Mel Torme

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Because why not.

"I'll always beeeeee...
A stranger in my own hometown..."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:02 (twenty years ago)

my exposure to MT has been only through night court and seinfeld, but those episodes are GREAT. if it's a question, ill say classic.

― don't start a RYE-OTT! (plsmith), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:08 (twenty years ago)

http://img.timeinc.net/ew/seinfeld/photos/CT86-sm.jpg

― Deluxe (Damian), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:10 (twenty years ago)

It's sort of a family tradition every Christmas to listen to the Mel Torme Christmas album. Great stuff. "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)" has always been one of my favorite holiday tunes.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:10 (twenty years ago)

Torme is the shit. Hugely underrated. Great ballad singer, of course. But he swung fiercely. Best scat singer ever besides Ella. Ethel Waters: "Mel Torme is the only white man who sings with the soul of a black man." Count Basie: "The way Mel sings, he should have been black."

He also wrote songs, including "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)."

― Jody, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:21 (twenty years ago)

I love Mel's Christmas songs!

― TRG (TRG), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:23 (twenty years ago)

P.S. He also was a great drummer in the Buddy Rich mold.

― Jody, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:25 (twenty years ago)

"Comin' Home Baby" is one of my favorite songs of all time.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:28 (twenty years ago)

Somebody told me it inspired John Lennon to write "I Want You"; Tormé later disavowed the song or something

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:29 (twenty years ago)

(This was all inspired by my dragging out my copy of Mel Torme's Finest Hour, a recentish comp on Verve.)

"She's too clooooooose for comfort, too cloooose..."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:30 (twenty years ago)

JMC i totally love that song in all incarnations

― don't start a RYE-OTT! (plsmith), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:35 (twenty years ago)

i like the Evolution Control Committee version i.e. "jack frost roasting on an open fire..."

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:39 (twenty years ago)

"and every mother's child is gonna slay"

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:40 (twenty years ago)

I'm not very familiar with him, I've only relatively recently realized how great jazz vocals are. Anyhoo, I checked out his 2-CD "Best of the Concord Years" compilation, which is full of great, great stuff. I have a certain fondness for the silly "New York New York" medley on it (basically doing loads of standards with the NY,NY piano riff)
Great singing, and a lovely, charming personality behind it all.

Anyone have any good recommendations for records by him? I tend to prefer the ballads and smaller bands over the usual big bands the biggest jazz singers usually front.

Best scat singer ever besides Ella
Have you heard Betty Carter? She's outstanding, to say the least. I highly recommend "The Audience with Betty Carter".

― Øystein (Øystein), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:40 (twenty years ago)

more like Mel Torment

― titty sanskrit (sanskrit), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:43 (twenty years ago)

Check out Mel Torme at the Red Hill (Atlantic) -- great swinging early-60s live album recorded at club with small jazz combo backing.

― Jody, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:47 (twenty years ago)

"Zaz turned blue, what was I supposed to do?"

― drewo (drewo), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:56 (twenty years ago)

I'm still laughing at that photo - that's one of the funniest Seinfeld episodes ever and Mel is great in it. Kramer's finest 22 minutes.

"When you're smiling..the whole world smiles with you..."

He (Mel Torme) was one of the greatest - no question.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 00:45 (twenty years ago)

Supposedly he asked the Was Brothers, "So tell me about this cat Zaz."

I have a bunch of his stuff. I love "Lulu's Back in Town" (Bethlehem) and "Swingin' On the Moon" (Verve). The latter's title track is completely wiggy, and both those records have covers that are beautiful in totally different ways.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 02:12 (twenty years ago)

Just reading this thread title shot me back in time to last August driving home from Montreal in what is arguably the worst rainstorm I've ever experienced in my life (the candidate for the other worst storm happens to also have happened on a long drive back home on the highway from some town) I think this one was worse because some highways got flooded, highways! And I'm not talking about the ditches, I mean the section closed in from barier to barrier being shoulder deep in water. So pretty much all there was was to do was listen to the radio, which could not support the regular scheduled broadcasting due to the storm. And one of the CBC radio stations did this whole panel show on the best (pop) songs of the 50's. And that was the first time I'd ever really heard Mel Torme. I don't know why but he just always really stood out to me after hearing some brief allusion to him on The Simpsons. He just happened to have been nominated for the best singer category, and just nearly won at that. Personally I agreed on the point against Elvis laregly owing his success to the appropriation of songs by black musicians, but hey, what can you do?

― Tokyo Ghost Stories (Tokyo Ghost Stories), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 02:13 (twenty years ago)

What am I talking about Simpsons. . . It was Sienfeld, and I'm sure it was from the episode that the screenshot above is from, you know, the one with Jimmy who talks in the third person.

― Tokyo Ghost Stories (Tokyo Ghost Stories), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 02:22 (twenty years ago)

I'm kinda partial to his version of "Cast My Fate to the Wind," with its twist-and-turn arrangements. He handles it very well indeed.

― Guymauve (Guymauve), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 09:27 (twenty years ago)

"Jimmy loves the Velvet Fog!"

― Deluxe (Damian), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 11:55 (twenty years ago)

I saw Mel once at Bumbershoot in Seattle, on the huge mainstage in sunny mid-afternoon. He sang "Since I Fell For You' (one of my favorite songs of all time) and it was sublime to the nth degree.

― Daniel Peterson (polkaholic), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 21:02 (twenty years ago)

two years pass...

"Stars and steel guitars and luscious lips..."

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.jazzhouse.org/jpg/nart/seidel/MEL_TORME_AND_BUDDY_RICH.jpg

― scott seward, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

i love mel. love california suite. love the mel-tones stuff. most of the 50's stuff. lots of people think his 70's and 80's records are actually his best perfomance-wise, but i never really listened to those.

the lean years:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4115Z3TT57L._AA240_.jpg

― scott seward, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

haha. mel was a pretty bad-ass drummer himself.

― Jordan, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 16:41 (eighteen years ago)

Another opportunity for me to plug the two volumes of Drummin Men:the Heartbeat of Jazz, by Burt Korall, with a foreword by Mel Torme who, as we all know, wrote his own bio of Buddy Rich called Traps, The Drum Wonder.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 16:49 (eighteen years ago)

is that buddy rich bio good? i should read that.

― Jordan, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

i always wanted to read this:

http://www.jgdb.com/book12.jpg

― scott seward, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

I never read Traps either, but the Burt Korall books are great, although he's a little too Buddy Rich-o-centic.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 16:58 (eighteen years ago)

Note that the name of the 2008 Jazz D-bags thread is a quote from one of those Korall books. It was something said by Jo Jones after Buddy played a one-armed show to a packed house, the audience being unaware of the injury until the very end of the performance.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 17:03 (eighteen years ago)

"What's New at the Zoo?" is one of the goofiest things ever recorded. (A compliment.)

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 17:10 (eighteen years ago)

From "Don't Let That Moon Get Away"

"It's one of those nights for adventure
We ought to be recklessly gay..."

(Okay, so that's just a typical LOL at word meaning shift.)

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 17:13 (eighteen years ago)

mel torme advocates unprotected sex

― Jordan, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

"Comin' Home Baby" is a lost white soul classic! Sounds like Ray Charles without the horn section. Too bad Torme, this old swinging jazz cat, thought he was Selling Out To The Man doing this commercial R&B record, but he actually holds his own here!

(I should mention that the "Comin' Home Baby" I'm talking about is the hit version on Atlantic. Never heard the version from that RIGHT NOW! album pictured above.)

― Rev. Hoodoo, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 18:12 (eighteen years ago)

two months pass...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy3AokXLwPc

Mel Torme, Judy Garland Show, 1963

― Dom Passantino, Saturday, 12 April 2008 13:04 (eighteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.