A rare evening, 45 years ago, at a place that no longer exists

by Jack Neely

When he drove to the airport at the request of the thin man, Jack Comer didn't know who they'd meet. Behind wire-rimmed glasses which were beginning to seem old-fashioned in 1953, his out-of-town guest had been deliberately vague about the errand. The 47-year-old visitor was the sort of guy who always looked like he knew a very funny joke and was keeping it to himself. He had told Comer only that he needed to go to the airport to pick up "a friend."

He'd been in Knoxville for a couple of days. He was here yesterday, when Dogwood Winter brought a low of 30 degrees and snow flurries. Last night he and his band played a show at UT's Alumni Gym. Today it warmed up enough for a few rounds of golf at Deane Hill, where he was scheduled to play that evening. His picture was on page six of today's News-Sentinel, standing beside a couple of UT students with his trombone. The man's name was Tommy Dorsey.

Barely a decade ago, the Sentimental Gentleman had been the most popular musician in America, with signature tunes like "Marie," "Song of India," "I'll Never Smile Again," and "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You." He was the bandleader who introduced one of his employees, a singer named Frank Sinatra, to the world. Big-Band music had waned since the war—one explanation was that it was too noisy for shell-shocked GI's. Several bands had collapsed in the last five or six years. But Tommy Dorsey could still draw a crowd.

His older brother, saxophonist Jimmy Dorsey, had enjoyed his own career as a bandleader, but the two brothers hadn't played together since 1935 when Tommy stormed out of a practice session. Their rivalry was said to burn as brightly as hatred; the two had even come to blows over the years. Jimmy's band didn't survive the '40s as well as Tommy's had—the younger brother's band was widely regarded as the better one. News had gotten around that Jimmy, broke and disspirited, had given it up. But that Tuesday in Knoxville, Tommy gave an interview with surprising news that would hit newspapers around the country on Wednesday.

Comer knew both Dorseys. He knew everybody. As owner of Deane Hill, he'd hosted Bob Hope, Doris Day, Les Brown, Woody Herman, Gene Krupa, Sammy Kaye, Vaughn Monroe—most of the big names in big-band jazz. Jimmy Dorsey, who hated big crowds, was known to be especially fond of Deane Hill.

But that day in April when he and Tommy Dorsey went to McGhee Tyson Airport, Comer didn't expect that Tommy's "friend" would turn out to be Jimmy Dorsey. Comer drove the famous rivals back to Deane Hill and unloaded two (2) Dorseys at the front door. For the first time since 1935, the fighting brothers of the Big-Band Era were alone together in one place. And that place was Deane Hill, with its expensive wood paneling and imported-marble floors. Comer might well have checked his clubowner's insurance. The Dorseys went to the library, where the two stayed behind closed doors for hours. No one knows what they said.

Meanwhile, guests were arriving in semi-formal attire for the sold-out spring dinner dance, unaware there was a second Dorsey under the slate roof.

When the dance started at 9:00 p.m., Tommy startled the 400 guests in the ballroom by introducing the saxman. The two Dorseys played together for four hours, without incident. Recognizing the historic occasion, Comer taped the entire show. It ended at 1:00 a.m.

That week the News-Sentinel ran a full review about a visit from the Boston Symphony—but they wouldn't stoop to making a big deal of describing another dance band. Big-Band shows at the country clubs were usually consigned to the News-Sentinel's "Women's News & Feature Section"; Tommy's Deane Hill show was announced beforehand only as part of a society column called "At The Country Clubs." The few articles that actually described big-name shows tended to include a great deal of information about what the guests wore and little or nothing about the hired band's performance.

Neither the Journal nor the News-Sentinel mentioned anything about the impromptu reunion which, according to one modern jazz history, "surprised the music world." Either they didn't hear about it, didn't care much, or had been persuaded to keep mum. The Dorseys' official reunion was, after all, to take place more than three weeks later, in their home state.

However, an item appeared in the New York Times the next day. It didn't say the two had already played together, in Knoxville—just that the two were planning to reunite, next month, in Huntington, Pennsylvania. The United Press story was datelined Knoxville, Tenn.

Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey played together for the rest of their lives, but that wasn't a long time. They appeared on the Jackie Gleason Show in 1954, even got their own show. They appeared together in Knoxville at least once again, a more-publicized show in 1955 at Cherokee Country Club, which always got better coverage in the local papers. The News-Sentinel showed a picture of them together, laughing at a satirical magazine printed for the dance.

But it couldn't last. Both brothers drank heavily. Jimmy Dorsey developed cancer. Hardly more than four years after their Knoxville reunion, the Dorseys were both dead.

As for Deane Hill, it survived another three or four decades gracefully before falling on hard times. Today, it's a massive construction project called, for unexplained reasons, "The Grove at Deane Hill."

If you want to see the elegant spot where Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey reunited in 1953, it's now up in the air, somewhere above that construction trailer.