Tommy Dorsey -- Post-War Era

[Larry Kart]

http://www.amazon.com/Post-War-Era-Tommy-Dorsey-Orchestra/dp/B001DOOMLA/ref=sr_1_39?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1446074044&sr=1-39&keywords=tommy+dorsey

What a handsome and distinctive band this was, with subtle charts (mostly from Bill Finegan) and striking soloists -- lots of Charlie Shavers, tenormen Don Lodice and Boomie Richman, Dorsey himself, and some brilliant early Buddy DeFranco. Good liner notes from Loren Schoenberg.

Some samples:

 

Edited October 28, 2015 by Larry Kart

[AllenLowe]

that's a good CD.

[ghost of miles]

Favorite of mine as well, definitely an underrated big band.  Another disc on which it's represented iirc:

[Ted O'Reilly]

You Tube does it again, twice:  "This video is not available".  In Canada, anyway....(But I have that disc, if only I could find it!)

[Larry Kart]

Sorry, Ted -- They play for me.

[fasstrack]

Long live Bill Finegan!

[Big Beat Steve]

You Tube does it again, twice:  "This video is not available".  In Canada, anyway....(But I have that disc, if only I could find it!)

Doesn't play here either (performance copyright issues, as usual when the Big Ones among the label rights holders are involved).

But never mind - I've got several LP's worth of TD music from those post-war years (including the original Hep LP release of "At The Fat Man's") so can imagine what else there is on those CDs. A band that wasn't as old hat as its name might have led some to believe.

 

[gmonahan]

I always liked that edition of the band too.  First discovered it a few centuries ago on an old Pickwick album I found at some Drug Store rack somewhere.  Especially liked Charlie Shavers's work with that band.

 

gregmo

[Bill Nelson]

Let me say, "Si, si!" about the RCA Bluebird CD of 'Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra: The Post-War Era' (1993, BG2-66156).  Twenty-two tracks from 1946-50 were personally selected by Bill Finegan and Loren Schoenberg, with eight tracks either previously unissued or available only on compact disc.  I got my copy just a month ago and played it steadily for several days.  It's very adventurous, full-bodied swing, minus the looming thunder of Kenton and post-1950 cerebral touches of Eddie Sauter. 

[AllenLowe]

please note, since great minds think alike, that I do believe I placed a cut from that band on Devilin' Tune.

[JSngry]

I've heard some of this stuff in the past, just found a copy for a buck on amazon and ordered it, but...why is it that any Tommy Dorsey band I hear, and no matter how much I like it, there's this feeling of "corporation" that I cannot fully ignore? I can and often do render it irrelevant, but I can't ignore it. I mean, it's not a bad thing, the earlier bands were really organized like that, from what I understand, department heads, not just with section leaders and such, but everything, Staff arrangers reporting up to Head Arrangers and all that...maybe that was the norm for a bigtime (and just big in general!) outfit like that...but Glen Miller's band, which I'm sure was at least as corporate, didn't play that way, they played more like highly skilled employees. Dorsey's bands sounded like full board meetings or something, I don't know. Again, it's not repellant in and of it self, it's just a feeling that I get, like, you know, I would go to Tommy Dorsey's office any time I needed to, but I would never go to his house, because, you know, we ain't getting THAT level of access from him, not us.

[Larry Kart]

Jim -- I'm not sure what, in terms of actual musical results, you mean by "corporation" versus, a la Glenn Miller, " they played more like highly skilled employees." Name another band that sound "corporate" and maybe I might understand. 

[JSngry]

None I can think of, and that's maybe the point? How many Tommy Dorsey bands were there, I mean jeez, all things for all people all done like they should be done, I mean, that's the ideal corporate thing, right?No matter what your want, we got it, and at the quality you have a right to epect. It's freaky, really, that any one organization could do so many things so well, think about how organized that whole thing glad to have been at EVERY level!

But that didn't happen accidentally,  and me, there's a, for lack of a better term, intuition gap for me with that band. Not a complaint, mind you, just a subjective objective sensation. 

Maybe corporate is the wrong term..."department store", perhaps, only Dorsey was, like, Nieman-Marcus, nothing not perfectly created and then equally perfectly presented.

[JSngry]

Listened to this today. The less it sounds like a Tommy Dorsey band (which is more than often enough), the more I like it. At times, as on "Piccadilly Dilly" (sp?), I find myself asking what universe Bill Finegan was from to have been writing like this in 1949. Just...amazing writing, like some heretofore unexpected/unpredicted missing link between Ellington & Thad Jones...I always thought the link was explicit (and essentially direct), and no doubt it is, but somewhere in between, this!

 

And the RCA version was previously unreleased!