Tommy Dorsey
was called “The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing,
” but the label fails to describe the breadth of this trombone playing, or his role in the transformation of 1920s jazz into the big band era of the late 1930s and 1940s.
Thomas Francis Dorsey was born on , in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, slightly less than two years after his brother Jimmy. Under the guidance of their music-teaching father, Jimmy (on clarinet and alto sax) and Tommy (on...