Jazz Standards Songs and Instrumentals (I'm Getting Sentimental Over You) Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories 1890-1954 The scrappy Dorsey Brothers, trombonist and sometime trumpeter Tommy and master-of-all-the-reeds Jimmy, began their careers working in bands together in their native Pennsylvania, and the association continued when they moved to New York in 1925. After almost a decade of freelance work in the recording studios and on radio (sometimes working as the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra), the two formed their own fulltime orchestra in 1934. But the association would be short-lived. Even though the pair made wonderful music together, they had troubles getting along. In Richard Sudhalterï¿½s marvelous book Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz 1915-1945 , the author relates an incident witnessed by saxophonist Arnold Brilhart, a frequent associate of ï¿½The Brothersï¿½ in the late-1920s, early ï¿½30s: ï¿½We were working for Sam Lanin at the Roseland Ballroom.

Jimmy came in with a brand-new Selmer saxophone. Well, somebody said something, and before you know it theyï¿½re on the floor, a real knock-down, drag-out fight right there on the stand. Tommy-Iï¿½ll never forget it--Tommy got up and jumped all over Jimmyï¿½s brand-new saxophone. Made scrap metal of it. Jimmy grabbed his brotherï¿½s trombone and just wrapped it around his knee, slide and all. Ruined it.ï¿½ When the pair formed their ensemble, they needed a theme song-a tune to introduce the band on radio broadcasts. They picked ï¿½Iï¿½m Getting Sentimental over You.ï¿½ In mid-1935, during a performance, Tommy was kicking a tune off when Jimmy piped in ï¿½Hey Mac (Tommyï¿½s nickname), isnï¿½t that a little fast?ï¿½ It was the ï¿½straw that broke the camelï¿½s back.ï¿½ Tommy walked, taking the bandï¿½s theme song with him.

Jimmy continued on with many of the same sidemen as the Brothersï¿½ orchestra, and Tommy formed his own group, basically taking over the band of Joe Haymes . By this time, due to the popularity of his theme song, he became known as ï¿½The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing,ï¿½ the sobriquet he would have for the rest of his life. Even though the brothers would reunite in the 1950s, the pair used Tommyï¿½s theme song. More on Ned Washington at JazzBiographies.com More on George Bassman at JazzBiographies.com ï¿½Iï¿½m Getting Sentimental over Youï¿½ is undoubtedly the best-known composition of George Bassman, whose career was mostly as an arranger and writer for films. Lyricist Ned Washington had many hits, including ï¿½I Donï¿½t Stand a Ghost of Chance with Youï¿½ and ï¿½ My Foolish Heart ï¿½ (both with Victor Young ), yet he also became heavily involved with film work.

As is often the case, composer Alec Wilder ï¿½s comments from his American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 are spot-on regarding the Bassman-Washington tune. He writes, ï¿½Having for so long associated this music with Dorseyï¿½s trombone, I never bothered to consider it a song. And, frankly, it isnï¿½t one. Itï¿½s a very, very good instrumental piece, 20 measures long and with an unexpected tag.ï¿½ Nevertheless, Dorseyï¿½s premier version from 1932 has a vocal by Jean Bowes, and the 1934 version features soon-to-be-bandleader Bob Crosby (Bingï¿½s brother). The song has two refrains, both explaining why a newly-found love is making one feel sentimental. More information on this tune... George T.

Simon Chris Tyle - Jazz Musician and Historian Getting Started This section suggests definitive or otherwise significant recordings that will help jazz students get acquainted with ï¿½I'm Getting Sentimental Over You.ï¿½ These recordings have been selected from the Jazz History and CD Recommendations sections. Tommy Dorsey used ï¿½Iï¿½m Getting Sentimental over Youï¿½ as a theme song, and his 1932 version (Mood Hollywood) documents the beginning of his relationship with the tune. For learning the song in a straightforward manner, Ella Fitzgeraldï¿½s 1960 duo ballad recording with Paul Smith (Intimate Ella) is virtually perfect. To hear the song with a faster tempo and more emphasis on soloing, another duo recording is recommended, this time by pianist Bill Evans and guitarist Jim Hall from 1962 (Undercurrent). Tommy Dorsey: The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing: Centennial Collection | PopMatters Tweet This production belongs musically to a middle of the road pre-rock, sometimes jazz sometimes semi-jazz genre. Booze had something to do with Tommy Dorsey’s relatively early death at 51.

Maybe the gloomier 2006 centenary could inspire a more strictly jazz collection? Unlike Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman, TD was a hugely talented and skilled instrumentalist who could play jazz, rather than an out-and-out jazz musician with symphonic ambitions (though there’s no Mozart trombonce concerto!). Much the same might be true of his elder brother, Jimmy (1903-1957), significantly older than Goodman (both sons of a music teacher), of Pennsylvania Irish rather than Chicago Jewish origin, and probably with a legit technique which had to be adapted to jazz. Jimmy made his biggest contribution to jazz by demonstrating an at-the-time unparallelled mastery of alto saxophone which beginners in the 1920s imitated and emulated. There’s something of the coffee table book in this set’s production; its content has curious historical interest from the presence of Max Farley’s flute on Paul Whiteman’s “It Won’t Be Long, Now”. Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys (including H.L. “Bing” Crosby) do sing a little, but this is one of the limited number of jazz recordings in Whiteman’s huge, often too heavy discography..

It belongs within debate about what was the first flute contribution to a jazz record. iTunes The opening track’s from 1925, with the slightly muffled sound of pre-electric recording (a mechanical deviice vibrating to the band’s sound, rather than an electrical signal from a microphone, operated the machine that cut the initial master in warm wax). Golden Gate Orchestra was the name on the label, the romance of a far coast honoured in New York. “Dusting the Donkey” was composed by the banjoist whose name’s a form of address fit for politicians and vendors: Howdy Quicksell. The Fi is Hi-er on the 1928 title by Sam Lanin & his Famous Players & Singers—customers were probably expected to feel slightly apologetic when they realised they didn’t know these performers were famous. There’s no shortage here of Jazz Age appellations: as in Whiteman’s touted title of “King of Jazz” (earned by often elephantine performances in an early fusion sub-genre called Symphonic Jazz) this emphasises that the so-called Jazz Age (cf. Scott Fitzgerald) is more a literary and marketing reference than a musical one.

The Dorsey Brothers Orchestra came into being then, more accurate than “All Star Orchestra”, yet another primitive sales concept. Wow! You’d just snap that up if you saw it on the label! No? But doesn’t the hype tell you the company has assembled, just for you . . .the hyperbolically described ensemble perform stock period dance band stuff with TD soling briefly on trombone. The trumpet soloist sounds like him, but since the identity of one of the star trumpeters is unknown, who knows who it might not be? Pardon my irony. One day in 1928, the Big Aces recorded Don Redman’s tune “Cherry” (which Benny Golson’s added to his current repertoire) three times. The second attempt’s issued here for the first time ever! Really. It’s the Dorsey Bros. band with a difference: Redman plays on the date, and George “Foots” Thomas plays tenor and sings: a rare early “racially mixed” date! TD’s trumpet’s in evidence. It also has a whole feature track with rhythm dominated by Eddie Lang’s guitar.

“It’s Right Here for You” was composed by Perry Bradford, a piano-playing non-white impresario whose own recordings didn’t really work as they might have on the vaudeville stage. . The Dorsey Brothers band play “My Melancholy Baby” (1928) with TD opening on trombone, Jimmy soloing on clarinet, and some TD trumpet, including accompaniment to the sung verse of Seger Ellis. “With vocal refrain” was the common description; singers weren’t that far to the fore. Adrian Rollini’s bass saxophone was always good. I report with the authority of having heard the arrangement of “Mean to Me” by, well, Glenn Miller, that there’s flute here too. TD plays the melody statement in his later famous gentlemanly manner. Jimmy solos. Smith Ballew (a name almost to conjure with, and not obscure at the time) sings briefly. Under the name of Eddie Lang, whose solo break reproduces a phrase of his one-time duet partner Lonnie Johnson, “Bugle Call Rag” has amazing busy string bass-playing by Joe Tarto, Jimmy’s clarinet is distinguished, TD solos on trombone and briefly on trumpet.

It’s very good white New York jazz of the time. Likewise “Breakaway”, where the band was labelled “The Travellers”, with Jimmy on alto, Manny Klein on trumpet, and TD on trombone alternating with Jimmy. “Hallelujah”, taken at unusual halting tempo, is early big band from a group still called Red Nichols and his Five Pennies (which of the ten men were they?), TD’s trombone sounds modern, the trumpet might be Charlie Teagarden (Nichols was never so overrated as when much later the headline name of a pseudo- biopic with Danny Kaye!). “Dust” is by the Columbia Photo Players. Muted, TD’s solo would have sounded modern a decade later. Not so the male vocal group. This CD of TD the sideman includes a title by Ethel Waters, a good jazz singer the white band’s at home with. Harold Lem and his Orchestra is sheer nom-de-disque. The dance-band director Fred Rich seems to have led the date. So many discs came out under his name, perhaps a bit of marketing variety promoted Lem (an engineer, a fiction?).

The Charleston Chasers was a stable name for a New York recording band, and “Cinderella Brown” is fun, with good solos. “Bend Down Sister” is the widely-recorded, deeply-dated singer Chick Bullock’s advice to a lady to be less pretentious, nothing worse. Lively jazz solos, including either slide whistle or ocarina, feature in a stodgy period arrangement. Jack Bland wasn’t a star guitarist, but it was nice he was awarded nominal leadership of the Rhythmmakers recording band with Pee Wee Russell and the trumpet of Henry “Red” Allen. Pops Foster and Zutty Singleton are a vast improvement on the white bass-drums duos hitherto. This is another “mixed race” date on which TD takes a leaf out of Allen’s regular colleague J.C. Higginbottom’s book, opening a good solo with a fast trill. “Goodbye Blues” opens with falsetto vocal from Art Jarrett, whose second tonsil exercise on the track benefits from Dick McDonough’s guitar. Larry Bonyon plays still more flute introducing the Boswell Sisters’ “Sentimental Gentleman from Georgia”.

McDonough and Artie Bernstein on bass emphasise the greater rhythmic fluency white musicians were now attaining. Connie Boswell wasn’t a negligible singer. On “Lullaby of the Leaves” TD plays the melody with the jazzless finesse for which he was later famous. The second manifestation of “Bugle Call Rag” is an unissued demo disc with imitation snoring and TD clowning (give the trombone an indigestion tablet!) even more than Jimmy and Manny Klein. Boswell parodies banjo, Bernstein’s bass bounces, vocal intrusions occur—it’s a far cry from the straight lyric baritone on the next title, serious young Bing Crosby singing “How Deep Is the Ocean?”. TD’s non-jazz interludes and obbligati are technically amazing. He opens “Shoutin’ In that Amen Corner” with the wonderful Mildred Bailey in a Dorsey Brothers Orchestra which had entered a a whole new rhythmic element by 1933. By late 1935 that band no longer existed. Disc 2 is by TD the leader.

He was a generous, friendly guy with a vile temper, which last you don’t hear in “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”, his theme tune recorded that year with no more than a duly moody orchestral interlude between his two masterly delineations of the melody. He’s the only jazz soloist on the band within-a-band Clambake Seven title which follows; the singer was, it seems, his girlfriend. If he was at times a gentleman, and his band could be sentimental, by all accounts he wasn’t the latter. The early band is impeccably drilled. He was a perfectionist, but needed more individual colleagues. “Marie” and “Song of India” are known to jazz enthusiasts, not for the former’s pretty trombone intro or the vocal over a choir, but the explosion of Bunny Berigan’s trumpet solo, after which TD muted and Bud Freeman on tenor wind things down. One short solo transformed the whole thing. The drummer Dave Tough was something else as well, and on “Song of India” the pianissimo muted trombone is sufficiently startling to light up the pleasant arrangement of a snatch of Rimsky-Korsakov before Berigan and Tough catch light.

Then there’s the low flame sound you couldn’t imagine coming from a trombone. “After You” sounds more like a small group, a tendency of the earlier TD band once it had really gotten going, The pianist Howard Smith had heard the start of the Boogie Woogie craze by the time the Clambake Seven recorded their lovely weirdie “Twilight in Turkey”, with Pee Wee Erwin showing Berigan influence, and the excellent Johnny Mince new to the band on clarinet. The brainy guitarist Carmen Mastren had also made a difference, not just by arranging Rubinstein’s “Melody in F” congenially for the soloists. “Stop, Look and Listen”, which Freeman recorded to great effect many years later, is a small group number played by the big band: another odd theme, but with a distinctive rhythm. The mid-1930s Dorsey band sounds best when playing small, not making a loud noise “Blues” from a date billed Jam Session at Victor has just Berigan, Dorsey, and McDonough with Fats Waller on piano and George Wettling on drums.

“Boogie Woogie” by the whole band is a rare very musical example of the later debased genre of big band transcription of Pine Top Smith, with its clarinet choir, and nothing loud. Dean Kincaide arranged that and also “Hawaiian War Chant”, at its best when quiet, with solos made interesting by the funny rhythm. “Vol Vistu Gaily Star” is the better for being a Clambake Seven performance (Babe Russin on tenor, Mince and Yank Lawson on trumpet solo well),. “Imagination” is an impeccable arrangement centred on young Sinatra, 1940, his phrasing making Art Jarrett’s in 1932 a joke. “Yes Indeed” has an arrangement and vocal (shared with Jo Stafford) from Dorsey’s big signing Sy Oliver, drawn with an offer of an annual $5000 above what he had been paid to work the wonders he did for Jimmy Lunceford’s stunning band. “Opus No. 1” follows with the same command of brass and reed scoring from Oliver.

Buddy de Franco was an asset on clarinet, and suggestions of Artie Shaw might also be due to TD having engaged Shaw’s string section, unemployed when Shaw disbanded for a time. On drums Buddy Rich wasn’t, I think, Tough’s superior, but had his different boy wonder merits. Sy Oliver’s “Sunny Side of the Street” is yet more evidence of his greatness as big band arranger. I’d happily have foregone the strings and vocal group, but neither can be heard on “At the Fat Man’s” (1947), where Charlie Shavers doesn’t just arrange and sing, but plays trumpet. Sy Oliver would have been a huge asset as trumpet soloist, but Shavers was the ultimate swing trumpeter. “Tonight I Shall Sleep” is by the 1945 Ellington band with Dorsey as featured trombone solo, with Johnny Hodges on alto almost outdoing him. Ellington’s piano features with the Dorsey band is one of Oliver’s best arrangements, “The Minor Goes Muggin’”: amazing brass, Shavers soloing on top. Rich thrashes.

Ellington’s piano was also featured with Dorsey’s band on radio: there’s an amazing “Take the A Train” on Disc 3. Ellington performs the introductory patter much better than TD. Eight of the radio titles have Sinatra, which might not be the advantage the notes suggest since there’s also a Sinatra-with-TD set advertised. For some, less comprehensive representation would have been preferable: I mean a set rather of the jazz which was one of several aspects of Dorsey’s performing repertoire. The broadcast recording of “Liebestraum”—TD did like themes from the light classics—substitutes for a studio recording the authoritative Albert McCarthy commended along with (omitted from the present set) a “Hallelujah” with Berigan, Oliver’s “Well, Git It”, and a very early “Tiger Rag” as well as the very late small group “Dirty Dozens” and “Trouble in Mind” with Billy Butterfield on trumpet in a Dixieland style from an otherwise mediocre album. The Bluebird CD Yes Indeed! was ,however, a good selection of the 1939-45 jazz.

McCarthy summed up TD’s last years as a musical decline, with inferior remakes of earlier hits—presumably to hang on to a former public in a period of terminal economic decline for big bands. I wonder what the now elderly sometime trendy young enthusiasts of TD, BG, and uncle Glenn Miller and all will think of the ilk of All Star Orchestra. To judge from the present set, before TD signed Sy Oliver there’s small evidence that he ever really needed a big band for musical purposes. The big bands have generally been associated with the need for a volume of sound necessary in big ballrooms and halls in the absence of later standards of electronic amplification. Which is why nobody complained about Basie and Ellington playing in symphony auditoria, on the grounds which have raised questions about whether, for instance, the Lincoln Center Orchestra could fill the same halls with sound. Bob Wilber’s initial effort to create a repertoire version of the 1938 Benny Goodman band—which didn’t sound too small for the auditorium—probably got flak because critics were expecting the brassier sound of after 1940. To round up this set.

with a little injustice to Pee Wee Erwin’s “Jimtown Blues” and maybe a couple more of the seven broadcast instrumentals I don’t mention: “Trombonology” (1947) is a jazz feature for TD with a melodically convoluted theme (and a title) obviously based on bebop phrasing. The harmonic foundation is, however, strictly pre-bop. TD loathed bebop. “Pussy Willow”, from 1949, is a lively modern chart of a distinguished sort with which Bill Finnegan’s writing somewhat sidelined the leader: I didn’t know this later band and am interested; Joe Mondragon makes a huge contribution on bass, and Jimmy Rowles is on piano. The latest charts included are brassy 1950s Ernie Wilkins ones, “Flagler Drive”, a “Ja-Da” variant on 1950s Basie lines, TD standing back. “Dippermouth Blues” has Jimmy back (not exactly as in the Dorsey Brothers biopic. whose best bit is one of the few clips of Art Tatum playing).

This brassy stuff—even with the Dixieland element—may seem the more faceless for its extent of echo. Shavers was in the band, and some of the colourful tales about him belong to his time touring the “ghost” band forty years back. The best TD story, apart from calm urbane Bud Freeman telling TD that he was a (expletive excluded) baby, is the one of his having bawled out Shavers for excessively lubricated joviality. Shavers responded by sneaking on-stage before the performance. The trombone had been placed on its stand to await TD’s grand manner appearance, in the course of a band intro, to play “Getting Sentimental”. With a funnel the little trumpeter put water into the vertical trombone, just enough not to be noticeable. Fanfared as usual, TD walked onstage, and as he raised the trombone toward his lips a jet of cold water hit him in the teeth and dribbled down his front. Simultaneously a gap appeeared in the trumpet section at the back of the band. Shavers was already running, and TD uttering anything but sentimentalities charging enraged for the gap with blood in his eyes.

The decline from prominence probably deepened his thirst, but the name stayed big enough to keep Shavers in work for some time fronting the ghost band. Under-recorded, the little trumpeter made one of his most amazing albums in France a year before he died. He’d been taken there as a guest on a tour by his friend Frank Sinatra, Jr. TD Legacy, like Frank, Sr.‘s, appropriation of the trombonist’s phrasing in “Imagination”, and as the basis of later recordings which I don’t need to write about. The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing: Centennial Collection Rating: Big Band Library: Ralph Flanagan: "Prime Time" "Prime Time" by Christopher Popa December 2005 "Flanagan was just a so-so piano player," Prime reflected. "He was an arranger, and like most arrangers, they did their best work in what I'd call the 'shadows' of the band. And I think it proved true, because as soon as he got what he considered enough money to get out of the business, he got out fast and retired to Florida and [ became ] almost reclusive in his lifestyle.

He [ had ] a chain of motels down there, or something like that . . . He's a guy that never sought the limelight and was uncomfortable in the limelight." Still, Prime looks back on his vocals for Flanagan with satisfaction. "No matter what key he put me in, I could sing it," he said. "And there were tempos that would have killed Ray Eberle, like You're Breaking My Heart and things like that . . . [ the Miller band's ] arrangements were so much kinder to Ray Eberle . . . While I was vocalizing up front, Flanagan would be calling . . . 'Play louder, play louder!' You had to battle the band all the time." No wonder Prime is excited about the freedom he has enjoyed during the last few years, singing with recorded backgrounds each Thursday night at the Roasted Pepper restaurant in Chalfont, PA, about 30 miles outside of Philadelphia. (He's a native of the East Falls neighborhood in Philly.) "The people that stick out in my mind as the best group of people that I ever met [ are ] musicians and waitresses," Prime reported.

"I think waitresses are the kindest, most generous people I've ever met in my life . . . decent people. I find that waitresses are so compassionate and so warm, so generous. The nature of the job, I think, makes them that way." Prime was famous before, but, nowadays, singing in front of family and friends at the restaurant, he's content, too. He picks the songs and sets the mood. "This has got to be, probably, the most wonderful chapter of my whole life, the last four or five years. What a reward," he said. "And I have my four kids around me, they come to see me with their kids, and it's just a beautiful time for me." vital stats: given name: Ralph Elias Flenniken birth: Apr. 7, 1914, Lorain, OH death: Dec. 30, 1995 education: graduated from Lorain High School, Lorain, OH, 1931 school activities: member of Student Senate, Hi-Standard student newspaper staff, Hi-Y Club, National Honor Society, League Chorus military service: U.S. Merchant Marine, Oct.

1942-1946 hobbies: piloting his own plane, woodworking, photography dislikes: "loud-mouths, wild clothes, bad drivers, and city life" residences: Malverne, NY (early 1950s); Miami, FL (1960s-1990s) "I had been with two or three other bands before him," Prime reported. "You know, I sang with Randy Brooks, I sang with Jack Fina, and then I had a... I didn't travel with the Tommy Dorsey band... but I did ten recordings with them, when they were anticipating a musicians' strike in 1948. So Tommy - and all the other artists on the different labels - recorded in advance of the strike, so they would have records to release during the year 1948. And I did the last million-selling tune that Tommy did . . .

a tune called Until." Flanagan had worked as pianist and arranger for Sammy Kaye's band from 1937 to 1941, and went on to write arrangements for Charlie Barnet, Boyd Raeburn, Tony Pastor, and, starting in 1946, Perry Como's "Chesterfield Supper Club" radio show on NBC. "He had been an arranger and was a rather obscure guy in the recording business," Prime reflected. "But they found out that he had a flair for imitating other sounds, and probably his best imitation was doing the Miller sound." Evidently, Flanagan approached Herb Hendler, a producer at Rainbow Records, in 1946, desiring to make a set of 78-rpm discs, "A Tribute to Glenn Miller." Flanagan conducted the orchestra, which was built around a number of Miller alumni, including Bobby Hackett and Dale McMickle (trumpets), Al Klink and Ernie Caceres (saxophones), and Trigger Alpert (bass). Hendler suggested using Miller's "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" as a guide.

Selections chosen were Make Believe and Always, two songs written in the 1920s (old); Low Gear and Come On In, two Flanagan originals (new); I'm Getting Sentimental Over You and Goodbye (borrowed from Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman, respectively); and St. Louis Blues and Basin Street Blues (blue). Without question, the man most responsible for Flanagan's success as a bandleader was Hendler. "He was a manipulative guy," Prime commented. "He was shrewd and he was energetic. He was very clever." Hendler knew, for instance, the various artists-and-repertoire, or "a&r" men, at the record company. "He had the contacts at RCA Victor, and once he got in with Victor, with Joe Csida and some of those other guys down there... [ Hugo ] Winterhalter and all, and Henri Rene... he had that contact," Prime went on. "He was a guy that would smile at you, but he would be picking your pockets while he was smiling, you know." I asked how true was the story that RCA had confused Flanagan with the marvelous arranger Bill Finegan. Had Prime heard that?

"I heard it constantly," he laughed. "And I was constantly denying it. No, they wouldn't make a... when you think about it, they knew who Bill Finegan was. He had a big reputation . . . And he was around New York all of the time." So the story was a phony. "You gotta remember, these people that were the major players in that world of the big band business and the entertainment business were usually crossing one another's paths every day, walking on the street, where they had lunch, you know. And it was a big thing where they converged on the Brill Building or the Gateway Restaurant or Lindy's or Jack Dempsey's Restaurant. And there was no way that RCA Victor could have mistaken Bill Finegan for Ralph Flanagan. But, what happened was the two guys that handled Flanagan realized that this would be a very big talking point and . . . they didn't deny it, they just let it fly. And the thing had legs, the story grew, and it became a story that looked good everywhere we went." By 1949, the strike had been resolved and Hendler had joined RCA Victor. When the company wanted to revive interest in dance music, he turned to Flanagan.

"They decided to go for the big challenge and put out a Miller-type dance band, under Ralph Flanagan's name," Prime recalled. "So that's when they contacted me to be the singer with the band." He was voted the "favorite band" in a number of early 1950s polls, played for over two million people in a year's time, and racked up big grosses, including some $600,000 in 1951 alone. "Actually, his contributions were in what I'd call 'the arranging field,'" singer Harry Prime, who worked with Ralph Flanagan's band from 1949 to 1953, told me recently. "He was not a very personable guy. He was nice enough . . . but he was kind of shy . . . He didn't have many smarts about the music business, and I would call him a guy that was, sort of, 'a fish out of water,' because many times when we were playing ballrooms, as we traveled the country . . . we played every major ballroom and casino and hotel in America, and did it numerous times...

and he would constantly be coming up to me and saying, 'What am I doing here? I just can't stand this being "in the fishbowl," all these people coming up and talking to me.' He was really not a guy that enjoyed the spotlight at all . . .

He had been mainly a 'background' man." recommended listening - select list: You're Breaking My Heart Harry Prime, vocal / RCA Victor "Bluebird Series," 1949 Penthouse Serenade, (When We're Alone) RCA Victor "Bluebird Series," 1949 Rag Mop the band, vocal / RCA Victor, 1950 Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year Harry Prime, vocal / RCA Victor, 1950 Joshua Ralph Flanagan, arranger / RCA Victor, 1950 What, Where and When Ralph Flanagan Trio, vocal / RCA Victor, 1950 If I Had a Magic Carpet Harry Prime, vocal / RCA Victor, 1950 Singing Winds RCA Victor, 1950 Nevertheless Harry Prime, vocal / RCA Victor, 1950 On the Road to Mandalay RCA Victor, 1951 Stouthearted Men RCA Victor, 1951 A-Flat Swing RCA Victor, 1951 Save the Last Dance for Me Harry Prime, vocal / RCA Victor, 1951 Slow Poke The Singing Winds, vocal / RCA Victor, 1951 Just One

 More Chance Harry Prime, vocal / RCA Victor, 1951 Only Fools Harry Prime, vocal / RCA Victor, 1951 Winter Wonderland RCA Victor, 1954 I Belong to You The Singing Winds, vocal / RCA Victor, 1955 On the Beat RCA Victor, 1955 Apple Blossom Time, (I'll Be with You in) RCA Victor, 1957 "You gotta remember as we're talking about him that this was not the kind of guy that I would spend...

When we would be off the bandstand, Flanagan was an entity unto himself. He didn't mix much with the other guys," Prime said. "When we were looking for a place to go have a beer, or something good to eat, he would be looking for a hobby shop. He loved to come on the stand with all these, like, cufflinks that lit up, and he was a strange guy to be in the music business . . . He just wasn't a party-type guy, and was totally different from most of the musicians that I knew . . . So there was no putting our heads together, consulting . . . He never said to me, ' What do you think you'd like to do?,' anything like that. He was a very hard guy to be real friendly with." To complement Prime's vocals, Flanagan's band also featured a singer on the distaff side. Prime recalled, "A girl who showed up on the George Gobel Show, and had a nice TV role in it, on the Gobel Show, and was herself an excellent singer. They called her 'pretty, perky Peggy King.'" Flanagan, again mirroring Miller, even had a vocal group, which was called The Singing Winds.

(Singing Winds was the name of Flanagan's theme song.) "Well, he pulled two guys out of the band, and Peggy King and I... and there was another girl by the name of Rita Hayes . . . and she was an excellent singer . . . What he would do, he would augment Peggy King and I with two guys from the band, and he would sometimes join in. So we'd have a group of five," Prime explained. Prime left Flanagan in 1953, hoping his experience of singing with America's #1 band would help him to launch a successful solo career. "I'm listening to the radio and hearing guys like Eddie Fisher, Jerry Vale, Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Steve Lawrence... and not a one of them ever sang with a band," he observed. "The format was changing while I was out there, trying to do what everyone said, 'This is the way you do it... the way Sinatra did it, the way Haymes did it, the way Como did it.'" "But the format changed in those years after World War II," Prime said. "People didn't give a damn whether you sang with a band.

In other words, if you were with Tommy Dorsey prior to World War II, that was the top of the rung . . . you were known all over America. After World War II, there were guys that sang with Tommy Dorsey and nobody even knows them today. That's how it slipped, the prestige angle." with him . . . He'd put the arrangements in front of them and they'd play his music. And I went up to Sunnybrook to see him . . . but that's the last time I saw him." At this writing, it's been a decade since Flanagan's death, and more than 50 years (!) since Prime was the singer with his group. Although Prime [ pictured r., kneeling under the second "A" ] was there from the start, recorded and traveled with Flanagan, and sang on a large portion of the band's selections, he was not given any choice in his material. "He had an excellent band. I thought his band was better than Flanagan's," Prime told me. "But, he just didn't like that idea of playing the ghost band of Glenn Miller . . .

He wanted to sound like the Tex Beneke Orchestra, and, believe me, to me that was a great sound. I loved the way the band played and sounded, and the things that they did. He had an excellent boy vocalist in Garry Stevens, and they did some real good things . . . RCA Victor was so insistent on continuing that [ original ] Miller sound that they looked around for a guy and found Flanagan." With Flanagan sometimes quoting, almost note-for-note, various bits and pieces of Miller's original arrangements on his new records, RCA's big promotional push behind Flanagan angered one of the men who had actually been a huge part of that sound with Glenn, Tex Beneke. "It did, but Tex... I felt sorry for him in a way... but his demise was much his own [ doing ]," Prime observed. Beneke was, at the time, leading the 'official' Glenn Miller Orchestra, also signed to RCA Victor, and wanted the group to progress, musically. "They created a demand by recording for about two or three months, in New York, with the best musicians in the city, what they call 'studio men,'" Prime noted.

"And then when the band became popular, and people were demanding to see it, they auditioned young men who wanted to travel with the band and make a reputation with them. So the men who hit the road... the only one from the original group was me. The rest of them were guys that did not make the original records." Hendler and his business partner, Bernie Woods, pushed it to the point that Flanagan's band, following in Miller's footsteps, opened at the Cafe Rouge of the Hotel Statler in New York City on September 11, 1950, and was featured on the radio in a show sponsored, like Miller had been, by Chesterfield cigarettes. Prime last saw Flanagan in 1958, when Flanagan appeared with a pickup band at a one-night stand in Pottstown, PA. "He came to Sunnybrook Ballroom, but what he was doing... he had disbanded his regular band, and he'd come into a town [ and ] he'd go to the union and get a bunch of musicians that . . . weren't really Some musicians then had reputations as drinkers; Flanagan would have a drink or two only occasionally.

"All he needed was to get two or three drinks in him and then he was like a guy who drank 'til he got stoned," Prime remarked. "But then he wouldn't drink again for about three months . . . He was an occasional drinker, but what an occasion when he did drink!" Perhaps the most embarassing moment occured when Flanagan was arrested for public nudity. "It happened in Atlantic City," Prime remembered. "He started drinking, one of those nights he decided he was going to 'pop a few,' and he went down on the beach and disrobed. And he was walking on the beach with no clothes on. They locked him up < chuckles >. I had to lead the band on [ the ] Steel Pier for about two nights." Flanagan enjoyed flying his own single-engine plane to jobs, when possible. He escaped injury in 1954 when the light plane he was piloting crashed, as he was taking off from a Chicago airport. His plane was caught in the propwash of a four engine aircraft. sources: "Band Leader Escapes Injury in Plane Crash," Chicago Tribune, Jan. 6, 1954, p.A4. Fenton, Jacob.

"Swing-era crooner still packs in the crowds," The [ Lansdale, PA ] Reporter, thereporteronline.com, Mar. 4, 2005. Knox, J.E. E-mail to author, Dec. 5, 2005. ---. The Ralph Flanagan Discography (Portland, OR: Metolius Music, 2004). Prime, Harry. Interview with author, Mar. 9, 2005. S.S.S. "Rapid Rise of Ralph Flanagan, The," International Musician, June 1950, p.15. Strick, Sue. Post to "OHLorain-L Archives [ Internet genealogy forum ]," Aug. 3, 2002.

Question: Which American big band leader had as his theme song, the tune, "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You"?
Answer: TOMMY DORSEY