Mel Tormé's Already Fine Sounding Original Gets Added Luster on The Verve/UMe Acoustic Sounds Reissue

The Velvet Fog"'s Verve Debut Remains a Classic

The subtitle on the album cover and on the spine of this album is "Orchestra Conducted by Marty Paich," so consider Mel Tormé's 1959 debut for Verve Records a collaboration. Recorded in one day (June 26) in 1958, the arrangements have the efficiency of a well-rehearsed orchestra with a hip-for-its-time feel.

 Paich was a top arranger/producer, busy on the West Coast jazz scene: He didn't have a singular style, like Nelson Riddle, so he and Tormé were well-suited for each other. Earlier in the 1950s, Tormé had made several records with Paich's Dek-tette–a rare 10-piece band, for different labels. 

 In the 1980s, it seems sensible to say now, Tormé regularly played the bon vivant Manhattan hangout Michael's Pub, where Monday nights were reserved for Woody Allen's clarinet gigs, the only night of the week press were discouraged. For me it was like a night off from the rock beat to catch Tormé, because you never knew what he was going to play: Often, selections from "The Great American Songbook" (including a live album recorded there for Telarc in 1992). Though he'd been in the anti-rock camp in the 1950s, Tormé was flexible enough to do a decent job with the 1966 "Right Now," a chance to "get with what the kids were listening to, nothing too heavy: Some Paul Simon, Bacharach and David, Manfred Mann. If I find a copy vinyl hunting, I'm buying, even if it leans a little campy.

One extraordinary night at Michael's, in1988, Mel performed from the Donald Fagen songbook: Tormé and Paich had done a "Reunion" with the Dek-Tette on the West Coast, which included both "The Goodbye Look" and "Walk Between the Raindrops," the two closing tracks on Fagen's first solo album, The Nightfly. I could swear that he also did Steely Dan's "Green Earrings," which the Woody Herman band had covered on a side of its big band oddity, Chick, Donald, Walter & Woodrow" in 1978,with a Chick Corea suite on one side and Steely Dan on the other.

 That Tormé (1925-1999) was part of the Sinatra/Bennett generation, but lacked their multigenerational hit power, worked in his favor. He could do whatever he wanted. And you could take that to the bank, since he had written one chestnut when he was 20 years old, "The Christmas Song" (aka "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"), so he could have spent the rest of his life surfing, assuming he held on to the publishing and liked the water.

Tormé was a true multi-hyphenate: singer, composer, TV and movie actor, songwriter, and drummer from the time he was at 17 with Chico Marx's band; he continued drumming and singing with his group, Mel Tormé and his Mel-tones. He had great pitch as a singer, and an innate sense of swing as a former drummer. The cover of "Tormé" (it has two sleeves with extra photos inside) is a close-up of Mel's face, seductive eyes, slightly hooded eyelids, a bit of a come-hither look that seems like a cross between Tab Hunter playing it straight and Paul Reubens, if you look real close at the airbrushing, hamming it up.

 The songs here are standards, some quite familiar, others not so much. As an informal collector of the many versions of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's "Blues in the Night," this is excellent and idiosyncratic, with peppery horn bursts and percussion emphasis on bongo drums. "I'm Gonna Laugh You Out of My Life" is performed almost as a tragedy, like a Portuguese Fado, which is at its best when achieving profound sadness.

"That Old Feeling," a 1938 tune by Lew Brown and Sammy Fain, stands up well to versions by Sinatra, Chet Baker, and Ella Fitzgerald. (You can also find an excellent retro version on YouTube by contemporary but history-grounded singer Nicolle Hulett, who specializes in pop tunes of the 1920s and 1930s.) 

 "'Round Midnight," with lyrics to Monk's standard? A little slow, tempo-wise, not my particular bag. "Body and Soul" is better, with a trumpet solo that rises to the occasion. Surprise favorite: "House is Haunted by the Echo of Your Last Goodbye," which sounds like a jumping off point for a new season of "American Horror Story." Not "The House," by the way, just "House is Haunted..." It's a 1934 tune by Basil Adkin and showman/lyricist Billy Rose. It was an oldie when Tormé recorded it; all these years later, you listen to it and still want to call "Ghostbusters."

The original Verve recording probably sounded pretty good anyway with the label's trademark Living Sound Fidelity: Higher highs, lower lows, without the hangover. Chad Kassem, who as usual supervises the reissue for his Acoustic Sounds, keeps the clean audio of Verve's original, finding ways to improve what was already there in the grooves. That's what he does.