Search - Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra :: That Sentimental Gentleman

A super sound from Tommy Dorsey at his peak!

Jeffrey J. Karpinski | King of Prussia, PA United States | 01/16/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Musically this album rates even more than five stars, if that's possible (more about my 4-star decision below). It consists exclusively of broadcast recordings by Tommy Dorsey's orchestra during the height of its success, in the years from 1940 to 1944. Okay, so the title's actually a bit misleading in that only half of the tracks are from the band's romantic style that earned Tommy his nickname, but nothing can beat the excitement of the band going full tilt on Hawaiian War Chant or Well, Git It! And when you do get to the sentimental songs you have both Frank Sinatra and Dick Haymes to listen to and love. The album is also historically significant because it includes Sinatra's last performance with the band, followed by a very early Haymes effort on Daybreak, from Grofé's Mississippi Suite. In addition there are five songs from the otherwise-unrecorded period of the ASCAP strike, when the band featured some great jazz from Charlie Shavers and Sy Oliver.The performances are all "live" - going so far as to include some banter between Dorsey and a waiter at a restaurant on one cut - so there's a spontaneity and looseness that few studio recordings can match. All the great musicians and singers are there: in addition to Shavers and Oliver, there's Buddy Rich, Ziggy Elman, Bunny Berigan, Jo Stafford, the Pied Pipers, the Sentimentalists, and on and on. Except maybe for the Glenn Miller AAF Band, it just doesn't get better than this!Now why did I assign only four stars? All of this great music is on a CD which sounds like it is a second-generation copy of the 1950s LP. There seems to have been virtually no sound restoration beyond the clumsy echo chamber and bass/treble boosts that were the only techniques available five decades ago. If you listen through those efforts, the quality of the original 1940s transcriptions must have been far better than the average for the time, but much of it is muffled by whatever was done by the LP's engineers. Let's hope that the original discs are still out there somewhere and that the third time will be the charm."

The best TD

Rob Stoneback | Bethlehem, PA USA | 07/10/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is still my favorite Tommy Dorsey recording, and I have over 45 of them. "That Sentimental Gentleman" captures what I consider the best era of the TD band, from 1940 to 1943. Although the sound quality is not as good as the studio recordings, the excitement of Ziggy Elman, Buddy Rich, Bunny Berigan, Frank Sinatra, and all the rest swinging live more than makes up for it. And all those great Sy Oliver arrangements! If you want to find out how exciting TD's band really was, this is it!"