JAZZ : Torme’s ‘Songbook’ Has New Notes

If you think Mel Torme’s appearance with Maureen McGovern entitled “The Great American Songbook” is just another trip down Tin Pan Alley, think again.

“We didn’t want to do just another wonderful nostalgia show,” the singer, arranger and author said last week in a phone interview from his home in Beverly Hills. “That would really bore me.”

Instead, says the 66-year-old vocalist, the program will embrace the entire spectrum, past to near-present, of the American pop tune. “The thing I like about (the program) is that between Maureen, who has her own repertoire, and myself, virtually every phase of what we call the popular song will be represented.

“Of course we’ll be doing some older tunes. I’ll be doing some Cole Porter, I’ll do ‘You Make Me Feel So Young.’ But I’m also doing some (Burt) Bacharach, a tune by Neil Sedaka, a tune by Paul Williams.”

While he admits that Sedaka, Bacharach and Williams may not represent the cutting edge of the current pop scene, Torme feels that theirs is the latest material he can honestly do. “I’m having trouble in this day and age finding absolutely current contemporary songs that I can sing with any credibility. But certainly there are songs in the recent past that work very well for me.”

“When I set out to do ‘The Great American Songbook,’ I really did try to mine something out of the current crop of songs. But in an age of rap and heavy metal, there’s not a lot of attention paid to the so-called popular ballad or the pop rhythm tune. I can’t find anything.”

In addition to performing separately, Torme and McGovern will combine their voices for a nearly 20-minute assortment of Rodgers and Hart tunes. Torme, who arranged the medley as well as many of the numbers he’ll perform without McGovern, said he spent over a month writing the parts for the 16-piece orchestra that will back them. “Honest to God, I got up every morning at 6 a.m. to orchestrate this medley, working for maybe three or four hours every day. You know I’ve never studied music and I’m extremely slow, just pedestrian, about writing out arrangements.”

Add to this a series of arrangements he’s writing for a Christmas album with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, scheduled for recording this spring, and the singer has found little time to devote to his other career, that of author. (Tormes recent biography of his friend, the late drummer and bandleader Buddy Rich, has gone into its third printing, and Oxford University Press has just reissued “The Other Side of the Rainbow,” Torme’s account of his experiences working with Judy Garland on her 1960s television series.) That’s why the singer, who’s currently working on a crime novel, is looking forward to the long U.S. tour with “The Great American Songbook.”

“Once we start, I’m free of the bloody piano. I’ll be free to pursue my laptop computer keyboard again.”

Who: Mel Torme, appearing in “The Great American Songbook” with Maureen McGovern.

When: Sunday, Feb. 2, at 6 p.m.

Where: The Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim.

Whereabouts: Take Harbor Boulevard south from Riverside Freeway or north from Interstate 5 and head east on Broadway. The Celebrity is on the left, just past Anaheim Boulevard.

Wherewithal: $28.

Where to Call: (714) 999-9536.