TORME, MEL

TORME, MEL (Melvin Howard; 1925–1999) U.S. singer, drummer, pianist, composer, arranger, actor, author. Although he was known as "the Velvet Fog," a nickname he loathed, and most people thought of him in terms of his creamy vocal tones, Mel Torme was a protean figure whose range of talents encompassed not only jazz and pop music but writing and acting as well. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants (the family name, Torma, was changed by an immigration official at Ellis Island), Torme was a child performer of note, singing with the Coon-Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra at four and appearing on numerous national radio programs including Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy when he was nine. Trained as a pianist and drummer, he also began his songwriting career very early, with the Harry James band performing his "Lament of Love" when Torme was 15. By 1943, the teenager was touring with the Chico Marx band as a singer, drummer, and arranger. That was the year in which he also made his film debut in Higher and Higher alongside another newcomer, Frank Sinatra. Sinatra's success with the Pied Pipers vocal group inspired Torme to form his own backup aggregation, the Mel-Tones, and it was his recordings with them in the mid-1940s that inspired New York disk jockey Fred Robbins to gift Torme with his famous sobriquet. (Torme eventually came to accept the nickname, sporting license plates that read LE FOG and EL PHOG.) His career continued in the ascendant with a commercial peak in the 1947 MGM musical Good News, which triggered a very brief enthusiasm for Torme among the bobbysoxers. But he was outgrowing this music and by the early 1950s hooked up with nascent Bethlehem Records where he became a jazz artist in earnest. The timing was probably unfortunate, as Torme's musical maturing coincided with the rise of rock 'n' roll and the ebbing of jazz as a commercial vehicle. Torme, however, was a man of many interests and talents, and survived by broadening his horizons to include writing for television, several books of non-fiction including an autobiography (It Wasn't All Velvet, 1988) and a biography of his close friend and fellow Jewish child prodigy, Buddy Rich (Traps: The Drum Wonder, 1991). His most famous composition, "The Christmas Song," was not only a huge hit for Nat Cole but is among the most frequently recorded holiday songs in the modern repertoire. Torme continued performing and recording until a serious stroke felled him in 1996; the lingering effects of that stroke would kill him three years later. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: "Mel Torme," Biography Resource Center, Thompson-Gale Publishing, at: www.gale.com/BiographyRC\>\> ; "Mel Torme," MusicWeb Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, at: www.musicweb.uk.net\>\> ; J. Rosen, "Mel Torme," in Salon Magazine (June 12, 1999), at: www.salon.com\>\> . (George Robinson (2nd ed.)