|
Peter Levinson,
author of
Tommy
Dorsey:
Livin'
in a Great Big Way
_________________________________________________
No musician evokes the time of the Big Band era more
strikingly than Tommy Dorsey (1905 - 1956), whose towering trombone style
and smash hits created legions of fans and influenced popular music for decades.
Peter Levinson, the author of criticially acclaimed biographies of
Harry James and Nelson Riddle, has now written the definitive account of
this icon of jazz, drawing on exhaustive new research and scores of interviews
with the musicians and others who knew him best.
Dorsey led a rich and complex life. After a harsh
childhood in the coal mining towns of eastern Pennsylvania, the young trombonist
rose to fame and fortune during the Jazz Age. With his brother Jimmy,
Tommy Dorsey created one of the most popular bands of the era and played
with such giants as Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller. But Dorsey's volcanic
personality eventually erupted, and he went off to start his own band.
Within a few years, he launched the career of the young singer Frank
Sinatra#.
In a November, 2005 interview, Paul Morris talks with Levinson
about one of the brightest stars of the "Greatest Generation."
Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra, c. 1941
"He would take a musical phrase and play it all the way through seemingly
without breathing for eight, ten, maybe sixteen bars. How in the hell did
he do it? I used to sit behind him on the bandstand and watch, trying to
see him sneak a breath, but I never saw the bellows move in his back. His
jacket didn't even move. I used to edge my chair to the side a little and
peek around to watch him… I discovered he had a 'sneak' pinhole in the
corner of his mouth -- not an actual pinhole, but a tiny place where he was
breathing [this was something Pop Dorsey had taught him]. In the middle of
the phrase, while the tone was still being carried through the
trombone…[he'd] take a quick breath and play another four bars with
that breath.
"Why couldn't a singer do that, too?… It was my idea to make my
voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin -- not sounding like them,
but 'playing' the voice like those instruments."
- Frank Sinatra
*
Stardust  ,
with Frank Sinatra
_________________________________________________
PM I want to start by thanking you for writing
this book. I thought I knew big band music pretty well, but after reading
Livin' In a Great Big Way, I can see that I didn't know Tommy Dorsey
well enough.
PL Part of that is probably because, to my
knowledge, my book is the first book written on Dorsey since 1973. I was
surprised to discover that. I got motivated to write this book after flipping
through the last Encyclopedia of Jazz and learning that Dorsey would
have been one hundred years old in November of 2005.
PM In general, I have found that books on
jazz have not properly shown his importance -- especially his commercial
importance of the 1930's and 1940's.
PL That's right, and he really had that
commercial appeal. While doing this book I discovered a somewhat obscure
fact that he referred to his own style of playing as "Civil War Jazz." It
was in a tiny publication, but still, there he was, talking about his jazz
background and his own playing. His forte, of course, was playing in that
legato style trombone for ballads, and it is what really made him distinctive.
He just wished he were Jack Teagarden, who he knew he never could be.
| PM Gunther Schuller has said that he was
one of the greatest trombonists of all time in any field.
PL That's true, when you look just at the
instrument, forgetting the jazz aspect.
PM How do you think he will be remembered
as a jazz player?
PL Probably not all that favorably. The writer
Dick Sudhalter is one of the few who thinks seriously of him as a jazz player.
Dick is a cornet player, while I am not a musician, so he has reason
for his opinion. Dick also loves that period of the 1920's and 1930's, so,
let's just say that as a jazz player, he thinks Dorsey is more important
as a jazz musician than I do.
PM Sudhalter is especially enthusiastic about
his cornet playing.
PL That's right, and he was the one who told
me about and encouraged me to listen to it, even saying that I would hear
a lot of Armstrong in Dorsey's style of cornet and trumpet playing. The cornet
probably only amounted to his instrument to fool around with. He would
occasionally play last sets on cornet and especially trumpet.
PM You paint a really vivid picture of him
as a personality. Could you talk about the phrase, "Living in a great big
way"?
PL I gave credit for choosing this title
for the book in the acknowledgements. Bill Ruhlmann wrote a piece for
Goldmine magazine in the early nineties called "Living in a Great
Big Way" that I used as a kind of road map. The piece told of Dorsey's career
in great detail, so, not only was the piece important, but it also gave me
a title. As I started to write the book, I saw the way he lived, and felt
that he did indeed live in a "great big way." And of course there is
another thing, and that is that he took that title from
"Marie ,"
where the band yells out "Living in a great big way, Mama," followed by the
Bunny Berigan trumpet solo. You could call it a double entendre that I took
from a magazine article. |
photo from collection of Janie New Dorsey
Dorsey with Eleanor Powell, from Ship Ahoy, 1942
*
"You take Jackie Gleason and his excesses, Frank Sinatra and his
excesses, Buddy Rich and his excesses -- put them all together, you, you'll
find Tommy Dorsey."
- Tommy Dorsey Orchestra trombonist Buddy Morrow
_____
Hawaiian War Chant
|
photo from collection of Joe Scocco
Tommy, Jimmy, Mary, and Edward Dorsey, c. 1911
"Since Tommy came along after Jimmy, he was the one who had to
prove his worth."
- Artie Shaw
*
"Wearing glasses and playing a musical instrument, Tommy often
found himself the subject of ridicule from kids in the town. He had
to learn to stand up for himself. He built up a strong physique from
playing baseball and various jobs as a laborer and soon was able to handle
himself in any kind of a fight. He had an explosive Irish temper, and
he became absolutely fearless -- a trait that would remain with him the rest
of his life."
- Peter Levinson |
PM Dorsey grew up in the coal country
of eastern Pennsylvania. What was the musical culture of the immigrants of
that part of the country?
PL There were many Welshmen from England
-- who tended to be the coal mine owners -- and they possessed a great hatred
of the Irish. I am not certain about the musicology of that culture, but
I assume they would play Celtic folk songs and that kind of thing.
Tommy's father "Pop" Dorsey was very important because he had been a coal
miner and was willing to do anything to keep his boys out of the mines. He
was making about ten dollars a week as a miner, and saw that it was dead-end
work that could lead to serious injury or death. He felt that if could instill
the importance of music in his three sons and a daughter, and provide them
with a training in music, it would enable the boys to get into a career other
than coal miner.
As far as describing the music in the town, I can't do that other than to
say that dancing was very important to the Welshmen, Irish, Poles and Italians
who were living there. While I was there I saw the remnants of a gigantic
ballroom that was destroyed by fire in the 1950's, as well as the Lakeside
Ballroom, which has been restored and looks exactly like it did during Dorsey's
era. They now have polka dancing there a couple times a week. These ballrooms
are a little more than a half-mile away from each other, and during the big
band era, one had bands on Thursday evenings, and the other on Saturday evenings.
They were able to draw name bands to both places. The larger one hosted the
bigger name bands, while the Lakeside would host the more square "Mickey
Mouse" bands. It is a quite remarkable statement about how much dancing meant
to that area that they could, for decades, have two dance halls host large
music events on a twice-a-week basis. |
| PM So, by the time Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey
became pros in their teenage years, they had a lot of venues in which to
play.
PL That's right. Tommy came along during
a time in the early 1920's when jazz was becoming very important -- it was
a time when so many players from Chicago moved to New York due to attempts
to rid the city of Al Capone. The cleanup was not entirely successful, but
many of the musicians who had all this work in Chicago came to New York.
After the Wild Canaries, the first band Tommy and Jimmy co-led, they joined the Scranton Sirens, which brought them to New York. Later, after Stints with Jean Goldette and Paul Whitman, they joined the California Ramblers that played in Westchester County.
Many of the great
young Chicago players who came to New York had a big influence on them, so
that their jazz credentials -- I hesitate to even use that expression --
were honed by rubbing shoulders and playing sessions with them during the
early 1920's.
PM Duirng this time they met the likes of
Joe Venuti, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Lang …
PL Yes, and they met Louis Armstrong in Chicago
as well -- after he returned to Chicago once he left Fletcher Henderson's
band. Tommy and Louis had a close friendship all their lives. At Tommy's
funeral, there were many large wreaths of flowers, and the second largest
in size only to Jackie Gleason's was the one sent by Louis Armstrong. |
photo from collection of Duncan Schiedt
At Bix Beiderbecke's first recording session, 1925.
Beiderbecke is second from right, Dorsey on far right
*
"A strong family loyalty was instilled in them, and they were taught
to always speak of each other with respect. But from the beginning,
the relationship between the Dorsey brothers was volatile. It didn't
take much to start a fistfight between them, and anyone who tried to intervene
was in danger of being attacked by both of them. Their rivalry was
to become part of their fame, and it lasted as long as they
lived."
- Peter Levinson
_____
Davenport Blues , by Bix Beiderbecke
|
Jack Teagarden
_____
It's All In Your Mind |
PM By 1928, you write that he had worked
in New York extensively, and that he had recorded as a sideman on over two
thousand records. He was quite a hard-working player.
PL Some of the bands he played with like
Ben Selvin and Howard Lanin are not important bands now, but so many great
musicians played with them, and they were important dance bands in that territory
at the time.
PM Some of the more significant people that
he worked with were Jack Teagarden and the Boswell Sisters.
PL Yes, very definitely. Listen to a Boswell Sisters
record and you can hear exactly where the Andrews Sisters came from. |
Boswell Sisters
_____
Hand Me Down My Walking Cane |
| PM Of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra --
which started recording in 1928 -- you write, "By 1935 they were the leading
band in the country."
PL Yes, but they were really on the cusp
of making it, and given that they were from the East where the media is centered,
that band could have been the first to really break through on a national
basis. But, of course, it was Goodman who did. It is kind of ironic that
Goodman started it happening on the other coast, about three months later.
PM Nonetheless, Dorsey was tremendously
successful, and was a millionaire by 1935.
PL As you pointed out earlier, he was on
two thousand sessions and was a very hard worker. He had plenty of work and
took care of his family quite well. The Depression meant nothing to those
brothers because they were in such great demand. Tommy and the brass section
-- including Charlie Margulis and Manny Klein -- played with everybody, and
they could play any kind of music, which all came from the discipline and
the drive Pop Dorsey instilled in them. He was single-handedly responsible
for their careers, and they knew it.
PM What qualities of leadership did he possess
that helped his son's success?
PL Perfectionism, drive, discipline, and
a very strong, powerful personality. As Bill Finegan and several others said
to me, when Tommy Dorsey walked into a room, there was electricity. I certainly
saw that with Sinatra many times.
PM It was said that Dorsey had "star presence."
PL Yes, I really believe that he did. He
was very interested in creating an image, and the clothes he wore were an
essential part of it. He was very slim and had tailor-made clothes to accentuate
his thinness, which, along with the elevator shoes he wore, made him appear
taller than he really was. The way he stood was also extremely important.
But that was all part of an impression, and the clothes were also a way of
saying, "I am successful. I am a rich man. I can wear the best clothes."
His motivation was to make a lot of money, which was derived from the poverty
he grew up with.
PM There are some fascinating anecdotes in
the book that illustrate his complex personality. He could be both cruel
and generous to musicians who worked for him.
PL One of the main aspects of my book something
no other biographer of Dorsey or Sinatra ever got -- which I have trouble
understanding -- is that Frank Sinatra's entire personality was that of Tommy
Dorsey's. That is a really important part of this story. Buddy DeFranco said
the entire personalities of Buddy Rich and Frank Sinatra, in fact, came directly
from Dorsey. Buddy Childers, who played with Dorsey and later with Sinatra
in his last years, said that Rich tried hard to be Dorsey and was unsuccessful
at it, but Sinatra came pretty close. I think that says something. Everybody
felt that the breathing and the long phrases were Dorsey's greatest contributions
to Sinatra, but it goes a long way past that. |
photo from collection of Connie Motko
The Dorsey Saxophone Quartet, 1916 -- Pops, Jimmy, Tommy (age 10),
Mary
"Their father at first insisted on two hours of practice from his
sons on a daily basis. In time, he increased it to four hours. It
was either that or a whipping. The first time Tommy was given a piece
of music by his father to sight-read, he did it extremely well. Tom
Dorsey then asked him to read it backward!"
- Peter Levinson
*
Tommy Dorsey
*
"Like most bandleaders...Tommy didn't like being upstaged by another
soloist, even at a recording session. But Tommy's jealousy went to
another level. In the midst of the recording of the Dorsey's twelve-inch
version of Duke Ellington's "Solitude," which featured Kay Weber's vocal,
trumpete Charlie Spivak's solo made a much greater impact than Tommy's solo.
Spivak, who had replaced George Thow, told Frank Riordan that after
a particularly good take that followed, Tommy made him record the next take
in the hallway outside the recording studio, which therefore lessened the
sound, much less the impact of his solo."
- Peter Levinson
_____
Opus One
After You've Gone |
PM In an explanation for one of his moods,
you write that Sinatra was overheard saying, "This is how Tommy would do
it."
PL Yes, that's right, he said that toward the end
of his life, and that quote was provided to me by Vince Falcone, whose book
on Sinatra is just out. Falcone told me that Sinatra once said to him that
the two most important people in his life had been his mother and Tommy Dorsey,
which pretty much says it all.
PM I was fascinated to read about how the
musicians who worked for him felt about Dorsey. They would talk about a lousy
feeling that existed in the band, and that they didn't like Dorsey, but in
the next paragraph you quote someone saying that he "ran the band in a good
way. "
PL Artie Shaw said, "Tommy Dorsey demanded
discipline, and he got it." He wanted things to be done his way, and he got
what he wanted. Musicians did it "his way," or they were gone. One of his
expressions was, "Nobody leaves this band. I only fire people." When the
Canadian trumpeter John Frost left to play with Benny Goodman, Dorsey threw
a chair against the wall and told him that he was going to get his green
card removed.
Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, c. 1941
"If you found him all good or all bad, then you really didn't know
him. Within the space of a few seconds, he could turn from one to the
other."
- Sid Cooper, saxophonist and arranger, Tommy Dorsey Orchestra
_____
Night and Day  , with Frank Sinatra |
PM It may have all been worthwhile, because
Buddy DeFranco said, "If you could put up with him, and he could put up with
you, you could learn a lot from him." You make an interesting comparison
of Goodman and Dorsey, writing that, "Goodman fundamentally wanted his music
to swing, while Dorsey was interested in his band being danceable."
PL I think that is very true because Benny
was a jazz musician, whereas Tommy was not -- his interest was in building
a band that could take advantage of the dance craze sweeping the country.
He felt that if his band was successful in getting people to dance, he would
make a lot of money. Now, Benny made a lot of money as well, but he did so
by concentrating on jazz, which is why he hired people like Jimmy Mundy and
Fletcher Henderson, who gave him the jazz feel. While Dorsey had two gigantic
hits with
"Song of India " and "Marie, " by the late 1930's, Dorsey felt that his band
was getting stale -- they were basically just covering other people's hits.
Meanwhile, the country was swing crazy, and swing meant jazz. Realizing he
had to go in that direction, he hired Sy Oliver, whose hiring really had
nothing to do with a racial breakthrough, but had everything to do with Dorsey
feeling Oliver could make his band relevant.
Sy Oliver
"Tommy's interest in [Jimmy] Lunceford's music turned serious...Buddy
Morrow remembers him addressing the band one night: ' Guys, your rehearsal
tonight is to go see Jimmie Lunceford at the Famous Door.' We went
over to Fifty-second Street and listened. Tommy knew all about Sy Oliver,
but he wanted everybody to see and get a sense of what his approach
was.'"
- Peter Levinson
_____
Stomp It Off , (Sy Oliver's first chart for Dorsey)
|
PM He had a great band during the Sy Oliver
times, and I found in listening to the records from the early forties,
especially, that the variety of interesting arrangements he recorded made
for music that has a lot of jazz interest.
PL Yes, and remember, it was not only Sy
Oliver, he also hired arrangers like Paul Weston, Dean Kincaide, and Bill
Finegan, whose writing was quite important after the war. While Sy wrote
most of the good arrangements, these other arrangers were able to provide
him various settings. No matter who the arranger was, the music was aimed
at creating a danceable identity for the band.
PM The majority of the records had vocals,
but I think the instrumentals are the ones that stand the test of time.
PL Regarding that, Artie Shaw told me that
he didn't understand why he relied on singers so much, as if to say that
he made jazz instrumental hits, but Tommy had to use vocalists. |
| PM The stories of his years with Sinatra
have been told many times. You provide some interesting details about the
rivalry between Sinatra and Buddy Rich.
PL Think about it; how could Tommy Dorsey,
Frank Sinatra and Buddy Rich live together? They couldn't. They were all
the same person! The other thing my book has that others don't regarding
Sinatra and Dorsey is that I printed a copy of their contract, which nobody
has ever seen before. Early on in my relationship with Tommy Dorsey III,
he told me that he had something I would probably be interested in. When
I found out it was the contract, I knew I had to include it in the book.
PM In exchange for a $17,000 loan and releasing
him from his Dorsey contract, Sinatra agreed to pay Dorsey one-third of his
future gross earnings.
PL That's right, although the contract never
would have stood up in a court of law. Dorsey actually received several firm
and threatening phone calls from Mafia figures, telling him to, in effect,
tear up the contract, but he wouldn't because he knew he had a contract with
the most important musical figure -- a musician who was on the verge of changing
everything in popular music. He eventually wound up making $43,000 dollars
on the $17,000 he lent Sinatra, which was, again, an example of him being
a very tough and resourceful businessman. |
Dorsey and Sinatra
*
"Beyond his musical influence, working with Dorsey intensified
personal traits that Sinatra had in common with his mentor. Among them were
his impatience, his insistence on exerting a firm control over every situation;
his demands to achieve and maintain perfection; his largesse in helping his
friends and those under extreme distress; his habit of often treating longtime
employees with disdain, while constantly testing both their efficiency and
their loyalty; his enjoyment of playing the dedicated host; his spendthrift
ways - which didn't always carry over to the paychecks of his underlings;
his natural charm (which could be followed by abrupt mood swings); his constant
search to associate himself with upper class people while in the long run
finding that he was more comfortable with his own peers; the vengeance aimed
at his enemies; and a complete inability to apologize for his actions even
when confronted by the fact that he was wrong. The 'My Way' aspect of Frank
Sinatra's character absolutely emanated from Tommy Dorsey. Why, he even walked
like Dorsey!"
- Peter Levinson
_____
I'll Never Smile Again , with Frank Sinatra
Dolores ,
with Frank Sinatra |
Dorsey and fans
*
"The obvious connection Tommy Dorsey made with his admirers as
a musician and bandleader perhaps compensated for his inability to connect
with his home life and more especially with his children. The bandstand
was his real home. That was the place where he received the acclaim
he coveted."
- Peter Levinson
_____
What Is This Thing Called Love?
Swing High |
PM In the early 1940's, you point out
that he had two thousand fan clubs around the country, and was neck and neck
with Glenn Miller as favorite college band.
PL There is a great recording demonstrating
his appeal. It is a live WNYC radio recording of Leopold Stokowski conducting
the New York City Symphony's performance of the Nat Shilkret Concerto
for Trombone, and, during the performance's first movement, Dorsey walked
on stage unannounced, causing the place to go into bedlam. All these kids
start screaming. Then, after playing the second movement, the noise got so
loud that Stokowski told them if they didn't shut up he wouldn't even play
the third. While that is hard to believe, that is really the way it was because
he was such a fan favorite.
PM You write that he was not widely loved:
"The repercussions of his way of doing things caused him to make many enemies.
That didn't faze Tommy Dorsey in the least. He was now a big success; that's
all that really mattered to him."
PL He had tremendous ego, coupled with tremendous
drive, and his attitude was that as long as he was succeeding on the level
he did, he would do things the way he wanted to, and to hell with anybody
else. That was the way it was going to be with him.
PM He remained popular into the late 1940's
and early 1950's, though he had to tour more to maintain his income.
PL Yes, during which time he featured vocalists
even more. Bill Finegan was coming along, as well as Charlie Shavers, who
was very important. Dorsey withstood bebop changing the music and the bandstands
going down through sheer determination and resourcefulness. By the early
1950's, he certainly wasn't as popular as he was in the 1940's, but he still
did well enough. At that time, his brother Jimmy was down and out. As several
people have said, Tommy was the leader and Jimmy was essentially a good sideman,
and that is the role Tommy put him into. Tommy took him in because their
mother demanded it. While they were considered to be co-leaders, Tommy got
all the profits. |
| PM Your book has a great deal of information
about the early days of television, when the Dorsey Brothers had a show called
Stage Show.
PL That show was tremendously important because
it featured major variety performers and introduced so many great people,
among them Elvis Presley, Della Reese, Bobby Darin, and Connie Francis.
PM This show started out with Jackie Gleason
as host?
PL Yes. Years before, the brothers used to
hire Gleason quite a bit for stage shows, where a comic may have been needed
to perform for fifteen or twenty minutes. Gleason didn't cost them very much.
They would drink together during that time and became good friends. Gleason
ultimately paid them back after he got into a position of power himself,
hiring them as guests and summer replacements for his variety show.
In January, 1956, Elvis Presley was a guest on Stage Show. Watching
it today, I have to say that it was an earth-shattering thing. The old and
the new were right there to be seen. Big bands were finished, and rock and
roll took over, right there on Stage Show.
PM This was Presley's first appearance on
TV?
PL Yes. Most people would say Ed Sullivan, which
is ridiculous. People tend to forget history quite easily these days.
PM Sony/BMG has just brought out a three-disc
set of Tommy Dorsey. Did you have any involvement in putting it together?
PL I encouraged that to be done. I talked
to Jeff Jones of Sony/BMG about a year and a half ago, and I had hopes that
he would come through with a Dorsey package, which he did, and the bonus
was that there is a two-disc Sinatra package out as well.
PM I noticed that the last track on that set
is of Elvis doing "Heartbreak Hotel," backed by the Dorsey band and from
the TV show.
PL While I am not suggesting I am the one
responsible for that, I did tell Michael Brooks, the producer, that I thought
"Heartbreak Hotel" was the perfect closer because it was the clear symbol
of how the music had changed.
PM But you didn't have involvement as a producer?
PL No. I have known Michael and I suggested
that idea to him, and he liked it. He may have missed a few hits on the second
record, but that is not very important. Dorsey only had one-hundred-eighty-six
hits, so, since he could only include twenty-five or so in the package, how
could he possibly include every one? But from an historic point of view,
the first disc is especially important because he found all those obscure
recordings that we discussed earlier, where the beginnings of Tommy's trombone
style is featured, as well as some great playing on trumpet and cornet. |
Elvis Presley with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, 1956
*
"Kinescopes of these performances of almost five decades ago still
represent incredible televison. The contrast between the tradition
the Dorseys represented and the uninhibited Presley was absolutely astonishing,
to say the least. The impact of Presley's performance brought down
the curtain on the era of romantic popular music and, through the power of
television, marked the launching of a brand new musical trend."
- Peter Levinson
*
The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing: Centennial Collection
_____
March Of The Toys
Heartbreak Hotel , by Elvis Presley |
"Opening night at the Palladium on Halloween Eve found Bob Hope,
comedienne Gracie Fields, and Mickey Rooney in the audience. Tyrone
Power, Judy Garland, Errol Flynn, and Lana Turner were there on subsequent
nights. Tickets sold for the then astronomical fee of five dollars a
head. Neither the price of tickets nor the Paramount booking had any
effect on business. The Dorsey band was hot, and the Palladium engagement
was an unqualified success."
- Peter Levinson
_____
Blue Skies , with Frank Sinatra |
PM It is good that you were able to get
some excellent recollections from some of the key people in Dorsey's life
-- people like Jo Stafford, Buddy DeFranco and Bob Bain.
PL This is my third book, and I have learned
to interview the older people as quickly as you can, because I missed a few
in the past. You can see from the list of people interviewed that many of
them are now referred to as "the late." I was fortunate to be able to get
to some of them only days or weeks or months before they died. Kay Weber,
for example, was tremendously important, and she just died a few months ago
at age ninety-six.
PM One last question. If you could choose
one of Dorsey's performances to go back and see, which would it have been?
PL I was quite fortunate to have been able
to see Tommy, and it happened to be on an historic date, April of 1953, which
was when the brothers began their reunion. But, there is a pretty easy answer
to your question: it would be the opening of the Palladium in Hollywood on
Halloween night in 1940, which was only ten months or so after Sinatra joined
the band. The band had really taken hold that winter and spring and, here
it was, coming to California when it had really developed as a huge attraction. |
_________________________________________________
"...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 suddenly cool off
and laugh at himself. He wanted you to come onstage 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."
- Louis Bellson
_____
I'm Getting Sentimental Over You
*
Tommy
Dorsey:
Livin'
in a Great Big Way,
by
Peter Levinson
*
Peter J. Levinson is the author of Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James and September in the Rain: The Life of Nelson Riddle. He has worked for four decades in the entertainment business as a publicist, freelance writer, booking agent, and personal manager. He lives in Malibu, California.
Tommy Dorsey products at Amazon.com
Peter Levinson products at Amazon.com
_______________________________
This interview took place on November 5, 2005
*
If you enjoyed this interview, you may want to read our interview with Peter Levinson on the life of Nelson Riddle
_______________________________
Other
Jerry Jazz Musician interviews
# Text from publisher.
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