Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. (November 19, 1905 – November 26, 1956) was an American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-toned trombone playing. His theme song was "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You". His technical skill on the trombone gave him renown among other musicians. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey. After Dorsey broke with his brother in the mid-1930s, he led an extremely successful band from the late 1930s into the 1950s. He is best remembered for standards such as "Opus One", "This Love of Mine" (no. 3 in 1941) featuring Frank Sinatra on vocals, "Song of India", "Marie", "On Treasure Island", and his biggest hit single, "I'll Never Smile Again" (no. 1 for 12 weeks in 1940).
Early life Born in Mahanoy Plane, Pennsylvania, Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. was the second of four children born to Thomas Francis Dorsey Sr., a bandleader,Billboard, July 25, 1942, died July 13, 1942 and Theresa (née Langton) Dorsey.Dorsey, Thomas Francis Jr. ('Tommy,' 'The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing'). The family moved to Lansford shortly after his birth. He and Jimmy, his older brother by slightly less than two years, became known as the Dorsey Brothers. The two younger siblings were Mary and Edward, who died young. Tommy Dorsey studied the trumpet with his father but later switched to trombone.
At age 15, Jimmy recommended Tommy to replace Russ Morgan in the Scranton Sirens, a territory band in the 1920s. Tommy and Jimmy worked in bands led by Tal Henry, Rudy Vallee, Vincent Lopez, and Nathaniel Shilkret. In 1923, Dorsey followed Jimmy to Detroit to play in Jean Goldkette's band and returned to New York in 1925 to play with the California Ramblers. In 1927, he joined Paul Whiteman. In 1929, the Dorsey Brothers had their first hit with "Coquette" for OKeh Records.
In 1934, the Dorsey Brothers band signed with Decca, having a hit with "I Believe in Miracles". Glenn Miller was a member of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra in 1934 and 1935, composing "Annie's Cousin Fanny", "Tomorrow's Another Day", "Harlem Chapel Chimes", and "Dese Dem Dose", all recorded for Decca, for the band. Acrimony between the brothers led to Tommy Dorsey walking out to form his own band in 1935 as the orchestra was having a hit with "Every Little Moment". Dorsey's orchestra was known primarily for its renderings of ballads at dance tempos, frequently with singers such as Jack Leonard and Frank Sinatra.
On August 21, 1949, Tommy, along with trumpeter Charlie Shavers and singer Red Wooten, survived a plane crash uninjured. The aircraft, departing from Windsor, Ontario, Canada, crash-landed in a cornfield after the engine failed shortly after takeoff, according to the pilot.Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 22, 1949, page 15
Band
In 2009, Buddy De Franco recalled recording "Opus One" with Dorsey in the 1940s, commenting on Dorsey's desire to be precise and exact. Expanding on De Franco's opinions about Dorsey, writer Peter Levinson said, "He wanted things to be done his way."
The band was popular almost from the moment it signed with RCA Victor for "On Treasure Island", the first of four hits in 1935. After his 1935 recording, however, Dorsey's manager dropped the "hot jazz" that Dorsey had mixed with his own lyrical style, and instead had Dorsey play pop and vocal tunes. Dorsey kept his Clambake Seven as a Dixieland group that played during performances. Dorsey became the co-host of The Raleigh-Kool Program on the radio with comedian Jack Pearl, then became the host.
By 1939, Dorsey was aware of criticism that his band lacked a jazz feeling. He hired arranger Sy Oliver away from the Jimmie Lunceford band."Jazz Wax""When I moved from the Lunceford band to Tommy Dorsey, I didn't change my writing approach. He made the transition. The band that Dorsey had when I joined him was Dixieland-orientated , and my sort of attack was foreign to most of the fellows he had. We both knew that to be the case, but he wanted a Swing band—so he changed personnel until he got the guys that could do it." Sy Oliver. see Sy Oliver's arrangements include "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and "T.D.'s Boogie Woogie"; Oliver also composed two of the new band's signature instrumentals, "Well, Git It" and "Opus One". In 1940, Dorsey hired singer Frank Sinatra from bandleader Harry James. Sinatra made eighty recordings from 1940 to 1942 with the Dorsey band. Two of those eighty songs are "In the Blue of Evening" and "This Love of Mine". Sinatra achieved his first great success as a vocalist in the Dorsey band and claimed he learned breath control from watching Dorsey play trombone. Sy Oliver and Sinatra did a posthumous tribute album to Dorsey on Sinatra's Reprise records. I Remember Tommy appeared in 1961. Dorsey said his trombone style was heavily influenced by Jack Teagarden.
Among Dorsey's staff of arrangers was Axel StordahlSimon Says p. 297 who arranged for Sinatra in his Columbia and Capitol years. Another member of the Dorsey band was trombonist Nelson Riddle, who later had a partnership as one of Sinatra's arrangers and conductors in the 1950s and afterwards."Yes, the musical discipline of Tommy Dorsey, that was such an ingredient of everything he did, was something that Nelson grabbed on to. As an arranger, Dorsey knew what he wanted and Nelson had to deliver a high standard of arranging. As Bill Finegan pointed out to me, playing all of those Sy Oliver charts gave Riddle the sense of how to write very dynamic arrangements, which he did about ten years later for Sinatra." Another noted Dorsey arranger, who, in the 1950s, married and was professionally associated with Dorsey veteran Jo Stafford, was Paul Weston. Bill Finegan, an arranger who left Glenn Miller's civilian band, arranged for the Tommy Dorsey band from 1942 to 1950.
The band featured a number of instrumentalists, singers, and arrangers in the 1930s and '40s, including trumpeters Zeke Zarchy, Bunny Berigan, Ziggy Elman, Doc Severinsen, and Charlie Shavers, pianists Milt Raskin, Jess Stacy, clarinetists Buddy DeFranco, Johnny Mince,Harvey Pekar and Peanuts Hucko. Others who played with Dorsey were drummers Buddy Rich, Louie Bellson, Dave Tough saxophonist Tommy Reed, and singers Sinatra, Ken Curtis, Jack Leonard, Edythe Wright, Jo Stafford with the Pied Pipers, Dick Haymes, and Connie Haines.
In 1944, Dorsey hired the Sentimentalists, name with which he renamed the already known vocal band The Clark Sisters asking them not to reveal their identity. They replaced the Pied Pipers.Levinson 174–175 Dorsey also performed with singer Connee Boswell He hired ex-bandleader and drummer Gene Krupa after Krupa's arrest for marijuana possession in 1943. In 1942, Artie Shaw broke up his band, and Dorsey hired the Shaw string section. As George T. Simon in Metronome magazine observed at the time: "They're used in the foreground and background (note some of the lovely obbligatos) for vocal effects and for Tommy's trombone."
Dorsey made further business decisions in the music industry. He loaned money to Glenn Miller enabling him to launch his band of 1938, but Dorsey saw the loan as an investment, entitling him to a percentage of Miller's income. When Miller balked at this, the angry Dorsey got even by sponsoring a new band led by Bob Chester, and hiring arrangers who deliberately copied Miller's style and sound. Dorsey branched out in the mid-1940s and owned two music publishing companies, Sun and Embassy.Dorsey, Thomas Francis Jr. After opening at the Los Angeles ballroom, the Hollywood Palladium on the Palladium's first night, Dorsey's relations with the ballroom soured and he opened a competing ballroom, the Casino Gardens circa 1944. Dorsey also owned for a short time a trade magazine called The Bandstand.
Tommy Dorsey disbanded his own orchestra at the end of 1946. Dorsey might have broken up his own band permanently following World War II, as many big bands did due to the shift in music economics following the war, but Tommy Dorsey's album for RCA Victor, "All Time Hits" placed in the top ten records in February 1947. In addition, "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?", a single recorded by Dorsey, became a top-ten hit in March 1947. As a result, Dorsey was able to re-organize a big band in early 1947. The Dorsey brothers were also reconciling. The biographical film The Fabulous Dorseys (1947) describes sketchy details of how the brothers got their start from-the-bottom-up into the jazz era of one-nighters, the early days of radio in its infancy stages, and the onward march when both brothers ended up with Paul Whiteman before 1935 when The Dorsey Brothers' Orchestra split into two.
In the early 1950s, Tommy Dorsey moved from RCA Victor back to Decca."Tommy Dorsey" Billboard He was promised $2,000 if he switched to their label. However, he was reported to have collected $2,500 instead.
Jimmy Dorsey broke up his big band in 1953. Tommy invited him to join as a feature attraction. In 1953, the Dorseys focused their attention on television. On December 26, 1953, the brothers appeared with their orchestra on Jackie Gleason's CBS television show, which was preserved on kinescope and later released on home video by Gleason. The brothers took the unit on tour and onto their own television show, Stage Show, from 1954 to 1956. In January 1956, The Dorseys made rock music history introducing Elvis Presley on his national television debut. Presley, then a regional country singer, made six guest appearances on Stage Show promoting his first releases for RCA Victor several months before his more familiar visits to the Milton Berle, Steve Allen, and Ed Sullivan variety programs.
Personal life Dorsey was married three times. His first wife was 16-year-old Mildred "Toots" Kraft, with whom he eloped in 1922, when he was 17. The couple had two children, Patricia and Thomas F. Dorsey III (nicknamed "Skipper"). In 1935, they moved to "Tall Oaks", a estate in Bernardsville, New Jersey, that he used for entertaining celebrities.Baratta, Amy. "Big band leader among owners of historic home in Bernardsville; Dorsey hosted Frank Sinatra, other celebrities", The Bernardsville News, April 20, 2012. Accessed June 6, 2016. "Known as 'the= sentimental gentleman of swing,' the musician purchased the 21-acre estate for $32,000 in 1935 and lived there with his first wife, Mildred 'Toots' Kraft, and their two children, Patricia and Tommy, for nearly a decade."Deak, Mike. "100 Central Jersey residents who changed history", Home News Tribune, July 12, 2026. Accessed September 8, 2026, via Newspapers.com. "Tommy Dorsey: A trombonist and big-band leader, Dorsey owned an estate in Bernardsville, where he entertained numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, who emerged as a star while singing with Dorsey’s orchestra." They divorced in 1943 after Dorsey's affair with his former singer Edythe Wright.Levinson 148
Dorsey's second wife was film actress Patricia Dane in 1943, and they were divorced in 1947,Levinson 211 but not before he gained headlines for striking actor Jon Hall when Hall embraced her. Finally, Dorsey married Jane Carl New on March 27, 1948, in Atlanta, Georgia. She had been a dancer at the Copacabana nightclub in New York City. Tommy and Jane Dorsey had two children, Catherine Susan and Steve.
Death and aftermath