Tommy Dorsey and his band pose for a publicity photo in NBC studio 8G before a broadcast of Tommy’s Raleigh-Kool radio show – probably November of 1937. By 1939, both Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey were household names in the US, and wealthy men. (Pearl was eased out of the show by mid-1937, after which Tommy had it to himself.) This show, sponsored by Raleigh and Kool cigarettes, on which TD would continue appearing weekly through 1939, provided for him the same ongoing widespread public exposure and cash-flow as the Camel Caravan provided for Benny Goodman during the same time period. Tommy, then both personally and through his various agents and business associates, began to lay siege to the offices of his (and Goodman’s) booking agent, Music Corporation of America (MCA), located in the Squibb Building on Fifth Avenue (1) in Manhattan, demanding that they get him his own radio show.īy November of 1936, MCA did in fact get him his own sponsored network radio show, albeit one where he was presented initially as a supporting act for the headliner, comedian Jack Pearl. When Benny Goodman was signed to appear weekly on the sponsored CBS radio network Camel Caravan radio show in mid-1936, Tommy understood immediately that that would raise the public awareness of BG’s band and music, and at the same time, provide Benny with an ongoing source of revenue which would ensure that he could keep his band personnel as stable and strong as possible. He also understood what it took to keep his band successful as a business enterprise, in addition to giving his audiences what they wanted musically. Consequently, Tommy Dorsey was one of the most consistently popular bandleaders from the mid-1930s until the mid-1950s.Īs a show business “operator,” Tommy knew where the action was, and always wanted to be, indeed had to be, in the thick of it. He constantly tried to give audiences what they wanted.

(His star clarinetist from 1937 to 1941, Johnny Mince, once told me: “Tommy had an applause meter in his head.”) That applause meter guided TD’s selection of music.

He gradually learned what his audiences liked and wanted. (Above left – Tommy Dorsey in 1938.) After he had befriended someone, he would not hesitate to try to include them, if they could help him, in whatever public relations gimmick he was working on at any given moment.īy 1941, Tommy Dorsey had been performing for audiences for some twenty years, first as a sidemen, later (starting in 1934) as the leader of his own band. Through his long experience in show business, starting in the 1920s and running into the mid-1950s, he had met and become friends with countless performers, including musicians, other bandleaders and singers. He could make people laugh, and he loved to laugh himself. He had a great sense of humor, true wit and good comedy timing.

He loved radio and relished reading scripted lines on radio, and he did that and also ad-libbed very well. He was not only a public relations person’s dream, he was always his own best public relations person. He was as Bud Freeman, one of his most talented sidemen, told me “an operator,” meaning that he was always involved in cooking up some scheme that would advance his band’s popularity. He was not just a superb bandleader who had the ability to elicit great performances from his various orchestras. Tommy Dorsey was not just a virtuoso trombonist, and a pioneer in moving forward how the instrument could be played. Tommy Dorsey, first and solo trombone, directing: Ziggy Elman, first trumpet Ray Linn, Jimmy Blake, Chuck Peterson trumpets George Arus, Les Jenkins and Lowell Martin, trombones Freddie Stulce, first alto saxophone Johnny Mince, alto saxophone Don Lodice and Paul Mason, tenor saxophones Heinie Beau, baritone saxophone Joe Bushkin, piano Clark Yocum, guitar Sid Weiss, bass Buddy Rich, drums Sy Oliver and Jo Stafford, vocals. Recorded by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra for Victor on Februin New York.

Tommy dorsey well git it