Word: recording
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Really interesting record came out this week on Victor: Tommy Dorsy's "Stomp It Off." For the last year, this column has been panning Tommy pretty regularly for turning out nothing but obnoxious sweet music. Lately, however, Tommy's popularity rating has been taking a beating. Evidently he has finally worken up to the fact that one of the biggest factors in his decline has been that the fans felt that all his pieces sounded the same--that they could tell what a new Tommy Dorsey arrangement was going to sound like long before they heard...
Thus we have Tommy Dorsey who never made a colored swing style record, who lately has been doing either very feeble Dixieland or even more feeble sweet music trying to do one of the famous Lunceford arrangements...
...Jimmy's Decca record and the Victor of Tommy if you want to see something interesting...
Instead of the alternate power and bounce-lightly that Lunsford uses, you have a white band playing a colored-style arrangement without anything behind it. The record strikes one as being slightly bewildered, as though the boys in Tommy's band just couldn't make the shift fast enough...
...wrong, the record is good. The arrangement is played in a far cleaner manner than the 1934 Lunceford band could do (although the same wouldn't be true today), but it settles once and for all the argument as to whether all a band needs to play good swing is a bunch of musicians that can read and play section well, and a good arranger. The answer is gently but firmly...