“Tangerine” by Jimmy Dorsey

At #1: May 9, 1942-June 13, 1942 (six weeks)
Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died of cancer on June 12, 1957

“Tangerine” is another song from a movie soundtrack. This time, the movie was The Fleet’s In, which better known as the film where Betty Hutton made her screen debut than in being Jimmy Dorsey’s best appearance on screen.

(Note: I’ve finished watching The Fabulous Dorseys and there will be a review in the future.)

The movie version is slightly different than the album version. In the movie Bob Eberly sings the line "And I've seen times when Tangerine/Had the bourgeoisie believing she was queen” but on the record he sings "And I've seen toasts to Tangerine/Raised in every bar across the Argentine”.

While trying to find out as much as I can about the Big Band Era, I lucked onto the Donald Clarke Music Box website. Clarke wrote a biography of Frank Sinatra and his website includes an encyclopedia of music, essays and a blog. Clarke writes about Dorsey:

Jimmy Dorsey led a band similar to that of Harry James in that it was a good mainstream dance band. He had been a superb alto player on many fine jazz records; when Tommy walked out in 1935, most of the members of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra stayed with Jimmy, who became one of Jack Kapp's greatest successes on Decca. The band's very good and extremely popular vocalists were Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell; Kitty Kallen sang with it in the early 1940s before she joined Harry James. Sidemen included Ray McKinley on drums, 'Tootie' Camarata on trumpet, Freddie Slack on piano and Herbie Haymer on tenor saxophone. But, as with James, his biggest hits almost all featured the singers: 'The Breeze and I' (from the Spanish song 'Andalucia' by Ernesto Lecuona), 'Maria Elena' (a Mexican song), 'Blue Champagne', 'High on a Windy Hill', 'I Hear a Rhapsody' and many others were sung by Eberly; 'Green Eyes' (from Cuba), 'Amapola' (a Spanish song) and 'Tangerine' (from the film The Fleet's In) were all duets by Eberly and O'Connell. The band's last big hit was 'Besame Mucho' (from Mexico), a duet by Eberly and Kallen. Like most leaders on Decca, Dorsey also recorded with Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. He is rated as the seventeenth best-selling recording artist up to 1954, but brother Tommy was number four.

Regarding Bob Eberle and Helen O’Connell, the vocalists for “Tangerine”:

Eberly was extremely popular, beaten in '39 poll only by Crosby, while O'Connell was one of the most highly rated white female vocalists of the era. Jimmy's band was sweeter than Tommy's, but could swing.

We might not remember “Tangerine” in the 21st century, but the tune is popular enough for people to keep coming back to it. It’s been used in two different commercials – oddly enough, both diet commercials. One was for “Sego”, a diet drink and the other one was for Pillsbury Figurines, a diet bar. (I’ve been unable to find the Pillsbury Figurines commercial, but my wife remembers it. “Figurines, da da da da da da da, da da da da da, da da da diet bar….) It was also reworked as a disco hit by Salsoul Orchestra and made the Billboard Top 20 in 1976.

Extra #1: The Sego commercial, which you can find at 3:58 in the clip below:

Extra #2: The Salsoul Orchestra pop version.

“Blue Champagne” by Jimmy Dorsey

At #1: September 27, 1941 (one week)
Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died on June 12, 1957

There’s not a lot to say about “Blue Champagne”. It’s much more instrumental than the more popular Jimmy Dorsey tunes, which were a) Bob Eberly starts singing low-tempo, b) instrumental section, and then c) Helen O’Connell in swing tempo. Only Bob Eberly sings and he’s late coming in.

Enotes.com has an interesting assessment of the swing era:

Although illusory in nature, the world created by the music and the shared identity of the listeners "is perhaps the happiest and most significant aspect of the Swing Era," Schuller declared. That facet of swing faded, however, when the American consciousness was permanently changed by World War II. Stereo Review's Peter Reilly consequently dismissed the Dorsey brothers' music for modern listeners: "It doesn't have enough vitality or true style to bridge the years."

Indeed, what is amazing is how thoroughly this era of music has been eradicated. Not only that, the eradication came fairly quickly, within the living memory of the biggest fans of the genre. Oh, there were still hangers-on : Lawrence Welk was very popular on TV and the show wasn’t much more than all of those old big band hits played over and over. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians could always expect a solid paycheck on New Year’s Eve. But the popular attitude toward the last of these big band dinosaurs was always one of derision.

Here’s a thought exercise: think about a musical style from a given decade from the 1940s to the 2000s – how likely is it that a song written under the musical tropes common to that era could make it to the 2012 Billboard Hot 100? Songs written in the style of the 1970s still have enough motive power to influence modern songwriters with their melodies and lyrical arrangements. (It seems that “classic radio” – what some called “oldies” – has been rolled up to 1970 – 1990, with only the biggest hits from the 1960s hanging on and virtually nothing from the 1950s.) If Jimmy Dorsey could be resurrected and arrange something new with Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell, even at the height of his power he’d never make the 2012 Hot 100. The landscape has changed too much.

You could hunt through a barrel of hypotheses as to why this is so. My pet hypothesis is the individualization of American culture, “every man a king and every woman a queen”. The thought of being one performer in a seventeen-piece big band is just hard to stomach. Better to be a bass player in a four-piece rock band. Or in 2012, better to be the lead vocalist with studio backup. (If you can barely carry a note, there’s always autotune.)

The above paragraph says that “the American consciousness was permanently changed by World War II” but that doesn’t seem like enough of a reason for the disappearance of big band. Big bands were still popular during wartime; it’s not like American GIs were exposed to hot rock ‘n’ roll acts on some Pacific island and flipped over to an undiscovered musical style.

More likely, big band music hit a demographic wall. The purchasing power of younger people was starting to make itself felt very slowly. The first wave that hit big band music was the economic post-war financial boom, when teenagers had purchasing power and decided that they didn’t want to spend their cash on big band music. (Either that, or they started watching television, which didn’t have the sonic fidelity afforded to a radio listener.) The second wave – the demographic wave that hit in the 1960s when the war babies became teens – smashed the 1940s era to smithereens.

Presently: Have made it to the 30 minute mark of “The Fabulous Dorseys”. Wow, Janet Blair is easy on the eyes, ain’t she?

“Green Eyes (Aquellos Ojos Verdes)” by Jimmy Dorsey

Time at #1: August 30, 1941 – September 20, 1941 (4 weeks) Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died on June 12, 1957

If young dancers got bored with “Maria Elena”, there was the flip side to the old 78 rpm with a song called “Green Eyes”. Everyone must have liked what they heard, because “Green Eyes” would move to the #1 position on the charts in the fall of 1941. Dorsey would dominate music in 1941, with 17 non-consecutive weeks at #1.

It’s the typical Jimmy Dorsey composition. Bob Eberly croons the opening part of the song, the band picks up the temp mid way and Helen O’Connell finishes with a (slightly) more swing-oriented version. The formula proved to be very successful, at least in 1941.

Once again, Dorsey goes back to the well with a Latin song. The song goes back to at least the 1920s, written by Adolfo Utrera and Nilo Menéndez with Eddie Rivera and Eddie Woods adding English lyrics in 1929.

Since there’s not a lot to say about “Green Eyes” except that it spent some time at #1, we’ll take a diversion and look at the composition of these big bands. This is from the Wikipedia article on Big Bands:

A standard 17-piece instrumentation evolved in the big-bands, for which many commercial arrangements are available. This instrumentation consists of five saxophones (most often two altos, two tenors, and one baritone), four trumpets, four trombones (often including one bass trombone) and a four-piece rhythm section (composed of drums, acoustic bass or electric bass, piano and guitar).

It would be interesting to learn how this arrangement mutated into the modern rock band. They did call rock and roll “rhythm and blues” and it looks like the rock band is just a big band stripped of its brass and woodwind sections.

Jazz History by Joe Moebrook gives some insight into the instrumentation of the early Dorsey Brothers band:

They broke with the pattern of most white bands of the period, which performed mostly straight dance arrangements. The Dorsey brothers, borrowing from their experience with small jazz groups and some of the swinging black big bands, combined elements of small group jazz and big band dance music. They did it with only eleven players, and unusual instrumentation: three reeds (Jimmy Dorsey, Skeets Herfurt and Jack Stacey), three trombones (Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Don Matteson), piano (Bobby Van Epps), drums (Ray McKinley), bass (Delmar Kaplan), guitar (Roc Hilman) and only one trumpet!

So who listened to big band music? From the same article:

White teenagers and young adults were the principal fans of the Big Bands in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They danced to recordings and the radio, and attended live concerts whenever they could. They were knowledgeable and often biased toward their favorite bands and songs, and sometimes worshipful of the famous soloists and vocalists. Many bands toured the country in grueling one-night stands to reach out to their fans. Traveling conditions and lodging were often difficult, in part due to segregation in most parts of the United States, and the personnel often had to perform on little sleep and food. Apart from the star soloists, many personnel received low wages and would abandon the tour and go home if bookings fell through. Personal problems and intra-band discord could affect the playing of the group. Drinking and addictions were common. Turnover was frequent in many bands, and top soloists were often lured away to better contracts. Sometimes bandstands were too small, public address systems inadequate, pianos out of tune. Successful bandleaders dealt with all these hazards of touring to hold their bands together—some with rigid discipline (Glenn Miller), some with canny psychology (Duke Ellington).

This could give another key to the shift from big band to rock and roll music – big band might have represented white musical tastes; rock and roll – at least initially – was more inclusive.

(A side note: My goal is to get through “The Fabulous Dorseys” and dedicate a post to it. It’s been a real struggle just to get through the first twenty minutes – it’s not exactly a compelling movie. What have I learned? Tommy is the one with the trombone; Jimmy is the one with the alto saxophone.)

“Maria Elena” by Jimmy Dorsey

At #1: June 14, 1941; July 5, 1941 (two non-consecutive weeks)
Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died on June 12, 1957

If you look at Billboard’s list of #1 hits from 1941, you get an interesting pattern.
June 7: “My Sister and I”
June 14: “Maria Elena”
June 21: “Daddy” (by Sammy Kaye)
June 28: “My Sister and I”
July 5: “Maria Elena”
July 12-August 23: "Daddy" (which breaks the logjam)

This pattern might never be seen again, where three different songs trade off at #1 for six consecutive weeks. Whereas "Daddy" had a nice long run at #1, "My Sister and I" and "Maria Elena" were there for only two weeks each.

I remember vaguely reading about the state of country music in the 1980s. The link – which points to the list of #1s in country music in 1981 – has a different song at #1 almost every single week. Even though some of those country songs would become classics, a lot more would not. There is so much movement at the #1 spot in the 1981 country music chart that one might conclude that all of the songs are more or less at the same level of quality. And I believe that the 1980s are not considered a great era for country music.

It looks like there wasn’t much going on in the summer of 1941, certainly not with popular music, unless you want to conclude that all of those songs are classics. From the viewpoint of someone in the 21st century who never listened to swing/big band music, the list above doesn’t look like a list of all-star classics.

“Maria Elena” – at least the way Jimmy Dorsey/Bob Eberly are performing it – is a lousy song. (“My Sister and I” is only interesting in its subject matter.) Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell frequently teamed up with Eberly singing a slow tempo part of the song and O’Connell coming in to jazz it up. This worked, at least in the case of “Amapola”. But “Maria Elena” is all Bob Eberly (a good, but not great vocalist), all slow tempo, and all snoozeville.

(Note: the linked version above only has Bob Eberly – if there’s a version of “Maria Elena” with Helen O’Connell, I haven’t found it yet.)

There are many big band/swing/crooner aficionados out there who want to mark the 1940s as a Golden Age of Music. Every bygone era has its fans, from the 1940s to the 1980s who want to mark their decade as the peak of creativity in music. The problem is that this viewpoint requires some selective memory.

If you were to ask a hardcore music fan of the 21st century – someone, say, in their early 20s – who the greatest performers were and what the greatest songs were, here’s how it would probably go. Maybe fifty percent of the songs would be from the 21st century. There would probably be a big chunk of 1990s songs – maybe Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam – in the list. Then Michael Jackson and maybe a few big names from the 1970s. The better songs of The Beatles. Elvis would get a mention, although everything he did after 1960 would be omitted.

And then what? Our hypothetical fan might remember Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, but all they’ll remember is “New York, New York” and “White Christmas”. If they remember a smattering of names before this point – Al Jolson, Glenn Miller, the Andrew Sisters – they’ll probably remember hearing the name somewhere but won’t be able to recall a single song.

This illustrates the process of filtering: humans have a selective memory. For the most part, we remember only the good songs from an era and conveniently forget all the bad ones. I experienced this first hand when I (briefly) had Sirius Radio and kept my radio tuned to the 1980s channel. I heard a lot of great music that I wanted to remember – but for every good song, I heard at least three or four that should have been buried in a landfill. My selective memory of the 1980s is sort of a “Best Hits of the 1980s” and I suspect the memory of big band fans is that of “Best Hits of the 1940s” – the only difference being that they might be more generous with the definition of “best hit” than I would.

“Maria Elena” is not a “best hit”. If you’ve got a better argument, I’d love to hear it.

“My Sister and I” by Jimmy Dorsey

At #1: June 7, 1941; June 28, 1941 (two non-consecutive weeks)
Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died on June 12, 1957

No, this is not the song by Haylie Duff. This song was written before Haylie’s mother was a gleam in someone’s eye. “My Sister and I” was sung by Bob Eberly and written by three songwriters: Hy Zaret, Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer. It’s far from a happy song, being the first-person story of a war refugee and his sister.

We’re learning to forget the fear
That came from a troubled sky
We’re almost happy over here
But sometimes we wake at night and cry

My sister and I recall the day
We said goodbye and then we sailed away
And we think of our friends who had to stay
But we don’t talk about that.

(It might actually be “her sister” according to the obituary for Hy Zaret in the New York Times, but with Bob Eberly singing you can’t be blamed for being confused.)

From the end of the 1930s right up to the World War America was in the middle of a refugee crisis. America was just coming out of a Great Depression – one could argue that we were still in one as of 1941 – and didn’t want the labor competition that an open immigration policy would bring. However, there were thousands of refugees attempting to escape the threat of Nazi persecution.

Just two years earlier, the refugee ship MS St. Louis which carried 930 Jewish German refugees (and seven non-Jewish) sought asylum in Cuba. The United States could not convince Cuba to provide asylum and refused to provide it themselves, the Coast Guard following the ship around Florida to make sure that it didn’t dock. Eventually, some European countries were convinced to take the passengers as refugees – countries which would soon fall under Nazi domination themselves.

Six hundred twenty passengers would end up in continental Europe. (Great Britain accepted some of the refugees. Of those, 254 would die at the hands of the Nazi killing machine.

Most American were opposed to entering World War II. According to a website of the Constitutional Rights Foundation:

On the eve of World War II, a bill that would have admitted Jewish refugee children above the regular quota limits was introduced in Congress. President Roosevelt took no position on the bill, and it died in committee in the summer of 1939. Polls at the time indicated that two-thirds of Americans opposed taking in Jewish refugee children.

So I find it interesting that this song poked its head up and brought the refugee problem back to America’s attention. The song doesn’t say what sort of refugees the children are, although the song says that they remember “a tulip garden by an old Dutch mill”.

I’m certain that Hyman Harry Zaritsky – the future Hy Zaret – was quite aware of the refugee problem. He himself was the son of immigrants from Russia. He was a socially conscious writer who not only wrote the massive hit “Unchained Melody” but also wrote educational songs. I was surprised to find that one of the songs he co-wrote with Lou Singer was “Why Does the Sun Shine?” better known as “The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas”, a song later performed by They Might Be Giants. (The Zaret-Singer version is slower; the version by They Might Be Giants made the song popular.)

So in a way, “My Sister and I” is not only the first “consciousness raising” #1 song, but is also the first war song to hit #1 – even though war was five months away. If two thirds of Americans didn’t want any refugees in 1939, opinions might have been turning two years later.

Extra: TMBG and “Why Does The Sun Shine?” co-written by the author of “My Sister and I”.

“Amapola” by Jimmy Dorsey

At #1: March 29, 1941 – May 31, 1941 (10 weeks)
Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died on June 12, 1957

According to Wikipedia, this song had been kicking around for a long time. It was composed in the 1920s by José María Lacalle. There’s some contradictory info in Wikipedia – the article on Lacalle states that it was composed as an instrumental, whereas the article on “Amapola” states that it was composed with Spanish lyrics. The song appears to have picked up English lyrics in the 1930s and it had been recorded or performed in films at least four times before Jimmy Dorsey took a stab at it.

Jimmy Dorsey was the brother of Tommy Dorsey. They were both playing musical instruments since childhood and both ended up leading bands. They initially tried working together, forming Dorsey’s Canaries and later on the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. But in a lot of cases where family members work together, they can’t get along. The following is from allmusic.com and William Ruhlmann and Bruce Eder:

…while their work was frequently dazzling, there were personal tensions that were never far from the surface; the older, more introverted Jimmy was less volatile, while Tommy was more assertive and aggressive. Each knew how to push the requisite buttons in order to needle one another. They'd gotten into squabbles before -- instrument-damaging battles backstage -- but on the night of May 30, 1935, on the holiday then known as Decoration Day (now Memorial Day), as the band tried to start "I'll Never Say 'Never Again' Again," they got into an dispute over the tempo and Tommy left the bandstand in mid-performance and walked out on his brother and the band.

Jimmy Dorsey kept the Dorsey Brothers name on the band, hoping that Tommy would come back. When it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen, it became Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra.

Listening to “Amapola” – which means “poppy” in Spanish – is odd, because it underlines that squabble that broke up the Dorseys. The song has two lead vocalists. The first is Bob Eberly, who performed with Jimmy Dorsey’s band until he joined the Army. I don’t know how to describe his part of the performance, but it can definitely put you into the kind of snooze associated with opiate use.

The second performer is Helen O’Connell. O’Connell also worked for the Jimmy Dorsey band and when she starts singing, the band immediately wakes up and kicks into swing drive. Basically, the joy in the song is waiting for the moment when Eberly will stop singing and O’Connell will start. O’Connell was, according to her Wikipedia article, a leading contender for best female singer of the early 1940s. It was the Army that set back Eberly’s career and it was marriage that set back O’Connell’s – she retired from singing in 1943 for eight years during the first of four marriages.

Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey would eventually make up. They made a movie together, a “biography” called The Fabulous Dorseys which will soon go on my List of Movies to See. Six years later the brothers would be back together in the same band, with Jimmy joining Tommy’s band as a featured performer. But their reconciliation was to be short-lived. Tommy Dorsey died in November 1956 and less than a year later Jimmy Dorsey was dead from lung cancer.