Toasting Tormé

Another '50s-icon reissue raises intriguing questions

by Richard C. Walls

Now that Mel Tormé has finally been boxed, via Rhino's four-CD The Mel Tormé Collection 1944-1985, the serious music fan must confront the question that the singer's oeuvre poses: is this guy basically a bachelor-pad accouterment or is he, like, more on the accomplished-artiste tip? There are clues. For a perennial to be boxed so late in the day is a good sign that he stands outside the pantheon -- though there's no indication of how far.

The fact is, Tormé is hard to pin down. He has arty chops but show-biz instincts. He can honor a standard with a heartfelt rendition, then deconstruct one with a hipster's disdain for mere homage. Sometimes he does both, as on a '54 version of "All of You" where his overprecise enunciation suggests sarcasm disguised as fidelity. He often displays the non-probing glibness of someone for whom great ability has come early and easily. Yet he has the ability to make a mediocre song glow in the moment.

Much of the first disc is less glowing than . . . interesting. There's an anemic quality to a lot of the '40s stuff -- due partly to the era's less than fabulous technology and partly to Tormé's pre-birth-of-the-cool concept. Early on he inaugurated the Mel-Tones (which included bachelor-pad maestro-to-be Les Baxter), and though their languid understatement and close sax-section-type vocal harmonies must have seemed bracingly futuristic in their day, it now sounds like some intriguing bridge between Bing Crosby's '30s and the Hi Los' '50s -- in short, archival. It's also a disc of early promise, the bulk of it snug between the poles of sublimity and kitsch -- the former being represented by a version of "Gone with the Wind" that's simplicity itself, with a cautiously hopeful exotica counterpoint (the song "Adios") adding pathos to the mournful melody, the latter by a dreadful ersatz-Americana mini-suite called "County Fair," which Tormé wrote with frequent collaborator Robert Wells.

But one doesn't have to wait too long for early promise to peak, and by the second disc the vagaries of precociousness give way to a string of masterly cuts. Tormé was fortunate to reach his first maturation during the '50s, a decade whose first half featured a renaissance of the popular standards of the preceding 30 years. This was postwar sophisticated nostalgia expressing itself, but also a reflection of the point of stasis pop music had reached -- such points, whatever the musical form, generally being a golden age for those whose talents are mainly re-interpretive. The same zeitgeist that boosted Sinatra into his classical phase also offered Tormé his best opportunities to shine.

So this part of the story flows rather smoothly. Tormé was best when working with standards of the highest quality -- the Gershwin/Porter/Rodgers & Hart classics -- and there are many points on disc two and three where he just might be one of the half-dozen best pre-rock pop singers ever. He can be wit personified ("Mountain Greenery"), warmth beyond the cloying clutch of sentimentality ("Isn't It Romantic"), the hip re-invigorator of old follies ("Lulu's Back in Town," "It's Delovely"). He is not a jazz singer (Sarah Vaughan was a jazz singer), but he knows the genre, knows enough to quote Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" during "How High the Moon" and to scat with vigor if not inspiration. And if his original compositions tend to be banal ("The Christmas Song" excepted), as an explorer of the Great Repertoire, he's leagues beyond fodder for the Ultra-Lounge revival.

Unfortunately, come the '60s and the GR falls on hard times (again, the Sinatra comparison: if the Chairman's Capitol cuts are Elysian, the Reprise sides are a cow field, with many a soggy pie awaiting the unwary treader). The nadir is reached fairly early -- a version of "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" that's a godawful hoot, a sharkskin Nehru jacket with designer love beads. But if little comes near the best '50s sides, there's still a lot of solid singing by a stylized crooner working against the current. And when Tormé alchemizes Don Was's callous "Zaz Turned Blue" into a touching ballad, one can only hope that the terminally hip Was felt like a proper dink.

So the verdict is mixed, with performer's pizzazz and artistic achievement standing side by side, and lapses in taste being largely signs of whatever time it is. Tormé is definitely more substantial than a casual familiarity would lead you to believe. And definitely appropriate as a summer fling, though don't be surprised if you end up with a relationship on your hands.