A Sinatra! Deep Cut & A Tommy Dorsey Classic: “Marie” (Part 1)

Spoken As It Came From Me: The strange but swinging afterlife of Irving Berlin’s first movie song.

Irving Berlin & “The Awakening”

Irving Berlin clearly loved the name “Marie”: in 1907, his first ever published song was a bit of ethnic business titled “Marie From Sunny Italy.” Three years later in 1910, one of the first songs he ever wrote for a Broadway show was called “Sweet Marie - Make a Rag-A-Time Dance with Me.” Perhaps by 1928, he considered the name lucky for him; when he was asked to write his first song for a motion picture, it was called “Marie.”

Berlin might not have actually chosen the title himself: as it happened, the story was about a French peasant girl named Marie (Vilma Banky) who falls in love with an austere German Count and officer shortly before the start of the first world war. The movie was titled The Awakening and in reading the synopsis, it’s difficult to ascertain what significance that title has to the story. In any case, “Marie” was a better title for a Berlin song than “Awakening.”

This was the twilight of the silent era, and The Awakening was essentially a late silent released to theaters with a soundtrack of music and some sound effects, but no dialogue. The Awakening received mixed reviews and turned a small profit; today, it is regarded as a lost film, only one reel survives.

For his part, in using “Marie” as the title of his theme song and setting it in 3/4, Berlin was being consistent with other contemporaneous film themes that were also waltzes inspired by girls’ names, like “Jeanine I Dream of Lilac Time” from Lilac Time, “Charmaine” from What Price Glory, and “Dianne” from Seventh Heaven, most of which were also WW1 stories.

Was the song more of a hit than the movie? There is no reliable way to know for sure - there were no reasonably accurate Billboard charts until 1940 (certain books and compilers to the contrary), but it seems reasonable to assume “Marie” was at least fairly successful. The best known early version is by Rudy Vallée on the Diva label - one of the few recordings that includes the verse. Victor released two recordings in in 1929, one by tenor Franklyn Baur and another by “The Troubadours,” a nome d’band for Nat Shilkret and the Victor Orchestra, with a vocal by Lewis James, another tenor.

The Song

As I wrote a few years ago:

"Marie" amounts to a wondrous piece of work; like many of Berlin’s best songs, it is at once complex and yet incredibly simple. Berlin apparently conceived the entire lyric as if it were one single continuous run-on sentence: there's not a single period in the words until the very end. Further, there's no clear-cut sense of going into a bridge section - the closest thing to a release occurs in mid-sentence "...and tears will fall..." Just the two notes of the title say it all - the syllables "ma" and "rie" occur on the three (D) and five (F) notes of the tonic, and one comes away with the feeling that no other word could fit those two pitches and that no other notes could possibly match that name. (Thanks to Zak Mitchell for help with this.)

Doc Wheeler & Tommy Dorsey

(Note: The account that follows below is cobbled together from both of the Dorsey biographies, Tommy and Jimmy: The Dorsey Years by Herb Sanford, and Tommy Dorsey: Living in a Great Big Way by my friend the late Peter J. Levinson, along with my own take on the facts as I believe them to be. Even more useful are the excellent liner notes by another friend, the late Mort Goode, for the Tommy Dorsey Bluebird series, particularly Volume III, released in 1978 - the interviews with Jack Leonard and Carmen Mastren come from Mort.)

By the turn of the ‘30s, the song, like the film, had been mostly forgotten - along with other Berlin ballads, from the early talkies, such as “Coquette,” the titular waltz from Mary Pickford’s first talkie, and “To My Mammy” from the 1929 Jolson two-color epic Mammy (which itself sort of evolved into “How Deep is the Ocean”).

Then, somehow Doc Wheeler got hold of the song. Wheeler had a very long life (1910-2005) but left a very small footprint - the famous arrangement of “Marie” is clearly his greatest legacy, According to historian Donald Clarke, he was born Morin (or Moran) A. Wheeler in Muncie, Indiana, and he played trombone in African American territory bands in Indiana and Milwaukee and throughout the midwest, including Syd Valentine’s Patent Leather Kids (a great band name if ever there were one) in 1928 and Bernie Young’s Orchestra in 1930.

By the mid-1930s, Doc Wheeler was leading his own territory band, and they were playing “Marie.” Mr. Clarke mentions that Steve Washington - who primarily played banjo and guitar with the Washboard Rhythm Kings but also recorded a 1933 session as a very hip crooner, backed by Benny Goodman no less - is sometimes credited as the guy who came up with the basic concept for what became the “Marie” arrangement. It’s generally acknowledged that several Black bands were already working in that general format, although none of them were able to capture it on a recording prior to Tommy Dorsey and “Marie.” In 1938, Don Redman recorded very “Marie”-like versions of “Sweet Leilani” and several other songs, and Edgar Hayes applied the same treatment to “Laughing at Life” - but Dorsey had gotten there first.

In October 1936, Doc Wheeler and his Sunset Royal Serenaders were had come as far east as Philadelphia where they were playing Nixon’s Grand Theater - a huge opera house with a capacity of 3000-4000. This time, the stage show consisted primarily of African American talent: there was a Black choir (a spirituals group?) and the already-legendary dancer Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates. Perhaps it was because it was such a big house that the Nixon management decided to add a second band, and they chose a white band - Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra.

At that moment, Dorsey and crew were essentially a new band; it was only a year or so earlier that Dorsey had his infamous split with his brother Jimmy and his stormy departure from the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. After the break-up, Dorsey had essentially taken over what had been the Joe Haymes band, and though the new Tommy Dorsey Orchestra recorded prolifically for RCA Victor, they had yet to land any major hits. The first year or so of Tommy Dorsey’s band is actually less distinguished than either the Dorsey Brothers on Decca or Joe Haymes’ own great 1932-’33 sides for various Victor labels. Still, Tommy Dorsey himself was a rising name, famous as a radio sideman and as the ex-half of the Dorsey Brothers, and the Dorseys were the regular orchestra on the very popular radio show starring comedian Jack Pearl, aka “Baron Munchausen.”

As the band’s manager Bobby Burns told Herb Sanford, they were playing - and bombing - at a restaurant in Boston when the offer came through to play Nixon’s in Philly; they left Boston in mid-gig and the owner was apparently delighted to see them go. At Nixon’s, they were expected to close the show, but when they watched the Sunset Royal Orchestra - as well as Peg Leg Bates and the choir - they knew that they were in over their heads.

They also were expected to engage Wheeler’s group in a “battle of the bands”; this frankly terrified the Dorsey crew. “They were on stage,” vocalist Jack Leonard recalled for Mort Goode. “Axel (Stordahl), Tommy and I were standing in the wings watching and listening before we went on. Tommy said, ’Boy, we got our work cut for ourselves.’ Then they went into their arrangement of ‘Marie.’ Tommy said, ‘Boy, I like that!’ and Axel says, ‘Yeah!’ We all discussed it for a bit and what we’d do with it. We really stole their arrangement.”

There are three conflicting stories as to how Dorsey obtained the Wheeler arrangement of “Marie.” 1. Some say that Tommy traded Wheeler eight arrangements from his band book for that one. 2. That Dorsey paid Wheeler $50 for it - which was actually a generous pay out for a chart at that time. (Nelson Riddle only received $52 for “Mona Lisa” and that was a whole generation later, in 1950.) 3. That Dorsey just had his arranger Freddie Stulce take it down from hearing it and didn’t give Wheeler anything. All three are equally likely.

Dorsey himself told the “eight arrangements for one” swap story in the June 1938 issue of Metronome magazine; if he was lying, Doc Wheeler and his musicians never called him on it. However, guitarist and arranger Carmen Mastren insisted to Mort Goode that Dorsey just took it without compensating Wheeler in any way.

However Dorsey obtained it, the Wheeler arrangement contained two innovations right off the bat: for one thing, the idea of taking an old fashioned waltz and putting it into swing time wasn’t totally new, but was still a very fresh idea in the early swing era - it had not been done a lot before.

No less important was the ensemble vocal. The band sang in unison, but they weren’t singing the actual Irving Berlin melody or lyrics - they were singing around the song. In fact, without having heard the Wheeler version, we don’t actually know what they were singing, if those were the same specific response lyrics that we hear in the classic TD recording. My own best guess is that it sounded like Don Redman’s “Sweet Leilani”: the orchestra plays the melody (in this case a solo clarinet in subtone) and the band sings around it.

“There was no lead in their arrangement, of course, just the whole band singing together.” Jack Leonard was clear in his recollection that Dorsey himself came up with the idea to add the original music and lyrics; essentially to add a lead vocal, in front of the band’s ensemble counterpoint. “We refined it with Tommy saying, ‘Hey, Jack, you sing the lead, and the guys will do a patter background.” This makes a major difference: you can’t really enjoy the jivey “patter background” unless you know the original song, and it was no longer familiar to many people by 1936. Even today, “Marie” is only remembered for the Wheeler-Dorsey hit arrangement; it’s rarely even included in Irving Berlin songbook albums - Ella Fitzgerald never sang it, for example.

Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra were playing “Marie” as early as January 11, 1937, as documented on a Jack Pearl Show broadcast, and then roughly two weeks later, on January 29, 1937, they recorded it for Victor. The disc starts with Dorsey himself playing the recast 4/4 version of Irving Berlin’s waltz, which is a gorgeous statement unto itself. This is followed by the famous vocal, from Jack Leonard and the band, which then leads to a tenor saxophone solo from the great Bud Freeman. “Right after my vocal,” said Leonard, “came that magnificent solo by Bunny Berigan. It’s a classic all by itself. Bud Freeman had a hell of a solo in that thing. So did Tommy, though Tommy claimed he was never a jazz player. He was the first one to knock his own talents, or lack of them, in that area.” Dorsey also plays a very gritty muted trombone solo in between Bunny and Bud.

Daniel Weinstein notes: The 4 bar intro on TD's record is rather cutting edge, with the second and fourth chords quite modern and a bit dissonant. That didn't stop anybody from buying the record, and might have even added to the allure of it. The first two choruses of TD's version are in C Major, starting on the 4 chord (F Major) with the melody notes being the 3 and 5 of that 4 chord. The last two choruses on TD's record are in Eb Major. Davey Tough's drumming and Bunny Berigan's trumpet solos were major components of both sides of TD's record, and put TD on an equal footing with Goodman and Krupa, in my opinion.

The back-and-forth vocal between the band and the solo baritone is performed as follows, as Sanford notes:

Jack Leonard: “Marie”
Band (starting on the fourth beat of “rie”): “Oh, Marie, ‘tis true”
Jack Leonard (starting over “tis”): “the dawn is breaking…”
Band (starting on the fourth beat of “breaking”): “Just breakin’ for me”

That’s the basic rhythmic pattern - it continues as follows:

Jack Leonard: “Marie, you'll soon be waking”
Band: “Girl of my dreams*, I want you, I need you.”
Jack Leonard: “To find your heart is aching”
Band: “have a little faith in me*, tra-la-la-la”
Jack Leonard: ‘And tears will fall as you recall’
Band: “Here I Go Crying Again* - take me darlin’, take me”
Jack Leonard: “The moon in all its splendor”
Band: “on a night like this*, we go pettin' in the park*”
Jack Leonard: “Your kiss, so very tender”
Band: “Oh the way I like it darlin, I’m yours*”
Jack Leonard: “The words, ‘Will you surrender?’”
Band: “Oh body and soul* of mine in heaven”
Jack Leonard: “…To me, Marie?"
Band: “Livin' in a great big way* - mama!”

Some of these band-chant lyrics (*) were references to song titles, the most recent of which is “Livin’ in a Great Big Way,” by Dorothy Fields & Jimmy McHugh, from the 1935 movie musical, Hooray For Love. (Thank you Dave Weiner!)

Between Winter 1937 and Fall 1939, when Leonard left the Dorsey band, he probably sang “Marie” several hundred times. Between January 1940 and September 1942, the time of Sinatra’s tenure with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, he continued where Leonard had left off, and sang “Marie” probably every night for that whole time. Sinatra’s vocal on the song is a lot looser and jazzier than his predecessor, but to be fair, some of the later live performances by Leonard are also much more relaxed than the original performance. (immediately below, Leonard live with Dorsey, July 10, 1939. Yank Lawson is probably the trumpet soloist, plus Babe Russin on tenor.)

By 1941-’42, the band began to play slightly slower and longer versions of “Marie,” to match Sinatra’s intense but laid-back style. We don’t have a date for this performance, which is admittedly lesser sound quality, but as you can see, it’s significantly longer than earlier versions:

More to come - including all the follow-ups in what became known as “The Marie Cycle” in part two! (Not to mention Berlin’s explicit instruction to Dorsey: “You tell that Irish bastard not to f**k with my song!”)

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The Buzz! (Jazz Journalists Association)
Neal Tesser interviews Will Friedwald
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