The Volokh Conspiracy

Although Torme did in fact participate in many schmaltzy or even campy performances (cough), he is actually one of the most gifted jazz singers.

... and pianists, as was your last subject, Nat King Cole. Having done some playing myself, I take it as an especially bitter insult added to injury that artists with their vocal gifts, just also -- oh by the way -- happened to play piano well enough to have been successful recording artists even if they had been mute. In fact Cole only started singing professionally many years into a successful instrumental career, and then only to make a few bucks. He just didn't think of himself as a singer!

I guess I went to hear Mel Torme twenty times. When he played my town I would go every night. I had rather hear and SEE him than any other singer; I mean that his presence added hugely to the performance.

But his recordings have left me completely cold.

Very good pianist. At strategic moments he would break into Bach, playing the phrases perfectly. In fact, so many years later, I'm not sure that he didn't improvise them.

All was well until the end: "shooby dooby"??? Ack!

And not only that, but Torme was a serious and advanced collector of Colt revolvers, particularly the Single Action Army model.

Obligatory link to Mark Evanier's story about Mel Torme.

No one should miss Rick Moranis's SCTV parody of Torme singing "The Star-Spangled Banner":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smOWov09Wbo

Also, the title of that fine Torme album is "Swings Shubert Alley," not "Swings Schubert Alley." Schubert, of course, is the composer; the Shuberts were the family of theatre owners-producers after whom Shubert Alley ("famous Broadway Alley between 44th St and 45th St between 8th Ave and Broadway") is named.

Larry Kart

NPR's Jazz Profiles had a great podcast about Mel within the last few months. He was a remarkable talent.

Thread convergence: A few posts back Randy Barnett mentioned Journeyman. Viewers who like Journeyman might well have liked Sliders. Sliders was written by Mel's son Tracy Tormé. Tracy was a regular participant on Usenet discussions of the show, which he was involved in at the time of his father's death.

I almost forgot Night of the Living Duck. I won't spoil it, but it's relevant. The impatient can skip to about 2 minutes in, and pay particular attention to the inscription on the bottle starting around 2:20.

I think Torme is much better than Bennett

That's like saying ice cream is better than lasagne.

Torme was also a gifted songwriter. In fact, he wrote The Christmas Song, which was featured here last week.

Orin, this is great

Here's Torme playing drums.

Wow, quite a story. With friends like that....

Mention of the notoriously hotheaded, repeatedly boasted of karate expert Rich reminded me of an Illinois Jacquet show I saw at Buddy’s New York club probably around 1982. Jacquet’s between-song segues, in the form of reminiscences directed at Thelonious Monk’s daughter in the front row, were peppered with anti-Semitic vignettes (“that [...] Jew, Benny Goodman, stole this next song from me....”). These made me wonder if Jacquet realized that Buddy was Jewish, and more interestingly, what might ensue if he wandered into the showroom. I never found out, and he didn’t.

Anyway, recalling this, I drew a blank on Monk’s daughter’s name (Barbara), so I went looking for it on Wikipedia, where I came across this nugget of jazzophilia that I think encapsulates so many of the colorful, bigger than life characters who inhabited Jazz’s Golden Age:

[Monk] was also noted for the fact that at times he would stop playing, stand up from the keyboard and dance while turning in a clockwise fashion, ring-shout style, while the other musicians in the combo played. Bassist Al McKibbon, who had known Monk for twenty years and played on his final tour in 1971, later said: "On that tour Monk said about two words. I mean literally maybe two words. He didn't say 'Good morning', 'Goodnight', 'What time?' Nothing. Why, I don't know. He sent word back after the tour was over that the reason he couldn't communicate or play was that Art Blakey and I were so ugly."

I can only give a personal answer to Philo's question, but it may dovetail with the responses of some of the public at large to Torme. First, his sheer vocal abilities and overall muscianship were remarkable -- intonation, range, evenness of tone production, harmonic ingenuity, rhythmic flexibility, you name it. On the other hand, some cavils. The quality (as in nature) of Torme's voice initially was, and to some extent always would remain, rather boyish. In the broader and more indefinable area of taste, Torme's boyish quality of voice arguably was coupled to a rather self-regarding emotional stance. One sometimes felt, for example, that when Torme was singing a ballad, he himself was the love object being addressed, as though he were singing in front of a mirror. If that sounds too harsh, compare Torme's way with a ballad to, say, Sinatra's or Bennett's. Different as those two are from each other in some respects, at their best both Sinatra and Bennett leave no doubt that they are singing to -- if you will, emoting to -- another person. (In that respect, Bennett's mid-1980s recording of "Lover" with cornetist Ruby Braff is so intimate that one almost feels he's whispering it into a woman's ear, which of course isexactly the situation that Lorenz Hart's lyric refers to.) And yet on the superb "Lulu's Back In Town" album, Torme's boyishness seems essentially and very convincingly gleeful -- it's as though he, the songs themselves, and arranger Marty Paich's hip, jazzy charts (and the work of the album's gifted jazz soloists) had all arrived at once at the same magical juncture in the culture. And this is true of other Torme recordings as well; individual tastes will vary as to what Torme's best work was and how much of it there was, but I think many will agree that the Torme of the "Lulu's" vintage was something special -- both for himself as an artist and, again, in terms of the fleeting cultural "moment" that that joyful recording represents. Speaking of hipness, Torme in the view of some had problems there too -- Rick Moranis's parody is built on that perception. One way to look at this side of Torme would be to say that while he was hip musically, he was not really cool (as in, relaxed) about this -- his demeanor at times proclaimed that he wanted us to like him too much. Also, a talented jazz musician who worked a good deal behind Torme once told me that while Mel never made mistakes rhythmically, his rhythmic choices were very much of a piece -- always the same kinds of choices. Certainly, Torme was a more overtly jazz-like singer than Sinatra was, rhythmically, but in vintage Sinatra one feels (or at least I feel) that the rhythmic elements are part of a seamless dramatic/musical whole, and that that musical drama seems to be taking place more or less "in the moment." Torme, by contrast, could sound rather studied, as though he wanted us to notice how artful he could be, how talented he was. A "Hey, look at me, Ma" kind of thing.

Terrific comment, Larry. (Oh, and for those who aren't familiar with Larry Kart, see here.)