Jimmy Dorsey was both an accomplished reed player, specializing in alto saxophone and clarinet, and one of the top bandleaders of the swing era. In the early and late periods of his career, he co-led bands with his younger brother Tommy; in between, he scored a series of Latin-tinged hits that established his orchestra as one of the most successful recording and performing units of the early '40s. And despite some lean years in the late '40s and the first half of the '50s, he managed to score a major pop hit during the final weeks of his life.

The first son of Thomas Francis Dorsey, Sr., a music teacher and marching band director, and Theresa Langton Dorsey, Dorsey received early music instruction from his father; by the age of seven, he was playing cornet in his father's band. Switching to trumpet, he made his professional debut at nine when he appeared with J. Carson McGee's King Trumpeters in New York in September 1913. But two years later, he had switched to reed instruments, alternating on alto saxophone and clarinet. Less than two years younger, his brother Tommy had taken up horn instruments, sometimes playing trumpet but mainly trombone, and the brothers formed Dorsey's Novelty Six in 1920. As Dorsey's Wild Canaries, they played an extended engagement at a Baltimore amusement park and made their radio debut (in the process becoming one of the very earliest jazz bands to be heard on the airwaves). Dorsey then left to join the Scranton Sirens. Around September 1924, he moved to New York and joined the California Ramblers, switching to the Jean Goldkette Orchestra in 1925 -- where he worked alongside the likes of Bix Beiderbecke, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and Frankie Trumbauer -- and then to Paul Whiteman's orchestra in 1926. His younger brother followed him into each of these bands.

Eventually the brothers settled in New York, where they worked as session musicians, appearing on records, on radio, and in the pit bands of Broadway musicals. Beginning in 1927, they began organizing studio-only ensembles dubbed the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra for recordings on OKeh Records, and they first reached the charts in June 1928 with "Coquette" (vocal by Bill Dutton). Their first Top Ten placing came in the spring of 1929 with "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)" (vocal by Bing Crosby). The Dorseys organized a permanent touring band in April 1934 and later signed to the newly formed Decca Records. They reached the Top Ten in the fall with "What a Diff'rence a Day Made" (vocal by Bob Crosby) and in the winter of 1935 with "I Believe in Miracles" (vocal by Crosby), "Tiny Little Fingerprints" (vocal by Kay Weber), and "Night Wind" (vocal by Crosby). "Lullaby of Broadway" (vocal by Crosby) hit number one in May. Their rise was helped along by their manager, Francis "Cork" O'Keefe, who was one of the prime movers and shakers in the big-band field of the early '30s.

By this time, the Dorseys were bidding fair to break out from the pack in the burgeoning field of swing music -- and they were poised to do just that when O'Keefe booked them into the Glen Island Casino, one of the top big-band venues on the East Coast, complete with a radio hookup from CBS. The brothers had worked together for years at that point, and 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. 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 was left with the band as it was, and several recordings were still in the pipeline. Ironically, "Chasing Shadows" (vocal by Bob Eberly) hit number one in June, while "Every Little Movement" entered the charts in July and reached the Top Ten. Despite his brother's departure, Jimmy Dorsey at first continued to record as the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, and he scored two Top Ten hits in the fall of 1935, "You Are My Lucky Star" and "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'." (These and all other Dorsey hits unless otherwise noted featured Bob Eberly on vocals.) By the end of the year, however, with Tommy Dorsey having launched his own band, Jimmy Dorsey changed his group's billing to Jimmy Dorsey & His Orchestra, scoring his first chart entry under that name with "You Let Me Down" in December. The same month, Dorsey signed on to provide the musical accompaniment for host Bing Crosby on the weekly radio series Kraft Music Hall, remaining with the show until July 1937.

Meanwhile, Benny Goodman emerged and claimed the title of "the King of Swing." Tommy Dorsey quickly put together a highly commercial outfit and gave Goodman serious competition. Jimmy Dorsey was not as successful at first, though he topped the charts in June 1936 with "Is It True What They Say About Dixie?" It was only after he left the Crosby radio show and began appearing extensively on his own that he started to figure among the more popular bands. In 1938, he scored seven Top Ten hits, culminating in "Change Partners," which hit number one in October. He had six Top Ten hits in 1939 and three in 1940, including the chart-topper "The Breeze and I," which was a key hit, since it began a series of adaptations of Spanish songs arranged by Tutti Camerata. Even as he began to find commercial success, his younger brother was burning up the airwaves with his more commercial brand of big-band music, its appeal spearheaded by the presence of a young singer named Frank Sinatra.

Jimmy Dorsey's career really took off in 1941 when he scored 12 Top Ten hits. "I Hear a Rhapsody" reached number one in April, followed by "High on a Windy Hill" the same month. Another key hit was Dorsey's third consecutive chart-topper, "Amapola," with alternate verses sung by Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell, which hit number one in March and was the most popular record of the year. Before 1941 was over, Dorsey had returned to number one with "My Sister and I," "Green Eyes" (another duet between Eberly and O'Connell), "Maria Elena," and "Blue Champagne," and he ranked second only to Glenn Miller as the most successful recording artist of the year. Hollywood took an interest in him, and he made his film debut in Lady, Be Good in September 1941. The recording ban called by the American Federation of Musicians in August 1942 cut down on Dorsey's recording opportunities, but he still managed to score six Top Ten hits during the year, among them "Tangerine," another Latin-tinged number with duet vocals by Eberly and O'Connell, which was featured in his second film, The Fleet's In, released in March. Overall, he ranked as the fourth biggest recording artist of the year behind Miller, Harry James, and Kay Kyser. The year 1943 was more of a struggle, but Decca settled with the union a year ahead of its rivals, Columbia and RCA Victor, and so its artists, Dorsey among them, were able to dominate the charts in 1944. Dorsey scored five Top Ten hits, among them the chart-topper "Besame Mucho" (vocals by Eberly and Kitty Kallen), ranking as the third most successful recording artist of the year behind Decca labelmates Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters.

Amid that string of vocal hits, it's easy to forget that the Jimmy Dorsey Band was also a serious jazz outfit, whose members liked to stretch out when they could and leave the vocalists on the sidelines. The instrumental "Contrasts," which dated from 1932, was his signature tune and a perfectly respectable jazz piece, and they also saw some success with the lighthearted pop-jazz piece "John Silver," and stretched the envelope with a surprisingly modern electric guitar sound (among other attributes) on "Sorghum Switch" in 1942. Unlike some contemporaries, Dorsey remained just as musically adventurous in the 1940s as he had been in the 1920s and 1930s; he was not only able but willing to incorporate elements of bebop into his work, and his singles of the early '40s were some of the bolder commercial swing sides of the period.

The Jimmy Dorsey Band went into a commercial decline from 1945 on, though there were two Top Ten hits in 1945 and one in 1946. By 1947, Dorsey had moved to MGM Records. In May 1947, he participated in a largely fictionalized film biography of himself and his brother, The Fabulous Dorseys, which was notable not just for the work of Jimmy and Tommy but also a musical cameo by Art Tatum. He scored a Top Ten hit with "Ballerina" (vocal by Bob Carroll) in January 1948 and continued to reach the charts for another couple of years, having moved to Columbia Records by 1950, where he cut some moderately successful (and enjoyable) Dixieland-style sides, which also led to the recording of his first LP. But he was forced to disband his orchestra, and in 1953 he accepted an offer from his brother to join the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra as a featured player. Soon, the band was being billed as the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. From 1954 to 1956, the brothers hosted Stage Show, a live television series. Elvis Presley made his national TV debut on the show in January 1956.

Dorsey was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1956. In November 1956, his brother died suddenly, and he took over the band briefly until he was hospitalized in March 1957. His last recording session for Fraternity Records had included "So Rare" (vocals by the Arthur Malvin Singers), which peaked in the Top Five the week of his death on June 12, 1957 at age 53. ~ William Ruhlmann & Bruce Eder

Bob Eberly was a superior, if somewhat inflexible ballad singer during the swing era, best known for his association with Jimmy Dorsey. He started his career by winning an amateur hour contest on the Fred Allen radio show and singing locally. When Bob Crosby left the Dorsey Brothers Band in 1935, Eberly (who had changed his name from Eberle) was hired. After Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey soon split up, Eberly went with Jimmy and became a fixture with his orchestra for the next eight years through rough times and prosperity.

His deep voice and very straight delivery were an inspiration for Dick Haymes and indirectly for Frank Sinatra. Starting in December 1940, Eberly and Helen O'Connell (who had joined the band nearly two years earlier) teamed up regularly on records; Eberly would have a ballad chorus (he much preferred slow tempos) and then, after an instrumental interlude, O'Connell would take a hotter chorus. Engineered originally by arranger Tutti Camarata so both singers could be featured on Dorsey's radio show, the combination clicked from the start, resulting in hit versions of "Amapola," "Tangerine," "Green Eyes" and "Maria Elena." Eberle was with Dorsey until December 1943, when he was drafted into the military. He was able to sing during the next two years with Wayne King's military group, but after his discharge, Eberly was never really able to get a very successful solo career going. He did continue working into the 1970s, and co-hosted a summer replacement television show with Helen O'Connell one year, but was largely forgotten. Ironically, Bob's younger brother Ray Eberle, who had much less of a voice, is today better remembered for his many ballad vocals with Glenn Miller. ~ Scott Yanow

Helen O'Connell, who had a fairly long career, will always be best remembered for her squeals on "Green Eyes" and her work with Jimmy Dorsey. She originally left her native Toledo with Jimmy Richards' nine-piece group, gigging and touring for a year and a half. O'Connell appeared on a regular radio show in St. Louis until she agreed to tour with Larry Funk's band (which was billed as "Band of a Thousand Melodies"). After the outfit started working in New York, she was discovered and quickly signed up by Jimmy Dorsey in 1938. O'Connell soon had a hit rendition of "All of Me," which was followed by popular recordings of "Embraceable You," "Brazil," "Jim." and "When the Sun Comes Out" (which she introduced). However, it was in December 1940, when she started sharing recordings with ballad singer Bob Eberly, that O'Connell for a time became a household name. Eberly generally took a slow chorus, Jimmy Dorsey would have a brief instrumental interlude, and then O'Connell would finish up the record with a swinging chorus. This combination worked very well on hit versions of "Amapola," "Yours," "Green Eyes" and "Tangerine." After appearing in the 1943 movie I Dood It with Dorsey (singing "Star Eyes"), O'Connell retired to get married; she would eventually have four daughters. In 1950 she began a successful solo career, making occasional records, appearing regularly on television (she spent a period as co-host of The Today Show), toured as part of Four Girls Four (which also included Kay Starr, Rosemary Clooney and Rose Marie) and made guest appearances with the Jimmy Dorsey ghost band, singing in an unchanged style. Although her voice was limited, she made her deficiencies into assets and carved out her own place in musical history. Helen O'Connell was active up until shortly before her death from cancer. ~ Scott Yanow