Ram called me and he said "Man, don't you ever do that to me again! You guys almost got my ass fired! What the f--- did you think you were playing?" (51)

When he wasn't working on his own, Billy still wrote arrangements for Ellington, and collected royalties on re-issues of his Ellington records. His basic expenses were still covered by Ellington's organization. Duke Ellington also survived the decline of the big band era on money he made as a composer. 

Strayhorn and Henderson planned on starting a partnership, which, they thought, could possibly bring in between $300,000-500,000 a year (in early 1950's dollars). Billy told Duke about their plan. Duke called Henderson and told him he didn't need Strayhorn to make that kind of money. Henderson fell for it. No partnership ensued, and Duke kept Strayhorn. "We left all that undone," said Henderson." It was the biggest mistake of my life." (52)

In the summer of 1954, George Wein produced the first Newport Jazz Festival. He didn't ask Ellington to perform, thinking the band was past its prime, but he did give Duke a slot at the third festival, planned for 1956. 

At the same time, George Avakian, Columbia records new A&R account executive, began encouraging Duke to perform something special at the Newport Festival- something they could record capturing the excitement of the band at a live performance. Columbia paid the festival $25,000 to record Ellington in 1956.

Avakian asked Duke to write something like "The Newport Jazz Festival Suite" that could be used as a tie-in product. Duke agreed to put "Strays" to work on it. The final result failed to create much excitement at the festival. But after midnight, when Duke called for his piece "Diminuendo & Crescendo in Blue", a two-part number separated by what turned out to be a wild, extended saxophone solo by Paul Gonsalves, the orchestra bit into the music hard. While Gonsalves blew, Duke shouted encouragement and waved his arms, pushing him along.  

Later, Ellington recalled "Jo Jones was the driving force behind our big success at Newport in 1956…Out of sight of the audience, in the pit in front of the grandstand, slapping a backbeat with a newspaper, talking to us, he prodded us into a "Go, Baby!" drive that developed into the rhythmic groove of the century." (53)

Leonard Feather wrote that "…The whole of Freebody Park was transformed as if struck by a thunderbolt. Photographers rushed madly to the scene of each gathering knot of onlookers while Gonsalves, Duke and the whole band, inspired by the reaction they had started, put their all into the work…Hundreds of spectators climbed up on their chairs to see the action…"(54)  

Gonsalve's solo provided excitement that created a moment of transformation for both the festival and the band- and it was all caught on tape by Columbia's engineers. The record sold extremely well. Duke was put on the cover of Time Magazine.

In 1956, Ellington and Strayhorn had collaborated on a CBS television special entitled "A Drum is a Woman", designed to introduce the public to the new CBS color television system. Ellington had been chosen by Theater Guild attorney Lawrence Langer for the assignment. Duke chose to write "An allegorical history of jazz- a trip from Africa and the Caribbean through New Orleans to the Rocket Age". (55) 

Strayhorn recalled: "I suppose the largest hunk of collaboration was "Drum is a Women" in which we just kind of did everything. He wrote lyrics, I wrote lyrics. He wrote music, and I wrote music. He arranged, and I arranged." (56) 

At this time, Billy was also President of the gay black show business organization, "The Copasetics". Each year Billy would write a music program for the group to perform, and it provided him with "fraternal support"…a creative outlet removed from Ellington." (57)

Said Copasetic member Honi Coles: "Billy had a good time when he wrote for us. He was often quite inebriated." (58)

From the mid to late 1950's Billy also worked extensively with saxophonist Johnny Hodges. Hodges, although a drummer, pianist, and finally virtuoso soprano saxophonist, had little formal education and could barely sign his own name. "Everybody said Johnny was gruff. They thought he was cold. He was just afraid." said his wife Cue Hodges. (59)

Strayhorn and Hodges were worlds apart educationally, but much the same emotionally on the stand. They both emerged from their respective shells while playing and created entertaining records.

Ellington, meanwhile, was writing a condensed version of "Black, Brown and Beige" for recording, which would feature Mahalia Jackson. Duke would call Billy at the last possible moment to write him an arrangement and ship it airmail to Los Angeles from Florida.

"I was in Florida…working with Johnny Hodges. We were working at a hotel, so, of course, we were off at 2:00 in the morning…Ellington was recording (in California) at 2:00 in the afternoon…so I would go home and stay up until he was up and we would confer over the phone about what was to be recorded that day. I was writing things [such as a new arrangement of "Come Sunday"], and I had a cab driver down there who would take the score to the airport and mail it off…It ended up, of course, that I didn't hear anything that was recorded, even things I had written…I didn't hear them until a year later." (60) Billy was given no credit on the Jackson/Ellington record, released in 1958.

Strayhorn had always enjoyed his cocktails, but by the late 1950's his drinking was out of control. His society friend Marian Logan: "You had to see him…Half the time he would be so out of it that he literally couldn't speak. You had to put your ear right up to his mouth to hear what he was saying…He drank just constantly, in every imaginable situation. He wasn't looking for a reason to drink. It was beyond reasons. He just drank. (61)

The well-fed gourmet of previous years now called a friend and asked him to come by for breakfast. Billy said he had some bacon. He made a big deal out of the fact that he had bacon. More out of curiosity than hunger, the friend soon appeared at Strayhorn's apartment door. When he opened up Billy's refrigerator, there it was- a lone package of bacon on one shelf, and a bottle of gin on another. Nothing else.

In 1960 Irving Townsend of Columbia Records made plans with Duke and Billy about doing an Ellington take of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite". Billy had come up with the idea, and Duke approved. Billy set to work arranging a jazz version of the piece. As usual, there was a huge amount of bi-coastal telephony between Duke and Strays. "It was a struggle. It's always a struggle, you know, to present someone of the stature of Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky and adapting it to our flavor without distorting him. It entailed a lot of conversation. Long Distance calls back and forth between New York and California, and records, listening to the way that the originals were actually played…Tchaikovsky wasn't available. Actually it sort of felt like we were talking to him, because we didn't want him turning over any more than he already was."(62) 

In 1960, Strayhorn and Ellington teamed up on their second film score, "Paris Blues". Their first had been Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder" in 1959. American trombonist Billy Byers, who was living in Paris at the time, was hired as a translator for Ellington. But Duke didn't need one because everybody happily spoke in English for him.

Byers ended up spending most of his time with Strayhorn. "Duke worked all the time. He was a very organized man. Every day he got up and wrote for about four hours, no matter how late he had been up…Billy's role was this; he did what he could when he could. But he was always out getting drunk in the Mars Club…After working and living with him like that, so closely, my perception of Ellington and Strayhorn completely reversed. It turned upside down…I had always understood that Duke was a free, creative spirit and a bon vivant, and I had always pictured him with a bottle of champagne in one arm and a blonde in the other, gliding through the club car and saying to Stray, "I just got an inspiration:  DA DA DA-DA, DA DA [The opening melody of the lyric "missed the Saturday dance"]! Go and do something with it.' Nothing could have been further from the truth. It turned out that Strays was the indulgent artist and Ellington was the professional; Ellington worked like a dog, and Strayhorn was the playboy. He was drunk and hanging out all the time…Duke kept Strayhorn around knowing the output might be small and getting smaller, but wanting it all." (63)

Even though the first number heard in "Paris Blues" is "Take The "A" Train", Strayhorn is not mentioned in the films credits.

American record producer Alan Douglas asked Billy if he would be interested in a recording project of his own. Billy agreed casually, as if he had never thought about doing anything like it before. He chose to record songs that he had written in his first decade as a composer, using a bass accompaniment, (Michel Gaudry) a few abstract vocalists harmonizing, and a string quartet on some numbers. The result was a release entitled "The Peaceful Side of Billy Strayhorn".

In 1961, Creed Taylor brought Hodges and Strayhorn together for another session at Van Gelder studios for Verve. The band was primarily Ellington players. Several more recordings with Duke followed. One memorable 1963 session with South African singer Bea Benjamin was later recalled by violinist Svend Asmussen:

"Duke rarely bothered to go into the booth and listen to a take. After a number, he'd say, "Wonderful! Next number- What do we have? Bea darling, what do you want to sing?'

"In my Solitude,' she said. 'Marvelous,' he said. 'What key?' 'B-Natural,' she said. And then Duke said 'Uh-mmm…Mis-ter Stray-horn…that's where you take over." He would have no business playing in B-Natural. Billy would laugh and sit down and play anything in the world in any key, perfectly. One take. And Duke would say, 'Marvelous! Wonderful! What should we do next?" (64)

One cold morning in 1964, Billy's close friend and neighbor Dr. Arthur Logan (who was also Ellington's physician) noticed Strayhorn sitting on a chair at the top of the Logan's West 80's Brownstone steps. He was out of breath from climbing the stairs. Logan sent him in for a check up and it was determined that Billy had advanced esophageal cancer.

Undergoing treatment immediately, Billy attempted to keep up his usual work output. During the spring of 1964 much of this work was recorded that later became "Ellington '65" and "Ellington '66". Then, he stopped writing for a year, though he continued to arrange charts for Duke. During this period, the earlier co-written "Far East Suite" was recorded, based on the impressions of both Ellington and Strayhorn during their 1963 State Dept. tour through the Near and Middle East.

"The Intimacy of the Blues", and "Blood Count" were both written in early 1967. They would be his last contributions to the Ellington book. "Blood Count", written in D minor, is a troubling, lonely sounding composition, and "the trombones and trumpets alternately play a line of desolate descending major triads that keep falling back to a D Minor chord, suggesting there is no escape." (65)

Ellington and the orchestra left for Europe at the beginning of 1967, but Strayhorn was too sick to go along. Billy began writing his final piece of music, entitled "North by Southwest Suite". It was intended for the duo of Willie Ruff (French horn and Bass) and Dwike Mitchell (Piano). Strayhorn invited the duo over to his apartment, to make sure that his writing was correct for their respective playing styles and abilities.

Willie Ruff recalled their meeting and how Strayhorn interacted clearly: "What I've written here,"[Strayhorn] said to Mitchell, "is quite complete in the compositional sense. But I want this first meeting to feel to you like a fitting, as in 'fit' a custom-made suit. The compositional elements should fit your hands, which are so much larger and powerful than mine…You know how to make sections like these on this page as big and as rich in sonority as you can. But here in this interlude, let the horn ring through…Let Willie's sound kind of hover over it all right there. And pause here, but only slightly…Over in this middle part, your line and the horn line are of equal importance. Balance is the key word; but that's the kind of thing you two do naturally anyway. I have left you space and, at the same time, given indications of essential details…" By now Mitchell was alive with excitement. His large fingers trembled as he carefully shaped them to fit the powerful, two-fisted chords Stray had written to underscore the horn theme. And wham! Stray was up off the piano bench at the huge sound Mitchell made. He stomped the floor and beamed at Mitchell. "Hell yes!" he hollered. "That's what I had in mind; I just don't have the hands and strength to make it sound that way." (66)

On May 31, 1967, Billy Strayhorn died of cancer at age 51. Bill Grove, his companion, was at his side. The New York Times obituary, written by music critic John Wilson, referred to Strayhorn as "a small, stately man', who observed the world with 'benign amusement' through dark-rimmed glasses." (67)

A week after a memorial service at St. Peter's Church, Rev. John Gensel led a small group in prayer beside the Hudson River and then "turned and emptied Strayhorn's ashes into the air over the water, and a breeze lifted them away." (68)

Duke Ellington was devastated by the loss of his friend. His son Mercer once said, "He couldn't accept any kind of misfortune- that was one of the secrets of his success. He couldn't accept Strayhorn really wasn't there anymore." (69)

Ellington lived seven more years. His writing increased after Strayhorn's death. He composed a tribute to Strayhorn entitled "And His Mother Called Him Bill", and two more "Sacred Concerts". He also wrote the operatic "Queenie Pie", as well as the "Degas Suite", the "Afro-Eurasian Eclipse", and the "Goutelas Suite".

Duke Ellington died on May 24, 1974. In his autobiography, Ellington had written, "Billy Strayhorn was always the most unselfish, the most patient, and the most imperturbable, no matter how dark the day. I am indebted to him for so much of my courage since 1939. He was my listener, my most dependable appraiser, and as a critic he would be the most clinical, but his background--both classical and modern--was an accessory to his own good taste and understanding, so what came back to me was in perfect balance." (70)
 
 References

 (1) P.195 David Hajdu; "Lush Life, A Biography of Billy Strayhorn", 1996. Farrar Straus Giroux. New York. (2) ibid. PP.8-9 (3) P.9 (4) P.11 (5) PP.11-12 (6) P.12 (7) P.14 (8) P.15 (9) P.14 (10) P.19 Walter van de Leur; "Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn, 2002. Oxford University Press, New York. (11) Hadju; P.17 (12) ibid. P.17 (13) P.18 (14) P.19 (15) P.24 (16) P.25 (17) van de Leur; P.19 (18) Hadju; P.30 (19) ibid. P.31 (20) P.33 (21) P.40 (22) PP.48-49 (23) P.49 (24) (Strayhorn, 1962); van de Leur P.23  (25) ibid.P.23 (26) ibid. P.23 (27) Hadju; P.57 (28) ibid. P.57 (29) ibid. P.59 (30) ibid. P.71 (31) ibid.P.73 (32) ibid. P.73 (33) ibid. P.74 (34) ibid.P.78 (35) ibid. P.52 (36) ibid. P.86 (37) ibid. P.87 (38) ibid. P.87 (39) ibid. P.87 (40) ibid. P.88 (41) ibid. P.90 (42) ibid. P.95 (43) ibid. P.99 (44) ibid. P.120 (45) ibid. P.122 (46) P.104 (47) P.105 (48) P.113 (49) P.125 (50) P.127 (51) PP.128-129 (52) P.142 (53) P.241 Duke Ellington; "Music is My Mistress", Da Capo Edition; Perseus Book Group. Reprint of 1973 Doubleday Ed. Garden City, N.Y. (54) P.263 James Lincoln Collier; "Duke Ellington", 1987. Oxford University Press. New York, Oxford. (55) Hadju; P.157 (56) ibid. P.158 (57) P.175 (58) P.176 (59) P.178 (60) PP.179-180 (61) P.197 (62) P.204 (63) P.210 (64) P.220 (65) van de Leur; P.171 (66) ibid. P.173 {Ruff 1991.1} (67) Hadju; P.255 (68) ibid. P.258 (69) P.259 (70) Ellington; P.156

Gene Krupa: Let Me Off Uptown

By John Twomey

He possessed a remarkable personality, being a sincere gentleman in a tumultuous business. He was always ready to give credit where it was due, helping to popularize some of the first true jazz drumming pioneers like Baby Dodds and Zutty Singleton.

He joined the musicians union while still a schoolboy, and started playing gigs around his neighborhood. The effects of late night playing made him fall asleep in class. The nuns who taught him reported this to his mother.

Returning to Chicago, Krupa met another drummer by the name of Al Silverman, who introduced him to some very important musicians then on the Chicago scene: Drummers Baby Dodds, George Wettling, Dave Tough and Coronetist Bix Beiderbecke. Gene and Dave started hanging around together, and Gene’s name became known among what was then the Austin High School Gang. The gang was to become the Chicago "School" of jazz, led by such lights as Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland Eddie Condon and Frank Teschmaker. When Tough decided to go to Europe and write, Bud Freeman recommended Gene take his place. Said Gene, “It was great, like dessert, exchanging ideas with Tesch, Condon, Bud and the rest after so many nights with commercial bands.”(3)

Krupa explained the situation at this point in his life: “I was being pressured at home to get a normal job, to do better at school…One day I got this call from Leo Shukin…He said he was putting a band together, including guys like Teschmaker, Mezzrow, trombonist Floyd O’Brien and pianist Joe Sullivan for "The Rendezvous", a club in downtown Chicago.”(4)

Gene’s first jazz recordings came next. Remarkably, these sides caused a sensation among drummers as far away as New York. Krupa brought his entire drum set to the studio. This had never been done before. Tommy Rockwell, the session producer for the Okeh label on the date, wondered if the noise from the bass drum would “knock the needle off the record” while recording. Rugs were placed around the set to dampen the sound.

After recording with such notables as Fats Waller and Red Nichols during the next few years, Gene moved to New York and played in the pit bands of two Broadway hits, “Strike Up the Band”, and “Girl Crazy”. It was around this time that Gene heard his biggest drumming influence: Chick Webb, which forever changed Gene's approach to playing drums. In “Girl Crazy”, one of his band mates was Glenn Miller. Gene began to realize at this time that further musical study would be in his interest. Gene told Metronome Magazine in 1938 that “I couldn’t tell a quarter note from an eighth note and Glenn knew it. So every time we got a new thing to do, I’d pass my part to Glenn who’d hum it for me a few times until I got it in my head. The conductor of the orchestra never caught on.” (7) In order to learn to read music, Gene began serious druming study with New York drum teacher Sanford A. Moeller (for some reason known among friends as "Gus"). Gene's use of the Moeller system of drumming (which used arms, instead of just wrists and fingers) was extremely important to Gene's style of drumming, and also to Gene's showmanship.
 During the worst years of the business depression of the early 1930's, Gene performed with commercial outfits such as Irving Aaronson’s Commanders, and then the 1932 band Benny Goodman formed for singer Russ Colombo. When that band broke up, Gene played with the Mal Hallet and Buddy Rogers bands. 

In 1934 producer John Hammond asked Gene to join a new band Benny Goodman was forming, but he balked at the offer. He had worked with Goodman in the Colombo band, and knew him to be difficult. Hammond convinced him to take the offer by telling him he would only have to work with Goodman on Saturdays. The rest of the week was his, and the pay was good. Krupa heard the Goodman band on the radio, with the stiff, metronomic Stan King on drums and decided to go for it.

Three years into Gene’s employment with Goodman, the band’s historic concert at Carnegie Hall took place. One carbon ribbon microphone suspended above the stage- a last minute thought- relayed the entire performance to a transcription studio in another Manhattan location. Krupa’s wild floor-tomming performance on “Sing, Sing, Sing”, an extended interpolation of the band’s earlier 1936 hit “Christopher Columbus”, caused a sensation, and within weeks he left Goodman to start his own band.

Then, just as suddenly, it was over.

Before he had left for the army, the valet had shoved the pot into one of Gene’s coat pockets in a closet, and Krupa, who preferred drinking anyway, had forgotten about it. When the police came looking for him at the theater where he was working, he called his new valet, who was still a minor, and told him to flush the cigarettes he would find in a certain coat pocket. The orders were not followed, and the cops busted the teenager walking out of the hotel with the pot in one of his own pockets.

Gene's orchestra disbanded, and his money dwindled. His first wife, Ethel McGuire, offered to give Gene back her $100,000 divorce settlement if he needed it. Then another trial was brought on two counts, the second one “contributing to the delinquency of a minor”. Krupa explained, “My new valet was a minor. We lost the felony case and made a motion for appeal. This meant I had to remain incarcerated until the appeal came up, or until the judge saw fit to let me go. After 84 days, I got out. I already had served the sentence for the misdemeanor. Out on bail, still convicted of the felony, waiting on the appeal, I went back to New York and stayed around home in Yonkers.” (8)

He took Goodman up on the offer to join his band, which was playing at the Terrace Room of the Hotel New Yorker on 34th St. Two months later, he switched to Tommy Dorsey's band, replacing Buddy Rich, who was serving in the Marines. When the Dorsey band rose on the platform stage of the old Paramount Theater at 44th and Broadway with Gene seated at the drums, "I got the greatest ovation of my life. It lasted several minutes and I have to admit I broke down." (9)

"I booked the Capitol Theater in New York for a new band I intended to put together. I gave Tommy notice and expressed my appreciation to him for all he had done. But in no way was I the same guy as the Gene Krupa of 1942. The whole experience- the arrest, the court trials, jail, disappointments with people, the terrible waiting- had changed me. I didn't feel guilty. But the shock of the entire thing straightened me up. I returned to religion and many other things that were important to me before I became a so-called big shot. Certainly I wanted no connection with drugs of any sort. (10)

He hired both Gerry Mulligan and Neil Hefti to write and arrange the music. Anita O'Day returned for a stay, and sang two more hit records with the band, "Boogie Blues", and "Opus One".

Unfortunately he always had to contend with the shadow of the 1943 marijuana bust. If a dealer got arrested in another state, he would tell police “Gene Krupa gave it to me”, and Gene would get drawn into yet another investigation until he could extricate himself from the lies. When he noted that a few of his own musicians were using drugs, he got out of the big band business.

He remained active through the 1960’s, raising his kids in Yonkers, N.Y., and coaching their Little League team. He assembled large and small recording groups in New York studios, and released the occasional album. He spoke out against drug abuse in schools and did charity benefits. His small group's appearance at New York's Metropole was one of that club's most successful acts of the 1960's. Together with Cozy Cole, he formed the Krupa-Cole Drum School in Manhattan.

Gene died of Leukemia in October of 1973. He was 64.

References

All quotes are from Krupa interviews with Burt Korall unless otherwise noted.

(1) Korall, Burt. "Drummin' Men". Schirmer Books, New York. 1990. P.46. (2) Ibid, P.47 (Source: Rudi Blesh, "Combo: USA", Chilton Book Company, Philadelphia.1971. PP. 135-136. (3) Korall; P. 51 (4) Ibid. P.52 (5) P.52 (6) PP.55-56 (7) Korall; P.57 (Source: Gene Krupa quoted in "Metronome". March, 1938. P.48) (8) Korall; PP.76-77 (9) Ibid. P.78 (10) P.78 (11) PP.82-83 (12) P.84

Discussed in this article are two historic 1929 sides he recorded with an integrated band. It is revealing that he felt these sides were his best recorded work. Without the acute sense of time, syncopation and harmony developed while working with some of the best black and white jazz players early in his career, he would not have been able to write and arrange for, let alone inspire such a great organization later on.

When I worked at 2 Penn Plaza on 7th Avenue across from the Hotel Pennsylvania in the late 1990's, I often visited an undistinguished retail store that leased that hotel's ground floor ballroom. My lunchtime visits were not as a consumer, but as a witness to the room's departed greatness, now filled with cheap, cut-rate goods. The actual wood of the dance floor could be seen in places where the overlaid tiles had been worn through. This busy store was a piece of musical history. From it Miller had broadcast radio shows to a national audience.

Up the coast a few miles in Rye, New York, is another Miller time-line notch: The Playland Casino. Planned by Robert Moses in 1928, this dance hall also sits facing the Sound next to Rye Beach. The entire park has been designated a national landmark of 1920's Art Deco design. It was here in the summer of 1938 that an earlier Miller band played for dancers, according to the surviving contract, between the hours of 8:00 pm and 3:00 am for the sum of $200.00

Glenn Miller's father, Lewis Elmer, changed towns as frequently as he changed jobs. Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa on March 1, 1904. By the time he was five years old, Glenn lived in a sod hut in Nebraska, where his father had decided on "homesteading" for a living. A homesteader was one who claimed land and had to stay on it to stake the claim. His mother made sure that her four children- Glenn had an older brother and a younger sister and brother- were schooled in this prairie wilderness. She organized and taught the school herself for a year. Mattie Lou Miller also played the organ in their sod home. Her kids would sing songs as their wagon rolled across the fields.

As time went by the family moved to Missouri. His older brother Deane graduated from high school and played the trumpet in their town band. Young Glenn went along to the shows, and showed such desire to be a part of the band that its leader gave him a new horn to be paid for in shoe-shines.

Before starting college at the University of Colorado, Glenn lit out for Wyoming for a band gig that never happened, and in the following 20 months ended up playing with the band of Boyd Senter. Back at the University, he played in the band of Holly Moyer, a fellow student. During his college years, he completed only 3 of 16 semesters. He flunked a first year harmony course. He continued playing the trombone with the Moyers band on a tour through Wyoming, where he met Smith Ballew, a singer with the Jimmy Joy band of Texas fame. Ballew arranged for Glenn to audition for the Joy band, but Glenn didn't pass the audition. He returned to college at Boulder but dropped out after failing three out of five classes in 1923. He still played in the Moyer band, but then left town and went out on tour with a group led by Tom Watkins. This group went down to Mexico, and back up to Los Angeles. Glenn had always worked at becoming an excellent sight-reader, and was hired by house bandleader Max Fisher at the Forum Theater in Los Angeles, California, to play stage shows.

Miller showed more interest in arranging for Pollack than playing. He had never had such an opportunity to work with first-rate musicians. His first attempts were pretty basic. He would listen to records by bands such as the Wolverine's, copy a few of their riffs, and place them into the context of his "new" arrangement.

The Pollack band made a big splash at the Southmoor Ballroom in Chicago when it opened. Even Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer drove in from Indiana to hear them some nights. The band soon recorded for Victor records, using one of Glenn's arrangements. Being in Chicago in the 1920's, the band often worked for the Mob, which controlled the clubs during the alcohol prohibition years. Pollack's band traveled out to Los Angeles and back to Chicago on its first tour, and then opened at the swank Hotel Blackhawk. On their next Victor records, the band added trumpeter Jimmy McPartland and tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman to the lineup of Goodman, Miller and Pollack.

Glenn worked very hard at his dream of one day becoming a famous jazz trombonist, practicing and studying in his spare time. But once again Gil Rodin, discoverer of young Goodman, made another find for Pollack. This time it was trombonist Jack Teagarden. Rodin told Pollack about the extremely talented Texan, and Teagarden was hired. Rodin first heard "T" playing his slip horn without the bell attached- he was just playing the blues through his straight horn into an empty glass, but he made it sound sweet. Glenn knew his days were numbered when he heard "T". He gracefully left the Pollack band and took a position arranging for the staid, less than thrilling orchestra of Paul Ash.

The scriptwriters of "The Glenn Miller Story" built a good part of the story around Helen and Glenn's relationship, but unlike most Hollywood treatments that throw in romance only to leaven the mix, this marriage really was what enabled Glenn to realize many of his aspirations. Glenn's friend George Simon put it succinctly:

In 1929, Miller recorded 12 sides with a band led by both Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. It featured the hip young vocalist/scat singer Bing Crosby. That same year Glenn recorded with Red Nichols and his Five Pennies, which was one of the best white jazz groups. Although Jack Teagarden also played on those sessions, Glenn held his own, and did some notable solo work and fills.

In 1930, Glenn worked for Red Nichols in the pit band of George Gershwin's Broadway show "Girl Crazy". Gershwin gave Glenn credit for writing the brilliant ride-outs on the show's numbers, such as "I Got Rhythm", and "Embraceable You". Glenn worked with both Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa in that band. He also recorded more sides with the Nichols group, which included Adrian Rollini on several sides. Nichols requested 51 arrangements from Glenn in 1930, allowing the Millers to live comfortably in their apartment in Astoria, Queens. Glenn earned over $6,000 in 1930. (3)

"All kinds of things had been happening. (Pianist) Chummy (McGregor) had been in the lock-up with D.T.'s and Glenn got juiced- it was the only time I saw him like that. He could be a bad drunk, too.  Nobody knows exactly how it started, but I understand Glenn had leaned over and grabbed J.D. Wade's legs (Wade was the lead trumpeter)...Anyway, they got into a real fight, right on the bandstand, and they were rolling on the floor and Frank Simeone, the little sax player, was trying to separate them and he was taking more blows than anyone." (4)

In 1934, the Dorsey band recorded 58 sides for Decca Records. Glenn oversaw much of the direction of these Dorsey sessions. He also got fed up pretty fast with the constant fighting between the brothers, and gave them his notice when he heard about another opportunity organizing an American band for English bandleader Ray Noble. Among his choices were trumpeters Charlie Spivak and Peewee Erwin, trombonist Will Bradley, reedmen Bud Freeman and Johnny Mince, pianist Claude Thornhill and guitarist George Van Eps. The band opened successfully at the new Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center.

Although Glenn had already composed and recorded two forgettable original songs, his third attempt appears to have caught him off guard. One night at the Hotel New Yorker on 34th St. he announced to some musician friends on the stand in the Bob Crosby band that he had written a song and made an arrangement of it. The band played it, but its complex voicing of reeds and flutes threw them, and he was told that it really wasn't in that band's style, which was mostly Dixieland. Crosby band member Gil Rodin asked him to rearrange it for the band, and then they could play it easier. Glenn told Rodin that he wanted to get it published first. He waited four years, and then published and recorded "Moonlight Serenade" with his own band.

In his years as a sideman, he had noted how things got accomplished in the music business of the 30's. The bands were large, and the pay was low for those starting their own bands. Commercial success, it seemed, was a combination of talent, fresh ideas, showmanship and a hard-nosed attitude in all business dealings. He was ready to try out his perceptions. He started scouting talent for his own band. Right away musicians picked up on his authority in rehearsals. He knew how to ask a player exactly what he wanted from him musically, and he expected a serious answer. If there was any misunderstanding, he gave all he could to help make it clearer. Some of the men he had hired were young and comparatively green to the caliber of players he was used to. However, they were what he could afford, and he was determined to make them succeed. If there was a problem within a section of how to phrase the notes, he would stand in the middle of the men and play the phrase out on his horn.

They were then off to the Raymoor Ballroom in Boston for a 2 week stretch, and some one-nighters on the way back to the aforementioned $200.00 gig at Playland Casino in Rye, N.Y. Next the band went down to New Orleans to play a successful gig at the Roosevelt Hotel. George Simon, in his book "Glenn Miller and His Orchestra" describes the situation Glenn faced at this point:

And this was to be the first Miller band's commercial height. After New Orleans it was all downhill. The drinking behavior of the band, led by some key members, was affecting performance quality. There were also related morale problems for the first time. At one extended gig in Minnesota, a killer schedule of daily performances starting at 12:30 pm and ending at 1:30 am, still left Miller in the red by almost $20.00 a week. The drummer spot was the biggest musical challenge. A series of players just couldn't move the band along the way Glenn wanted.

By December of 1937, the economics of running the band were no longer making sense. Indicative of how bad things were within the group was a dismal five hour recording session at Decca that produced only two songs. Most bands at this time could record four sides in three hours. Things got worse. The drinking was out of control. A drunken band member totaled one of the band's two cars. Men were fired or quit the band constantly. Glenn asked one trusted band member, who happened to be a fourth year medical school student on leave to make some money- to keep an eye on two hell-raising musicians and make sure they were sober for the next gig. The three of them rode together in an unheated car in New England and almost froze- until they started drinking. The trusted "keeper" was so drunk he passed out when he arrived at the overheated dance hall.

Glenn went back to New York broke. He took a part time job with Tommy Dorsey's outfit playing a weekly commercial for Raleigh cigarettes to pay the rent, and he and Helen lived quietly in Astoria, Queens. He had nights at home, and a normal schedule.

An indicator of how much trust was placed in Glenn at this second starting-point of his career was the fact that Helen's parents back in Boulder, Colorado. actually took out a second mortgage on their home to lend money to their son-in-law.

"It's different from both the legitimate and the jazz techniques. It's louder and stronger, and it requires an entirely different way of thinking about playing the horn. You have to think of it more like a lead saxophone, and it took me a long time to develop that approach.... I realized that I was playing entirely differently than I had been taught. It turned out to be a different instrument for me." (7)

Vocalist Ray Eberle, brother of already established singer Bob Eberle, was hired in the most interesting way- he simply walked past Glenn's table at the Hotel New Yorker looking so much like his brother that Glenn called him over to his table and after a few questions, hired him on the spot. Ray had never sung with a band before.

In the autumn of 1938 the Miller band signed with RCA's Bluebird label. Sales were slow. Glenn was ready to walk away from the idea of ever having a band. Tommy Dorsey was lending Glenn a lot of money to keep things going. He believed the loans entitled him to a piece of the band if it met success. Then Cy Shribman, a shrewd ballroom operator from Boston who had followed Glenn's ups and downs with interest got wind of Dorsey's unusual interest in the new band, and decided to underwrite the Miller group. In March 1939, with record sales picking up, the band went into Frank Daily's Meadowbrook, a ballroom in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. The Meadowbrook had a national radio wire- so a large audience was hearing the band regularly from a well-known nightspot.

That autumn, Glenn signed a contract with the Chesterfield cigarette brand for a radio program to air three times a week from the Hotel Pennsylvania. The string of hit records, personal appearances and eventually two movies, "Sun Valley Serenade" and "Orchestra Wives" kept the money rolling in. In 1940, the band scored another 31 Top Ten hits, including "Tuxedo Junction" and "In The Mood". This was more than three times as many hits as the second most successful recording artist of the year, Tommy Dorsey. Glenn was presented with the record industry's first Gold Record in 1941 for his hit "Chattanooga Choo Choo". He also charted another 11 Top Ten hits in 1941. Within a very brief amount of time, he was a millionaire, and not shy about telling people so.

When WWII began, the band added army camps to their regular tours. The band recorded another 11 Top Ten hits, including "String of Pearls". In 1942, Glenn walked away from his $20,000 a week salary and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was made a captain. It took him two years to convince the brass to let him take a band overseas to play near the action for troops. In the meantime he was stationed in New Haven, Connecticut, and was featured on a CBS radio show out of New York for eleven months called "I Sustain The Wings", which featured music and drama to encourage listeners to join the Army Air Force.

Stationed out in the country at an airbase, the band moved around England playing other airfields, hospitals and troop bases to great, appreciative service crowds. In less than a year, they had played over 800 performances, 500 of these were radio broadcasts heard by millions- many on global short wave signals heard back in the U.S. The band made more than 300 personal appearances at concerts and dances, with a gross attendance of over 600,000. (9)

On December 23, 1944, Helen Miller received a telegram from the War Dept. at her Tenafly, New Jersey home reporting Glenn's lost flight. She had been enjoying the holiday season with their two adopted children, one of whom Glenn hadn't yet seen. The story was announced in the press the following morning.

On Christmas Day, 1944, Helen wrote to Don Haynes, the band's business manager, who had been awaiting Glenn's flight in Paris:

Polly (Don's wife) has been here with me since day before yesterday when I got my terrible wire from the War Dept. It was such a horrible shock to me but after I thought it all over it will take more than a "Missing in Flight" message to get me down. Believe Glenn will turn up sometime--maybe not for months, maybe real soon--but if you hear from him first tell him I'm fine and just waiting for him." (11)

(1) Simon, George. Glenn Miller & His Orchestra. Da Capo Press Edition. New York, NY, 1974. P.45 (2) ibid, P.49 (3) P.56 (4) P.62 (5) P. 88(6) P.90 (7) P.122 (8) PP.125-26 (9) Statistics from Glenn Miller Orchestra website  (10) Simon; P.416