Music History

Of all the jazz musicians who link yesterday’s ragtime with today’s dance music, Duke Ellington is the dean. In his 27 years as a pianist and composer, the Duke has played alongside every great brass, reed, and rhythm man of his day. Now he picks those music makers who, ‘on the basis of their over-all contribution, their all-time record, consistently good performance, and love of music,’ constitute 1951’s All-American jazz band.

Duke Ellington made a list of his favorite eleven musicians; some of the names may surprise you.

Brought up in Pennsylvania, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey had a harsh taskmaster in the form of their father:

Thomas Dorsey was a self-taught musician who earned $10 a week in the coal mines and a few dollars extra by giving music lessons. When Thomas Francis Dorsey [his second son] was born in 1905, the father made up his mind that his sons would be musicians, or else!

While still in knee-pants, both learned all the wind instruments before specializing in the saxophone and trombone, respectively… The boys mother, Tess Langton Dorsey, often was distressed by her husband’s rigid disciplining of her sons. To miss a day’s practice meant a licking.

Inasmuch as the Dorsey brothers may have been united in their efforts to please their father, their union ended there. Much of the article pertains to their opposing temperaments and the skyrocketing career that both enjoyed as a result of their mutual desires to out-do the other. It wasn’t until the old man’s death in 1942 that their competition subsided.