Melvin Howard Torme was born in
Chicago, Illinois, to immigrant
Russian Jewish parents, whose surname had been Torma". However, the name was changed at
Ellis Island to "
Torme". A
Child prodigy, he first sang professionally at age 4 with the
Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra, singing "
You're Driving Me Crazy" at
Chicago's
Blackhawk restaurant. Between 1933 and
1941, he acted in the network radio serials
The Romance of Helen Trent and
Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. He wrote his first song at 13, and three years later, his first published song, "
Lament To Love," became a hit recording for
Harry James. He played drums in Chicago's
Shakespeare Elementary School drum and bugle corps in his early teens. While a teenager, he sang, arranged, and played drums in a band led by
Chico Marx of the
Marx Brothers His formal education ended in
1944 with his graduation from Chicago's
Hyde Park Career Academy Park High School.
In
1963 - 64, Torme wrote songs and musical arrangements for "
The Judy Garland Show", where he made three guest appearances. However, he and
Garland had a serious falling out, and he was fired from the series, which was canceled by
CBS not long afterward. A few years later, after Garland's death, his time with her show became the subject of his first book, "
The Other Side of the
Rainbow with
Judy Garland on the
Dawn Patrol" (
1970). Although the book was praised, some felt it painted an unflattering picture of
Judy, and that Torme had perhaps over-inflated his own contributions to the program; it led to an unsuccessful lawsuit by Garland's family.
Torme befriended
Buddy Rich, the day Rich left the
Marine Corps in
1942. Rich became the subject of Torme's book
Traps The Drum Wonder:
The Life of Buddy Rich (
1987). Torme also owned and played a drum set that drummer
Gene Krupa used for many years.
George Spink, treasurer of the
Jazz Institute of Chicago from 1978 to
1981, recalled that Torme played this drum set at the
1979 Chicago Jazz Festival with
Benny Goodman on the classic "
Sing, Sing, Sing"
The resurgence of vocal jazz in the
1970s resulted in another artistically fertile period for Torme, whose live performances during the
1960s and 1970s fueled a growing reputation as a jazz singer. He found himself performing as often as
200 times a year around the globe. In
1976, he won an
Edison Award (the
Dutch equivalent of the
Grammy for best male singer, and a "
Down Beat" award for best male jazz singer For several years around this time, his September appearances at
Michael's Pub on the
Upper East Side would unofficially open
New York's fall cabaret season. Torme viewed his
1977 Carnegie Hall concert with
George Shearing and
Gerry Mulligan as a turning
point.
Shearing later said
"It is impossible to imagine a more compatible musical partner. I humbly put forth that Mel and I had the best musical marriage in many a year. We literally breathed together during our countless performances. As Mel put it, we were two bodies of one musical mind.
On August 8,
1996, a stroke abruptly ended his 65-year singing career. In
February 1999, Torme was awarded
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Another stroke in
1999 ended his life.
Torme is buried at theWestwood
Village Memorial Park cemetery in
Los Angeles. In his eulogistic essay,
John Andrews wrote about Torme:
"Torme's style shared much with that of his idol,
Ella Fitzgerald . Both were firmly rooted in the foundation of the swing era, but both seemed able to incorporate bebop innovations to keep their performances sounding fresh and contemporary. Like
Frank Sinatra , they sang with perfect diction and brought out the emotional content of the lyrics through subtle alterations of phrasing and harmony.
Ballads were characterized by paraphrasing of the original melody which always seemed tasteful, appropriate and respectful to the vision of the songwriter. Unlike
Sinatra, both
Fitzgerald and Torme were likely to cut loose during a swinging up-tempo number with several scat choruses, using their voices without words to improvise a solo like a brass or reed instrument".
- published: 14 May 2013
- views: 1798