The band featured a number of future famous instrumentalists, singers and arrangers in the 1930s and '40s, including trumpeters Zeke Zarchy,[30] Bunny Berigan,[31] Ziggy Elman,[32][33] Carl "Doc" Severinsen,[34] and Charlie Shavers,[35] pianists Milt Raskin, Jess Stacy,[36] clarinetists Buddy DeFranco,[37] Johnny Mince,[38] and Peanuts Hucko.[39] Others who played with Dorsey were drummers Buddy Rich,[40] Louie Bellson,[41] Dave Tough [38] saxophonist Tommy Reed, and singers Frank Sinatra, Jack Leonard,[42] Edythe Wright,[43] Jo Stafford with The Pied Pipers,[44]Dick Haymes [45] and Connie Haines.[46] In 1944, Dorsey hired The Sentimentalists who replaced The Pied Pipers.[47] Dorsey also performed with singer Connee Boswell [38] Dorsey hired ex-bandleader and drummer Gene Krupa after Krupa's arrest and scandal for marijuana possession in 1943.[48] In 1942 Artie Shaw broke up his band and Dorsey hired the Shaw string section. As George Simon in Metronome magazine notes at the time, "They're used in the foreground and background (note some of the lovely obbligatos) for vocal effects and for Tommy's trombone."[49]

As Dorsey became successful, he made business decisions in the music industry. He loaned Glenn Miller money to launch Miller's successful band of 1938,[50] but Dorsey saw the loan as an investment, entitling him to a percentage of Miller's income. When Miller balked at this, the angry Dorsey got even by sponsoring a new band led by Bob Chester, and hiring arrangers who deliberately copied Miller's style and sound. Dorsey branched out in the mid-1940s and owned two music publishing companies, Sun and Embassy.[51] After opening at the Los Angeles ballroom, The Hollywood Palladium, on the Palladium's first night, Dorsey's relations with the ballroom soured and he opened a competing ballroom, The Casino Gardens circa 1944.[51] Dorsey also owned for a short time a trade magazine called The Bandstand.[51]

Tommy Dorsey disbanded his own orchestra at the end of 1946. Dorsey might have broken up his own band permanently following World War II, as many big bands did due to the shift in music economics following the war, but Tommy Dorsey's album for RCA, "All Time Hits" placed in the top ten records in February 1947. In addition, "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?", a single recorded by Dorsey, became a top-ten hit in March 1947. Both of these successes made it possible for Dorsey to re-organize a big band in early 1947.[52] The Dorsey brothers were also reconciling. The biographical film of 1947, The Fabulous Dorseys describes sketchy details of how the brothers got their start from-the-bottom-up into the jazz era of one-nighters, the early days of radio in its infancy stages, and the onward march when both brothers ended up with Paul Whiteman before 1935 when The Dorsey Brothers' Orchestra split into two.[53] In the early 1950s, Tommy Dorsey moved from RCA Victor back to the Decca record label.[54]

Jimmy Dorsey broke up his own big band in 1953. Tommy invited him to join up as a feature attraction[55] and a short while later, Tommy renamed the band the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra featuring Jimmy Dorsey. In 1953, the Dorseys focused their attention on television.[56] On December 26, 1953, the brothers appeared with their orchestra on Jackie Gleason's CBS television show, which was preserved on kinescope and later released on home video by Gleason. The brothers took the unit on tour and onto their own television show, Stage Show, from 1955 to 1956. On numerous episodes, they introduced future noted rock musician Elvis Presley to national television audiences, prior to Presley's better known appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Dorsey's married life was varied and, at times, lurid.[58] His first wife was 16-year-old Mildred Kraft, with whom he eloped in 1922, when he was 17. They had two children, Patricia and Tom (nicknamed "Skipper"). They divorced in 1943 after Dorsey's affair with his former singer Edythe Wright.[59] He then wed movie actress Pat Dane in 1943, and they were divorced in 1947,[60] but not before he gained headlines for striking actor Jon Hall when Hall embraced Dorsey's wife. Finally, Dorsey married Jane Carl New [61] on March 27, 1948, in Atlanta, Georgia. She had been a dancer at the Copacabananightclub in New York City. Tommy and Jane Dorsey had two children, Catherine Susan and Steve.

On November 26, 1956, Tommy Dorsey died at age 51 in his Greenwich, Connecticut, home. He had eaten a heavy meal and began choking in his sleep. Dorsey began taking sleeping pills regularly at this time; therefore, he was so sedated that he was unable to awaken and died from choking.[62]Jimmy Dorsey led his brother's band until his own death from lung cancer the following year. At that point, trombonist Warren Covington assumed leadership of the band with Jane Dorsey's blessing[63] as she owned the rights to her late husband's band and name. Billed as the "Tommy Dorsey Orchestra Starring Warren Covington", they topped the charts in 1958 with "Tea For Two Cha-Cha".[64] After Covington led the band for a short period, Sam Donahue led it starting in 1961, continuing until the late 1960s.[65] Buddy Morrow conducted the Tommy Dorsey orchestra until his death on September 27, 2010. Jane Dorsey died of natural causes at the age of 79, in Miami, Florida in 2003. Tommy and Jane Dorsey are interred together in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York

Tommy Dorsey had a run of 286 Billboard chart hits.[67] The Dorsey band had seventeen number one hits with his orchestra in the 1930s and 1940s including: "On Treasure Island", "The Music Goes 'Round and Around", "You", "Marie" (written by Irving Berlin), "Satan Takes a Holiday", "The Big Apple", "Once in a While", "The Dipsy Doodle", "Our Love", "All the Things You Are", "Indian Summer", and "Dolores". He had two more number one hits in 1935 when he was a member of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra: "Lullaby of Broadway" (written byHarry Warren), number one for two weeks, and "Chasing Shadows", number one for three weeks. His biggest hit was "I'll Never Smile Again", featuring Frank Sinatra on vocals, which was number one for twelve weeks on the Billboard pop singles chart in 1940. "In the Blue of Evening"[68] was number 1 on the Billboard pop singles chart in 1943

Thomas Dorsey