Tommy Dorsey led one of the swing era's most popular and technically polished big bands, prized for his own smooth, seamless trombone tone and for a bandstand that served as a finishing school for young vocalists, most famously a twenty-four-year-old Frank Sinatra. His legato trombone phrasing — playing through impossibly long musical lines without an audible breath — became a technical touchstone that Sinatra later credited as the direct source of his own singing style. Dorsey's orchestra was among the best-selling acts of the late 1930s and early 1940s.

the sound in question

1937

Song of IndiaTommy Dorsey