Mel Torme

   
Artist: Mel Torme

   Genre(s): 
Jazz
   

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Discography:


   
 The Best Of The Concord Years Vol.2

   Year:    
Tracks: 14


   
 The Best Of The Concord Years Vol.1

   Year:    
Tracks: 14

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Mel Tormé was a jazz-oriented pop isaac Merrit Singer wHO worked at his craft steadily from the forties to the nineties, principally in nightclubs and concert halls. In his 1988 autobiography, It Wasn't All Velvet (its title a mention to his moniker, "The Velvet Fog," bestowed upon him by a platter jockey in the 1940s to delineate his burly, varied voice), he mentioned a wish that he had been born ten days earlier, that is, in 1915 sort of than 1925. If he had had his wish, Tormé would hold been an demand present-day of Frank Sinatra, and like Sinatra he power possess had a fully fledged career as a big band singer. In fact, given the comprehensiveness of his talents, he might hold been a bandleader since, in accession to vocalizing, he was as well a drummer good sufficiency to have gotten offers to go on the road as early as his teens, a ballad maker responsible for one of the recurrent Christmas standards, and an arranger world Health Organization wrote the charts for lots of the music he performed. Amazingly, this is noneffervescent only a partial name of his accomplishments, which too included acting in more than than a dozen feature films and on radio and television system; hosting radio and TV shows; and writing television dramas, legion articles for periodicals including Down Beat and The New York Times, and vI published books of fiction, life, and music criticism.


Still, Tormé remains best known as a singer, and as a vocalizer his career was one of considerable esthetic accomplishment and frequent commercial defeat, peculiarly on records. That 1925 birthing date, despite his precocity, meant that, like such coevals as Tony Bennett, he grew up with a love for swing music and jazz in general, only to detect that, as he became an grownup, that euphony was pushed to the margins commercially and that as a performer he was faced with a choice between vocalizing what he liked to a modified audience or flexible to appeal to a wider one, a pick that became even starker with the onset of the "rock'n'roll era" in the mid-'50s. And like Bennett and only a few others, he succeeded largely through persistence, bend to the extent he had to, just weathering many lean long time until the 1980s, when he establish a sympathetic record company and renewed popular interest in the genial of music he wanted to perform. Unlike Bennett, he persevered despite very limited commercial impact as a track record vender. But he made up for that by beingness more appealing to the jazz audience, which responded to his obvious affectionateness for the panache and his talent for jazz singing (he was bested entirely by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald in his ability to scat). Describing a depressed percentage point in his life history in his autobiography, he wrote that he came to feel he didn't let a career, only a series of jobs. If so, his tattle and the wide variety of former talents he exhibited assured that he was never out of work.


Tormé was the descendant of Russian Jews world Health Organization settled in Chicago. His mother, the former Sarah "Betty" Sopkin, was natural in the U.S., only his male parent was natural William Torma in Russia. When the Torma family immigrated to America, an official on Ellis Island spelled the diagnose Torme, and it was marked with a long e at the closing until Tormé (or his mother, he wasn't sure) added an intense accent and began pronouncing it with a long a. When he was natural, his male parent owned a dry goods storage, only both parents were musical: his don panax quinquefolius, and his mother played the piano. Tormé himself revealed his melodious endowment at an amazingly pres Young eld. According to his mother, he sang his first complete song at ten months. By the eld of quatern, he would sing along with music on the radiocommunication, showing sufficiency interest in the Coon-Sanders Orchestra on their distant circularise from the Blackhawk Hotel in Chicago that his parents took him to interpret the isthmus one Monday nox. That was the beginning of his calling. Bandleaders Joe Sanders and Carlton Coon took poster of him and had him sing with the dance band as a knickknack for about six months, followed by engagements with other bands. (Tormé remembered singing "You're Driving Me Crazy! [What Did I Do?]" with the Coon-Sanders Orchestra. If so, his debut must have occurred when he was basketball team, because the song was non introduced until the fall of 1930.)


As a kid, Tormé performed in local vaudeville troupes. He likewise took up the drums. In 1934, he north Korean won a competition at the Chicago World's Fair for potential drop shaver radio performers, and that light-emitting diode to a series of roles on radiocommunication dramas broadcast out of Chicago that lasted until his voice changed in his early teens. Meanwhile, he continued to sing and began penning his have songs. While attendance Hyde Park High School, he played in bands with other students. In 1940, at the eld of 15, he auditioned a song he had written, "Dirge to Love," for bandleader Harry James, likewise acting drums at the tryout. James initially invited him to join his dance band, merely by and by decided he was also cy Young. James did, however, record "Requiem to Love" for Columbia Records, and it spent a week at number tenner in the charts in August 1941. The success of the song light-emitting diode to a contact with bandleader Ben Pollack wHO, in 1942, was putting in concert a band to be fronted by comedian Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers at a time when many musicians were organism drafted into the military to competitiveness in World War II. Now, Tormé's age worked to his advantage. At 16, he was old sufficiency to drop out of senior high school school, but excessively thomas Young for military help, and in August 1942 he united the band, in the lead its outspoken group and later subbing as its drummer. (He went on to garner his diploma from Los Angeles High School in 1944, so fagged a abbreviated spell in the ground forces before beingness discharged due to flat feet.) Two airchecks by this circle, recorded December 20, 1942, constitute the earliest Tormé recordings. As issued ab initio on the four-LP box arrange The Marx Brothers (Gilbert Murray Hill Records) and later reissued on the CD Big Bands of Hollywood: Desi Arnaz and Chico Marx (LaserLight Records), Tormé is heard telling the Irving Berlin vocal "Ibrahim" from the then-current pic Vacation Inn and playing a drum solo on "Pagliacci (Vesti la Giubba)."


Piece coming into court with Chico Marx in New York, Tormé was auditioned by a picture show scout for RKO Pictures, and when the circle stone-broke up in July 1943, he was hurtle in the moving picture melodic Higher and Higher, which began shot in August. Based on a Rodgers & Hart musical, only subbing a grudge by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson, the cinema is remembered as Frank Sinatra's number one featured appearance on blind. The 17-year-old Tormé's purpose was often smaller, only he was heard vocalizing on quatern songs when it open in December. Meanwhile, on Pollack's advice, he had begun working with a vocal group out of Los Angeles City College called the Schoolkids. He became the featured isaac Merrit Singer and adapter for the group, which was renamed Mel Tormé & His Mel-Tones. He also got his only starring role in a feature film with the B-picture Pardon My Rhythm, released by Universal in May 1944, which featured his compositions "Munchies" (co-written by Irving Bibo) and "Drummer Boy." (The same month he had a minuscule part in the film Spectre Catchers.)


Mel Tormé & His Mel-Tones made their transcription debut with the individual "Albumen Christmas"/"Where or When" cut for lilliputian Jewel Records in 1944. They also began coming into court on the radio, notably on the comedy series Niles and Prindle, which ran from January to June 1945. And they appeared in the Columbia cinema Let's Go Steady in March 1945, vocalizing various of Tormé's compositions. (Tormé continued to do work without them as well, appearance in the B-picture Junior Miss in June.) Contracted to major label Decca Records, the grouping panax quinquefolius background vocals on iI singles, Eugenie Baird's "I Fall in Love Too Easily," which charted in October, and Bing Crosby's "Day by Day," in the charts in March 1946. They then affected to the newly formed Musicraft label, and their featured vocals on the Irving Berlin song "I Got the Sun in the Morning" from the raw melodic Annie Get Your Gun, as recorded by Artie Shaw & His Orchestra, gave them a chart entering in July. In the meanwhile, Tormé continued to make modest or regular cameo appearances in films, turning up in Warner Bros.' Janie Gets Married in June and the Cole Porter bio-pic Night and Day in July.


Tormé & the Mel-Tones released more records on Musicraft, including "It's Dreamtime," which became their only chart entry in May 1947, simply by November 1946, Tormé had acceded to his handler Carlos Gastel's plan to launch a solo calling. (He continued to do occasional work with the Mel-Tones for many years, however.) Gastel too managed Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole. It was Cole's chemical group, the King Cole Trio, that made the first recording of "The Christmas Song (Festive Christmas to You)," which Tormé had written with his songwriting partner Robert Wells. Usually identified by its possible action cable, "Chestnuts roasting on an heart-to-heart flame," "The Christmas Song" peaked at figure three for the trio in late December 1946, which was only the beginning of its success. Half a 100 later, Tormé estimated that on that point had been 1,700 recordings of it.


The solo career of the 21-year-old Mel Tormé was launched formally with his first cabaret troth at the Bocage in Los Angeles in early 1947, the start of near 50 age of regular work for him. Gastel arranged a film abbreviate with MGM, and in February Tormé began shooting a supporting function in Sound News, based on the 1930 Henderson-DeSylva-Brown musical. He left in front filming was completed to accept an volunteer to progress to his New York club debut at the Copacabana in May, then stayed on the East Coast when he was offered a 15-minute radio set series, The Mel Tormé Show, on NBC. Back in Los Angeles by and by in 1947, he composed the title song for the RKO film Legerdemain Town, released in August, and cut a series of sessions as receiving set transcriptions for the MacGregor ship's company later released on two LPs in the late 1970s by Glendale Records (Mel Tormé and Leisurely to Remember). He too continued to record for Musicraft through November.


Beneficial News opened in December 1947, and Tormé was side by side disposed a part in the Rodgers & Hart bio-pic Row and Music, telling "Blue Moon." In the summer of 1948, NBC reanimated The Mel Tormé Show as a half-hour state of affairs comedy with music originating out of Los Angeles. (Recordings from this demonstrate, featuring the Mel-Tones and made 'tween July and October, were issued by and by on LP on Sounds Great Records in the eighties as Mel Tormé Live, Vol. 1 and Mel Tormé Live, Vol. 2.) Tormé too got some other movie songwriting assignment; he and Wells wrote "The County Fair," for the Walt Disney Pictures animated film So Dear to My Heart, which, like Words and Music, was released in December 1948. (As Tormé began to tour of duty more in the late '40s, his partnership with Wells was amicably dissolved.) Gastel staged for Tormé to be signed to Capitol Records, the home of his clients Cole and Lee, and Tormé's second school term for the label in January 1949 included "Careless Hands," which became a number one score in April. He followed it with a double-sided shoot, "Again," which reached number iII, and "Blue Moon," which got to number 20. "The Four Winds and the Seven Seas," cut in May, seedy at number x in July; "The Old Master Painter," a pair with Peggy Lee, got to number iX in January 1950; and the Rodgers & Hart strain "Bewitched" (aka "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered") shoot number octet in July 1950. But patch Tormé's put to work as a recording artist was at its commercial apex of the sun's way, his celluloid calling slipped away. Cast in MGM's The Duchess of Idaho with Esther Williams, he found when it was released in June 1950 that his role had been trimmed to a handful of lines of dialogue, his one song leftfield on the cutting room flooring. (It afterwards sour up on the Rhino record album At the Movies.)


In addition to his successful singles, Tormé conceived an ambitious musical work that was his suffice to Gordon Jenkins' tone of voice poem Manhattan Tower Suite. California Suite, with the Mel-Tones and an orchestra conducted by Jud Conlon (plus Peggy Lee performing under a nom de guerre), was recorded in November 1949 and issued as Tormé's (and Capitol's) start LP in 1950. In the summertime of 1951, Tormé was hired along with Peggy Lee as a host of the 15-minute, three-times-a-week CBS tv series TV's Top Tunes, a summertime substitute for The Perry Como Show. That devolve, CBS launched The Mel Tormé Show, a 30 minutes weekday afternoon spill the beans evince that ran through the summertime of 1952. He returned to prime time TV in the summertime of 1953 as co-host of another music series, Summer U.S.A., with Teresa Brewer.


Tormé had scored his terminal chart entry for ten days with "Anywhere I Wander" in November 1952. It came from his last school term for Capitol, afterward which he was without a mark affiliation for a year before sign language to the Coral Records foot soldier of Decca Records, for which he began to record in October 1953. Several singles roger Huntington Sessions followed over the side by side year, and on December 15, 1954, Coral recorded a performance at the Crescendo Club in Los Angeles that resulted in the 1955 LP Gene Norman Presents Mel Tormé "Live" at the Crescendo, the start of many Tormé live albums. The release came close to the end of Tormé's association with Coral; the pronounce by and by collected together some of his singles and other ramble tracks for the 1956 solicitation Musical Sounds Are the Best Songs. The vocalist, meantime, moved to the small malarky label Bethlehem Records, starting with a ballad LP, It's a Blue World, recorded in August 1955. This was followed by the first of many recordings made in association with pianist/arranger Marty Paich, Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dek-Tette, recorded in January 1956, and by a studio-cast recording of Porgy and Bess in which Tormé american ginseng the part of Porgy to Frances Faye's Bess, recorded in May.


Tormé had begun to blow up his touring territory oversea, appearing in Australia in the fall of 1955, and in the spring of 1956, the Rodgers & Hart call "Tidy sum Greenery," excerpted from the Coral unrecorded album, was released as a single in the U.K., reaching the Top Ten in July, in time for the singer's number one visit to Europe. Back in Los Angeles in November, he skip the LP Mel Tormé Sings Fred Astaire with Marty Paich and, on February 22, 1957, returned to the Crescendo Club for some other hot album, bewilderingly titled Gene Norman Presents Mel Tormé at the Crescendo. The following month, Bethlehem added to the discombobulation in the criminal record racks by having Tormé recut California Suite. In its defense, the label was in trouble financially; after nonpareil more Tormé LP, Songs for Any Taste (actually consisting of leftover tracks from the Crescendo particular date), Bethlehem went out of business. Back in the U.K. in the summer of 1957, Tormé skip an album on Philips Records for his English fans, Tormé Meets the British. In the U.S. in November, he contracted to the midget Tops label for Prelude to a Kiss, an album later on reissued over and over under various titles.


On February 14, 1957, Tormé had interpreted a nonsinging playing persona in the television system dramatic play The Comedian, broadcast live on the prestigious Wendy house 90 series. The appearance reawakened his film life history, and he made a series of appearances as a straight actor in usually low-budget films: The Fearmakers (1958), The Big Operator (1959), Girls Town (1959), Walk Like a Dragon (1960) (for which he wrote the deed of conveyance vocal), and The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1961). His recording vocation picked up in 1958, when he was sign to impresario Norman Granz's jazz-oriented Verve Records, the like label on which such peers as Ella Fitzgerald recorded. The resultant was octet albums over the side by side iV years: Tormé; Olé Tormé: Mel Tormé Goes South of the Border With Billy May; Back in Town (with the Mel-Tones); Mel Tormé Swings Shubert Alley; Swingin' on the Moon; Broadway, Right Now! (with Margaret Whiting); I Dig the Duke! I Dig the Count!; and My Kind of Music. The albums were well received, especially by the jazz community, without being prominent peter Sellers. But by the early '60s, Verve was the underling of a big platter company, no yearner an independent jazz judge, and Tormé recognized an offer from what he mentation would be the more than kindly Ertegun brothers, Ahmet and Nesuhi, and their Atlantic Records label.


Unluckily, Atlantic wanted Tormé to score more than pop-oriented euphony. His initial effort for them, the springy record album Mel Tormé at the Red Hill, cut in March 1962, was what he had in mind, simply Atlantic got what it wanted with the bluesy single "Comin' Home Baby," cut in September 1962, which gave Tormé a Top 40 hit on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and earned him his number one two Grammy nominations (Best Solo Performance, Male, and Best Rhythm & Blues Recording), simply which he did non precaution for. Atlantic rush out a Comin' Home Baby! LP, simply it did non chart.


In the springiness of 1963, Tormé recognized an offer to serve as musical consultant for the coming television system series The Judy Garland Show. He wrote arrangements and limited material for the musical sort programme, which broadcast 26 hourlong episodes beginning on Sunday night, September 29, 1963, and end on March 29, 1964, when it was canceled. He by and by recounted his experiences on the demo in his number 1 book, The Other Side of the Rainbow, published in 1970. He took time out from the job in November 1963 to record the rubric song for the plastic film Dominicus in New York, which played under the credits when the pictorial matter was released the following month. Also in December he recorded an consequent Atlantic LP, Mel Tormé Sings Sunday in New York & Other Songs About New York, grading the terminal of his association with the label.


Finished with The Judy Garland Show in the winter of 1964, Tormé returned to his independent business, springy playing. He sign-language to Columbia Records, for which he made a few singles during the year. And he took time out to play himself in the film The Patsy, released during the summer. He cut his first-class honours degree Columbia LP, That's All, in roger Huntington Sessions conducted in December 1964 and March 1965. Unfortunately, he enjoyed his stay at Columbia level less than he had his time on Atlantic, especially as the label began pressuring him to record book contemporary pop/rock songs. His 1966 roger Huntington Sessions for the LP Right Now! included recent hits like "Homeward Bound," "Red River Rubber Ball," and "Orphic Agent Man," non his sort of thing at all. "Lover's Roulette" gave him a Top Ten strike on the Easy Listening chart in the summertime of 1967, simply it came from his penultimate session for Columbia; by the conclusion of the year he was off the label.


Tormé had appeared in another film, A Man Called Adam, in the summer of 1966, over again playing himself, and cut the song "All That Jazz" (non to be disordered with the song of the like title from the 1975 musical Chicago) for the soundtrack LP released on Reprise Records. He succeeding began creating television system roles for himself, committal to writing an episode of the series Run for Your Life and guest-starring in it, then adapting Dollarhide, a Western novel he had written under a pseudonym in the '50s, into an episode of The Virginian and coming into court on the show. He had, however, mostly granted up on his recordings, at least as a locus for work he liked, agreeing to record contracts as a necessary evil to help advance his lively performances. Moving to Liberty Records in early 1968, he cut the LP A Day in the Life of Bonnie and Clyde, having composed the claim song, the rest of the selections dating from the twenties and '30s. In 1969, he was surprised to find himself back on Capitol Records, merely dutifully cut what he called two "toppingly forgettable" albums for the label, A Time for Us and Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head. After this he disappeared from the platter shelves for several age, while continuing to perform regularly.


In May 1971, Tormé served as the legion for an ABC documentary TV series, It Was a Very Good Year, each installment chronicling a twelvemonth between 1919 and 1964. The series ran through the last of August. He returned to idiot box in an performing office with his leading performance in the TV motion picture Snowman in 1974. He would proceed to make occasional appearances in acting and singing roles on TV for the rest of his calling. In September 1974, patch appearing at the Maisonette Room in the St. Regis Hotel in New York with Al Porcino & His Orchestra, Tormé recorded a live record album that was picked up by Atlantic Records and released as Live at the Maisonette in 1975. He claimed never to give birth seen any money from the LP, but it brought him his third Grammy nomination, not as a isaac Bashevis Singer, only for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) for his "Gershwin Medley." In 1976, he finally signed a young record narrow with Gryphon Records, recording the LP Tormé! A New Album in London in June 1977. It was followed by the January 1978 sessions for Together Again: For the First Time, on which he was co-billed with his longtime acquaintance, drummer and bandleader Buddy Rich, actually released prior to Tormé! A New Album. The Rich LP earned Tormé his fourth Grammy nomination, in the Best Jazz Vocal Performance class in 1978 (the family had been created alone iI years earlier), piece Tormé! A New Album brought him his fifth in the same class in 1979. Tormé took a breath from singing to finishing writing and put out his second novel (this clock time under his veridical name), Wynner, in 1979. There was a sixth Grammy nomination, once more for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, for his following LP, Mel Tormé and Friends Recorded Live at Marty's New York City, which was released on Finesse Records in 1981 and reached number 44 in the Billboard wind graph. Encore at Marty's followed in 1982 on Flair Records.


By the early '80s, with traditional pop music beginning to come back into style, Tormé had weather-beaten a long drouth and was comme il faut comprehended as a malarky vocalist, playacting regularly at jazz festivals, in prestigious concert halls, and with symphonic music orchestras, along with annual engagements at superlative clubs in major cities about the man. In April 1982, he appeared with wind pianist George Shearing at the Peacock Court of the Hotel Mark Hopkins in San Francisco, their demonstrate recorded for the record album An Evening With George Shearing & Mel Tormé, released by the jazz-oriented West Coast label Concord Records. Reaching number 34 in the jazz chart, it marked the beginning of felicitous and fertile associations with both Shearing and Concord. Tormé was nominated for his seventh Grammy, as usual for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, for 1982, and though he protested that Shearing merited equal recognition, he south Korean won his first Grammy at the ceremony held in February 1983. The following calendar month, he re-teamed with Shearing for the studio album Top Drawer, the title track of which won him a second base Grammy Award in February 1984. Another live album with Shearing, An Evening at Charlie's, trim down in Washington, D.C., in October 1983 and released in 1984, produced his ninth Grammy nomination, and another studio set with Shearing, An Elegant Evening, recorded in May 1985, brought a one-tenth nomination for 1986.


In May 1986, Tormé interrupted his string of duet albums with Shearing but well-kept his association with Concord, recording Mel Tormé With Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass; it hit number 11 in the jazz chart. The Shearing coupling was resumed in August 1987 with a session for the album A Vintage Year, which earned Tormé his eleventh Grammy nomination for 1988 and reached number 13 in the jazz chart. He renewed an old association in August 1988, cutting the LP Reunion with Marty Paich and a reconstituted Dek-tette. The reunion continued in Japan in December, producing the 1989 album In Concert Tokyo. Also in 1988, Tormé published his autobiography, It Wasn't All Velvet. A Tormé performance at the Concord Jazz Festival in August 1990 resulted in his following album, Night at the Concord Pavilion, and the following calendar month the isaac Bashevis Singer and Shearing got back together in the studio for a collection of forties songs, Mel and George "Do" World War II, that light-emitting diode to Tormé's twelfth Grammy nomination. Two months after that, he was captured live in Japan for the album Fujitsu-Concord Jazz Festival '90. He continued his busy recording schedule in March 1991, cutting a duette album with Cleo Laine, Zippo Without You; it reached identification number eighter from Decatur in the jazz chart. The year likewise brought the publication of his long-promised life of his champion Buddy Rich, Traps, The Drum Wonder.


In 1992, Tormé interrupted his run with Concord to cut a vacation compendium, Christmas Day Songs, for Telarc Records. Amazingly, it brought him his first-ever chart placing in the listings for start albums that December. Also for Telarc, he cut the live album The Great American Songbook in October 1992. But he returned to Concord only a calendar month later for Blab out Sing Sing, recorded with an all-star quintet back at the Fujitsu-Concord Jazz Festival in Tokyo. That made for enough recordings for a piece, and he stuck to hot performances and finishing his sixth book, My Singing Teachers (published in 1994), until May 1994, when he cut the studio album A Tribute to Bing Crosby; it hit number 18 in the jazz chart. A year after, he reunited with Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass for Velvety & Brass, which reached identification number eighter from Decatur in the jazz chart.


With Tormé's assistance, Rhino Records mounted the first comprehensive box set of his recordings, The Mel Tormé Collection 1944-1985, in 1996, and in July he recorded the live album An Evening With Mel Tormé for the A&E web; it reached number 25 in the jazz chart. The following calendar month, on August 8, he suffered a stroke. While he had recovered sufficiently by November to be released from the hospital, he faced continuing medical challenges for the following three years and never returned to acting. A&E Biography, a compiling, was released by Capitol in June 1998 and hit number five in the idle words chart. In February 1999, Tormé was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He died at 73 on June 5, 1999.


Piece Tormé disavowed some of his recordings in his autobiography, particularly the ones made with pop intentions in the 1960s, his more than jazz-styled sides for Musicraft in the '40s, Bethlehem in the '50s, and Concord in the '80s and '90s seem to let met his high standards, as well as those of critics and fans. Indeed, fifty-fifty the '60s recordings let base their adherents as they receive been reissued and heard more widely. In truth, Tormé brought his considerable skills to whatever material he tackled, and his enceinte soundbox of recordings fully justifies the assessment of him as a major jazz vocalizer of the post-World War II geological era.





Kate Rusby