Jazz Singer Torme Is Back on Top at 62

At 62, an age when many singers begin bracing for the twilight of their careers, Mel Torme is being rediscovered.

A recent issue of New York magazine advised, “The ‘in’ thing to do for Yuppies right now is to attend a Mel Torme concert.”

On the jazz singer’s frequent road trips, sellouts are now the rule rather than the exception, even at such prestigious venues as the Hollywood Bowl and New York’s Carnegie Hall.

In the last few years, Torme has also picked up a pair of Grammy Awards for Best Male Jazz Vocalist. He’s landed an unprecedented five-night booking, with pianist George Shearing, at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

And he has received plenty of television exposure through in-depth profiles on “20/20” and “Sunday Morning,” and regular plugs by Judge Stone on the popular sitcom, “Night Court.”

“I get on my knees every morning and face Mecca, thanking God that the last five or so years have been the most remunerative, the most productive of my entire career,” Torme said by phone from Valley Forge, Pa., one of the last stops in the Eastern leg of his national tour.

The West is next, and Torme will be appearing at Sea World’s Nautilus Amphitheater tonight with his three-member backup band.

“My career is enjoying a real renaissance, and I think it’s mainly because people have become proud of the fact that jazz is the only native American folk art, our singular musical contribution to the world,” Torme said. “Also, the competition for singers isn’t nearly as flooded, as jam-packed as it is in, say, the rock field, where there are literally thousands of contenders. There’s a much more select group of people in the jazz field, and, from the standpoint of scat-singing, it’s really narrowing down.

“Most young people coming up in the music business want to go the easiest way to gold, and the easiest way to gold is to jump into the pop-rock bag. I’m constantly getting asked the question, who’s going to follow me? ‘Who’s going to follow Ella Fitzgerald?’ ‘Who’s going to follow Joe Williams?’ And the answer is, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ ”

As a result, as time goes by, Torme hasn’t been getting older, he’s been getting better--better gigs, better money, better exposure, even better reviews.

Times jazz critic Leonard Feather recently labeled Torme “the consummate jazz-pop vocal master of our time,” and the New York Times’ John S. Wilson noted that Torme’s vocal prowess has actually improved with age.

“As you get older, your pipes normally go down, but my range has increased and the strength of my voice is tenfold what it was in the 1950s,” Torme said. “With me, it’s no giant secret; I just take care of myself.

“I’ve never smoked one cigarette, I don’t drink hard liquor, and, when I know I’m going to sing, I force myself to get at least seven or eight hours sleep the night before. And, in the middle of the day, I take time out to see how long I can hold my breath, because that’s always been my specialty.

“I can hold a note from now until Halloween, and that’s important if you want to sing phrases instead of chopping them up the way pop and rock singers do.”

Besides taking care of himself, Torme said, he regularly exercises his vocal cords--albeit not in the typical fashion.

“I never vocalize or do scales,” he said. “I simply get in my car, pop in a tape by Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald, and sing along. Your vocal cords are just another muscle, and, like all muscles, they need to be regenerated to keep them pliable. So you’ve got to stay in some kind of training--and for me, this is what works best.”

Torme was born in Chicago in 1925. He made his professional debut as a singer at the age of 4, when he sat in one night with the Coon-Sanders Orchestra at Chicago’s Blackhawk Restaurant.

“I still remember it vividly,” Torme said. “After I had finished singing and the audience applauded, Carleton (Coon) picked me up and took me on his knee while he played the bass drum and his band did their dance set.”

Two years later, Torme was working with child vaudeville troupes around Chicago. When he was 8, he won first place in the children’s division of a radio auditions contest at the Century of Progress World’s Fair with a rendition of a popular Al Jolson song, “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule.”

Torme was subsequently tapped for the role of Jimmy the Newsboy on the NBC radio soap opera “Song of the City,” and for the next seven years he was one of radio’s busiest child actors.

When he was 15, Torme wrote a song called “Lament to Love” that made its way onto the Hit Parade and was recorded by the Harry James and Les Brown big bands. The success of that song paved the way for Torme’s return to music. He was hired as singer for the Chico Marx Orchestra, and by the time the band broke up in 1943, he was playing drums as well.

In 1946, after a short hitch in the Army, Torme landed a solo deal with Musicraft Records that produced the mega-hit, “The Christmas Song.” The same year, he began touring and recording with clarinetist and bandleader Artie Shaw.

Through the 1940s, Torme also dabbled in the movies. He starred, and sang, in such films as “Higher and Higher,” the Gloria Jean epic “Pardon My Rhythm,” and “Good News.”

In 1951, Torme took over television’s “The Perry Como Show” with fellow singer Peggy Lee. CBS subsequently gave him his own daily half-hour talk show, which was on the air for two years.

In the meantime, Torme continued to record with such illustrious sidemen as Bud Shank, Art Pepper, and Bill Perkins. His smooth, light voice earned him the nickname “The Velvet Fog.” His inventive, lyrical style of scat-singing put him at the head of the vocal class in the burgeoning “cool school” of jazz.

With the advent of rock ‘n’ roll in the late 1950s, Torme’s fortunes as a singer began to wane. So, for the next two decades, he concentrated on movies and, in particular, television.

In 1957, Torme was nominated for an Emmy as Best Supporting Actor for his part in a Playhouse 90 show, “The Comedian.” He later starred in episodes of “The Bold Ones,” “Run For Your Life,” and “The Virginian,” many of which he wrote himself.

“I wasn’t really getting offered much in the way of decent TV roles, so I started writing my own roles,” Torme recalled. “Writing has always been kind of a natural thing for me, even back in my radio days as a child actor.”

In 1970, Torme created and served as executive producer of “The Singers,” a top-rated CBS TV special. The same year, he produced and starred in “It Was a Very Good Year,” a weekly nostalgia series on the ABC network.

As the decade progressed, Torme’s career as a singer gradually began to pick up again. He began stepping up his recording schedule and playing in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. By 1980, three of his albums had been nominated for Grammies, and he was regularly touring the country.

But only in the last few years has Torme’s long-awaited “comeback” as a singer really materialized. And, with public attention once again focused on his stunning pipes, Torme said, he couldn’t be happier.

“I think jazz singers are a breed apart from other singers--rock, pop, even country,” Torme said. “Jazz singers don’t sing a melody, they extemporize on it; they take a basic melody line and work and weave and move in and around it.

“As a result, you can sing the same song night after night, and each time it will be different. Singing jazz is adventuresome and creative, and that’s what I love about it; that’s what has always fascinated me since I was a kid. . . . And it’s nice to see that more and more people are now sharing that love, that fascination.”