Bobby Byrne (musician)

Biography

Bobby Byrne was born on May 13, 1918, on a farm near Columbus, Ohio. His parents, Clarence Byrne and his wife, were both musicians. His mother had been a concert pianist before she married, and his father was serving in France with the U.S. Army band when Bobby was born. When he was one year old, the family moved to Detroit so his father could teach music at Cass Technical High School, where he built a strong reputation. Bobby learned music at home from his parents from a very young age and later attended Cass Technical as a student. His father taught him with a blend of harsh criticism and generous praise. Besides trombone and harp, he studied piano, piccolo, flute, cello, and percussion. At one point, his father invited Tommy Dorsey to hear the school band, which Bobby led. Dorsey was impressed and asked Bobby to meet his brother Jimmy and hear the Dorsey Brothers band. He then invited Bobby to travel with the band to their next one-night stand, where Bobby sat in for a few minutes, playing in Tommy’s chair. Both Dorsey brothers were impressed by his playing.

After a quarrel on May 30, 1935, the Dorsey Brothers stopped speaking, and Tommy refused to play with the band. Their manager tried to find replacements for the important trombone part, but each one turned it down for personal or professional reasons. The next offer went to sixteen-year-old Bobby Byrne at 75 dollars a week. His mother drove him—along with a harp and three trombones—to the Glen Island Casino, where the orchestra was booked for several months. Playing from Tommy’s charts, Byrne succeeded. Because of contractual obligations, Tommy returned to play, and Byrne was moved offstage, where he watched and learned from Tommy’s performances. Tommy eventually broke his contract and left the band for good in September. When the Dorsey Brothers split, Byrne joined Jimmy’s group and took over leading the trombone section in Tommy’s place. By August, he had recorded his first solo with the band on their hit single “From the Top of Your Head to the Tip of Your Toes.” He married his first wife, Pat, in March 1939, just two months after meeting her in Dallas, Texas.

Style

Byrne based his style on Tommy Dorsey’s. While playing with Jimmy Dorsey, he handled both sweet and hot material with ease. Gunther Schuller thought his jazz solos were ahead of their time, and Bill Simon called his slow-number embellishments “breathtaking.” His extreme perfectionism was often blamed for the limited success of his 1940s band. He drove himself and his musicians hard, even after an appendicitis attack in 1940. A 1942 review admired his “clean, solid swing” but criticized his overly long song introductions. Despite his exacting standards, he was widely seen as a friendly and likable person.