“Little White Lies”
Composed by Walter Donaldson; arranged by Freddie Stulce.
Recorded by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra for Victor on December 6, 1937 in New York.
Tommy Dorsey, first and solo trombone, directing: George “Pee Wee” Erwin, first and solo trumpet; Agostino “Andy” Ferretti and Aniello “Lee” Castaldo, trumpets; Les Jenkins and Frankie D’Annolfo, trombones; Freddie Stulce, first alto saxophone; Johnny Mince, alto saxophone and B-flat clarinet; Arthur “Skeets” Herfurt and Lawrence “Bud” Freeman, tenor saxophones; Howard Smith, piano; Carmine Mastandrea (Carmen Mastren), guitar; Artie Shapiro, bass; Dave Tough, drums.
The story:
Radio was an important entertainment medium during the swing era. Radio was vitally important in promoting the music and musicians of the swing era. Most bands of the swing era, even part-time local ones, were able to get onto local radio via sustaining (non-paying) broadcasts from local venues like ballrooms, night clubs and road houses. As bands became better musically, they usually worked their way up the radio pecking order, broadcasting on regional, and if they were really good, national networks. But again, these broadcasts were on a sustaining basis, and though they provided bands with publicity and promotion, they provided them with no money.(*) The golden ring for a swing era band was a sponsored network radio show. That provided them with a lot of promotion, and usually, a good bit of money, without the hassles and expense of traveling. For any swing era band to become really successful, it had to be deftly managed in a way that utilized the magic “three Rs,” Radio, Recordings and the Road.
The last part of 1935 and all of 1936 were a time of arduous work, traveling, and slow development for Tommy Dorsey’s new band. He worked as hard as was possible to improve his band musically within the budgetary restrictions he had each week to ensure that he was always earning more money with his band than it was costing him to keep it operating. With the assistance of his personal manager, Arthur Michaud, and his booking agency, Music Corporation of America, he did that, but often just barely.(1) Incremental increases in his band’s income came as a result of non-stop touring (the Road); making as many records as was possible for his record label, Victor (Records); and last but not least, broadcasting on a sustaining basis as often as possible from the various venues where he and his band were playing (Radio).
The musicians in Tommy’s band then were a mix of young unknowns, seasoned with a few veterans. After six months of struggle, TD made a big personnel move in the spring of 1936: he acquired the well-known and colorful jazz tenor saxophonist Lawrence “Bud” Freeman, whose playing would greatly enhance the Dorsey band’s presentations. Along with Freeman came the drummer Dave Tough.(2)
Tough’s early career began in Chicago, where he was a member of the Austin High group of young, white musicians who had an intense interest in the new musical idiom called jazz. They absorbed a lot of jazz influences by listening to the many great black musicians that were playing on Chicago’s south side in the mid-1920s, including Louis Armstrong. They also drank more than was healthy for them. Tough went to Europe in the late 1920s with a group of Chicago musicians. This experience was life-changing for him. A man of intellectual bent, Tough developed continental attitudes about a lot of issues. He came to see his homeland as a place of deeply disturbing contradictions, especially in racial matters. Nevertheless, opportunities for jazz musicians were greater in America in the late 1920s than they were in Europe. So he returned to America in 1929.
After his return to the U.S., Tough spent about a year in New York, working very little and drinking a lot. By this time, his alcoholism was greatly interfering with his professional activities as a drummer. He returned to Chicago in the late spring of 1930. Based on the limited evidence that has survived, the period Tough spent in Chicago from 1930 through most of 1935 was a dark and unproductive one. Alcohol ruled his life, though he may also have begun to have symptoms of epilepsy at this time. (3)
It appears that Tough moved to Manhattan toward the end of 1935, and was seemingly sober enough then to begin to reestablish himself as a jazz drummer. Among his earliest activities at this time was his appearance early in 1936 as a sitter-in at The Famous Door, a jazz club on 52nd Street, with the band that was being led there by vocalist Red McKenzie, that included one of Tough’s old friends from Chicago, guitarist Eddie Condon, and a new friend, trumpeter Bunny Berigan. Among the visitors to that club was Bunny’s good friend, Tommy Dorsey, who was then leading a band that was struggling to establish itself musically and commercially. In March of 1936, Dorsey made a conditional offer to Tough: stop drinking, and then join his band. Tough accepted, and his participation in the swing era began.
Bud Freeman in late 1936.
As important as Dave Tough was to the swing of the early Dorsey band, and he contributed a lot, he was basically an unknown musician in the early 1936 world of swing. Bud Freeman was much better known, having by that time worked his way through several very good bands (most recently Ray Noble’s American band organized by Glenn Miller), and having achieved a solid reputation among jazz musicians. Tommy Dorsey had good reason to expect that Freeman would impart a substantial jazz and swing lift to his band. Tough, though obviously talented, brought with him a lot of baggage, most notably his drinking problem. Somehow, Tommy managed to keep Tough sober from the time he joined TD’s band until he left (for the first time) at the end of 1937. Much great music was made by Tommy, Bud and Dave in that seventeen-month period.
The music:
This song was written by Walter Donaldson in 1930. It got a spate of recordings in that year, including by Fred Waring, Lee Morse, Sam Lanin (with Scrappy Lambert singing), Annette Hanshaw, Jimmie Noone and Seeger Ellis in the United States; and by Jack Hylton, Billy Cotton, Harry Shalson and Noble Sissle in London. Tommy Dorsey, who was a ubiquitous presence in the radio and recording studios of Manhattan in the early 1930s, was undoubtedly aware of this song. I suspect that Freddie Stulce, Tommy’s jack-of-all-trades in his saxophone section, who was also a fine arranger, was also aware of it. Why it was resurrected by TD and Stulce at the end of 1937 is not known for sure. But based on the construction of the arrangement, it is clear that Tommy used it as a rhythmically swinging vehicle for a string of jazz solos by whomever the jazz players in his band were then, and later. (Above left: one of many different copies of the sheet music for “Little White Lies.” Pictured on this one was Ethel Merman.)
After a brief, bright introduction, TD jauntily sets out the main melody using a solotone mute, and swinging for sixteen bars. Drummer Dave Tough, whose playing throughout this performance is great, backs Tommy using his closed high-hat cymbals and crisp snare drum rim shots. The entire ensemble handles the bridge melody, with Pee Wee Erwin’s tart lead trumpet at the apex of the sonic pyramid. The saxophone quartet then plays the main melody to finish the first chorus.
A short, brassy interlude vaults clarinetist Johnny Mince into a swinging sixteen-bar solo that was state-of-the art jazz in late 1937. Mince is fairly levitated by syncopated brass bursts and Davey Tough’s back-beats. Mince once told me that the most inspiring drummer he ever worked with was Dave Tough. This performance offers evidence as to why that was so. Although Tough did not use a lot of technique, his intensity here on a scale of 1 to 10 was 11.
Pee Wee Erwin follows on open trumpet improvising first on the eight-bar bridge and then the eight bar main melody chords. His big, bright sound, swing, jazz ideas and range show that he was an outstanding trumpeter and fine jazz player. Arranger Stulce leaves the background behind Erwin sparse in the first eight bars of this solo, and drummer Tough, ever-alert, fills in the spaces by showering Pee Wee with cymbals, centered around his famous China cymbal, augmented by shots on his snare drum. The second eight bars have Tough working his high-hats and the saxophone section gliding behind Pee Wee. (Above right: Freddy Stulce – late 1930s.) (4)
As wonderful as all of this was, the place of pride in this arrangement, a full chorus, was reserved for tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman, who jumps in with both feet playing through a short break. He romps and swings mightily through this solo, demonstrating why he was considered a peer with the leading jazz saxophonists of that time, including Chu Berry, Ben Webster, and despite the fact that he was then in Europe, Coleman Hawkins. (Lester Young, another titan, had just made his first recordings a year before this recording was made, and was still largely unknown.) (5)
Bud is assisted nobly by percussionist par excellence Tough. Listen to how Dave centers his accompaniment of Freeman around the use of his small top cymbal, which later became larger and called a “ride” cymbal.(6) He adds other colors via his China cymbal and rim-shots on his snare drum, plus boots on his bass drum. (Above left: tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman, being supported by his favorite drummer at the Imperial Theater swing concert, May 1936.)
After this bracing solo, the entire ensemble plays with gusto. Stulce’s use of varying rhythms in this sequence adds excitement to the music. TD returns for a bit more trombone, this time with a straight mute, and then the band provides the joyous finale.
This is a great performance of an excellent arrangement that proves that by late 1937, Tommy Dorsey led one of the best bands of the early swing era.
The recording presented with this post was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.
Notes and links:
(*) I must clarify this. Although bands were not paid for performing on sustaining radio broadcasts, they were paid for playing at whatever venue the broadcast emanated from.
(1) It appears that Tommy Dorsey, like most other bandleaders, also had to borrow money at various times in the period 1935-1936 to keep his band going.
(2) Actually, Dave Tough joined Tommy Dorsey’s band a few days before Bud Freeman did. However, both were in the TD band when they made an April 3, 1936 Victor recording date.
(3) Detailed information about Dave Tough’s early career can be found here: https://swingandbeyond.com/2019/03/23/flat-foot-floogie-1938-benny-goodman-with-harry-james-and-dave-tough/
(4) At the time this recording was made, Arthur “Skeets” Herfurt was beginning to split the lead alto saxophone parts in the Dorsey band with Freddie Stulce. Herfurt soon developed into one of the best first alto saxophonists of the swing era, and had a very successful career later in the Hollywood studios playing first alto. Nevertheless, when a Dorsey band arrangement called for two altos and two tenors, as this one does, Herfurt played the tenor saxophone.
(5) Here is a link to one of Lester Young’s first recordings: https://swingandbeyond.com/2017/02/17/lady-be-good-1936-lester-young-and-count-basie/
(6) Other drummers in swing bands started to use the “ride” cymbal, tentatively, in mid-1938. When bebop arrived in the early 1940s, drummers often created a flowing sheen of rhythm using that cymbal as a main rhythmic driver. The other, off-kilter rhythms of bop contrasted with this, precisely what the boppers strove for. They did not want to be adjudged as guilty of playing dance music.
Here are links to other great recordings by Tommy Dorsey with Dave Tough:
https://swingandbeyond.com/2019/03/04/milenberg-joys-1939-tommy-dorsey/
Nice article, Mike! After reading it, especially the part about the venues that aired the events on the radio, I thought I’d do some research to see if I could find any information about my dad being on the radio. Well, believe it or not, I did. In two Billboard articles, I discovered another two venues that my dad, with the Donahue band, played at…Roseland-State Ballroom and Blue Gardens! The performances at the latter venue were aired on the radio. The Glenn Miller Story film shows Jimmy Stewart, as Glenn Miller, playing at the State Ballroom. Sy Shribman bought the Roseland Ballroom next door and took down the wall that separated the two. He renamed it the Roseland-State Ballroom. He’s also in the movie. The movie gave me an insight to sort of feel the circumstances my dad experienced. Thanks for the inspiring vibe that helped me discover more about Harry!
The Roseland-State Ballroom in Boston was also important in the development of Artie Shaw’s band in the spring of 1938.
That’s interesting, Mike! A lot of history and memories associated with that venue. It’s unfortunate that it was demolished like so many other ballrooms. The Roseland in NYC was probably the most recent one demolished, to make way for a monster apartment building. The Graystone Ballroom in Detroit was beautiful from the pics I’ve seen. A McDonald’s was built over the top of it. My dad also performed there.
Nice post that I have just read again. Mike, can you clarify why you believe Erwin played first trumpet during this time? I have always heard that Andy Ferretti was one of the top lead trumpeters of the time, so I figured it was Andy. Perhaps somewhere in Pee Wee’s book?
Thanks for your comment John. I just listened again. twice. Pee Wee is definitely playing the first trumpet part on this recording. His sound was quite individual and identifiable. TD used him and several other of his jazz trumpeters over the years to play lead on swingers. It added a bit of excitement. Andy Ferretti was an excellent lead trumpet player, but not a jazzman. Although he played most of the lead whenever he was in Tommy’s band, he didn’t do it here. My opinion is based on what I hear in this recording.