Will Friedwald has come to my rescue again with an interesting post - this is what you might call the Complete Mel Tormé at the Crescendo, 1957 edition (there also was a 1954 date released on records). A Tormé gig at that Los Angeles night spot was chopped up and released piecemeal on two different LPs. Will has put it back together again. He explains:
"Bethlehem recorded about an hour (who knows?) of Mel at the club, and issued the results on two records - the first as above, the second titled Songs for Any Taste, with no mention anywhere that it was a live album.
"Among other strange things, they took Mel's version of 'Autumn Leaves' (sung in French) and put the main vocal on the first album and his gag intro on the second...
"And because the second album was only 25 minutes, they took his studio version of 'Plenty o' Nothin'' and stuck it on the end of the second album.
"Anyhow, I put the two albums together into one coherent set, the way I always wanted to hear it."
Tormé has always been one of my favorite singers, and has probably not made an appearance here before only because his LPs have all been reissued and I am too lazy to find my 78s and see which ones (if any) haven't been assembled into CD collections.
The LPs above was one of the records that started me on collecting vocalists. Almost 40 years ago, the young Buster, jazz fan extraordinaire, came across a cache of 50s vocal records at a charity sale. Not entirely sure why I picked them up (it may have been the backing musicians on this LP), but I did, in the process snaring Sinatra's Songs for Swinging Lovers, one of the Ella Fitzgerald Gershwin albums, an autographed copy of Carmen McRae's Blue Moon, Tormé Sings Fred Astaire, and some others - all of which I still own.
Thanks to Will for his generosity (and to Mel for his artistry)!
NEW LINK - JULY 2014
