"Let's Get Away from It All"

Frank Sinatra, with The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra

When our children were small and money was tight, we used to enjoy taking them to see old movies at our nearby theater’s “Silver Screen Classics.” These shows were screened in the early afternoon on weekdays, and were offered mainly with senior citizens in mind, but the $2 price tag (which included a drink and popcorn!) was too good to pass up. So we often crashed the party, and we and the kids got a chance to see very fine old films and great actors on the big screen. What a treat.

I recall that when our son, David, was nine years old and was beginning formal piano lessons, we took him to the “Silver Screen Classics” to see “The Fabulous Dorseys,” a loosely biographical story of the famous band-leader brothers, whose parting of the ways was very public news in the late 1940’s, when the two were at the peak of their musical talents. The film, however, was made in 1953, after the brothers made an equally public reconciliation, and so the story could be told, with the requisite happy ending — and a whole lotta great music along the way.

I mention this story because I got so much mileage out of it for years, by way of reminders to our son that the hour a day of practicing we asked of him was nothing like what the Dorsey boys’ father had required of them. “Davey,” I would ask, “aren’t you glad that Mr. Dorsey wasn’t your father? How long would you have had to practice every day?” And he would reply, “Fourrrrr hoooours!” And we’d laugh, and he’d do his music and get lost in the sheer joy of it! He quickly got over the hump of the early days when the lessons were hard work, and elevated his skills to the point of pure enjoyment in playing and practicing. And so the story of the Dorsey brothers was an important part of our son’s voyage from “having an ear for music” to becoming a church organist. He literally learned the key to success from Mr. Dorsey, himself, a talented musician who had had to work in the coal mines to support his family and wanted to be sure that his sons grew up with a more pleasant (and profitable) way to support themselves.

What a roundabout introduction to our song for this week of voyages at Word & Song. Today I have for you a song that celebrates going someplace for the sake of doing just that: “Let’s Get Away from It All.” The song was one of Frank Sinatra’s early hits as a singer with The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and it was composed by the same team of writers — Matt Dennis and Tom Adair — who had given Frank his very first big hit, “I’ll Never Smile Again,” in 1940. Sinatra had begun his career as a big band singer with Harry James, in a job that got him air time and a few recording sessions but also meant performing a grueling twelve live shows a day. Even with great songs such as “All or Nothing at All,” Sinatra was not advancing his career with Harry James. So when Tommy Dorsey offered him a job, he jumped ship. In his two years with Dorsey, Frank Sinatra recorded eighty songs and hit the Top 10 charts with sixteen of those. Check out the video below if you want to hear four and a half hours of these wonderful Dorsey-Sinatra recordings!

I believe I’ve heard every recording Frank Sinatra ever made (and I have my mother’s dozens of worn LP’s to prove it), but I never knew until today one very interesting thing about the Dorsey recordings: when Sinatra began with Tommy Dorsey, he was kind of a lead singer, and kind of not. You see, Dorsey had hired a group called The Pied Pipers as his band’s singers, and he wanted Frank to replace one of the group’s singers who had left the band. When Frank joined Dorsey’s orchestra, The Pipers were a quartet, with one female singer whom many of our subscribers already know and love, the great Jo Stafford. Jo had begun her own singing career in an ensemble with her sisters, but her star began to rise as well when Frank Sinatra joined the Dorsey band. In 1944 she left the band to launch her own successful solo career. In the clip of our Sometimes a Song below, you will hear Jo Stafford singing first, with Sinatra and The Pied Pipers backing her up, and then Jo and Frank singing a duet version, with the other Pipers accompanying them. What a charming combination of talents.

So without further ado, I give you one great song, two great singers, a great backup ensemble, all together in a recording by a fabulous orchestra! As always, I hope you will love this recording as much as I do.

Bonus Below! Four plus hours with Tommy and Frank!

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