Tommy Tucker; Mellow Leader in Big Band Era

Tommy Tucker, whose long-ago recording of “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” turned his musicians from an ordinary $500-a-week band into a major, if temporary, presence during the Big Band Era, died Tuesday of heart failure in a Sarasota, Fla., hospital.

Tucker, 86, retired to Florida many years ago.

A short, quiet-spoken man in an age of flamboyant leaders, Tucker was probably the only band leader of any time to boast a Phi Beta Kappa key (from the University of North Dakota).

His band was known for its sweet sounds and capable singers and was playing the hotels and cafes of the day. But Tucker was still looking for a hit record in the summer of 1940 when he was performing at the Hotel Berkeley-Carterer in Asbury Park, N.J.

With his wife and female singer, Amy Arnell, they visited a club in nearby Philadelphia where a group called the Three Keys was singing “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.”

It was not a new song and had been recorded earlier but at a faster pace.

Tucker’s new, moderately paced version with Arnell on the vocal sold more than 500,000 records.

Other well-known Tucker songs were the band’s theme, “I Love You (Oh, How I Love You),” sung by a trio, and “The Man That Comes Around.”

Tucker, who played the piano, trumpet and trombone, was also familiar to radio fans for such shows as “Sing for Your Supper With Tommy Tucker,” “Thirty Minutes in Hollywood” and “Hit Parade.” And he made numerous television appearances on “The Kate Smith Show,” “Cavalcade of Bands,” “Arthur Murray House Party” and “Strike It Rich.”

In the mid-1940s Tucker tried to add luster to his quiet arrangements, but he had been so long associated with a mellow sound that audiences did not respond.

He eventually gave up the band, returned to academia as a professor of fine arts at Monmouth College in New Jersey and then retired to Florida.