Mel Tormé

Mel torme原名Melvin Howard Torme，是1925年9月13日出生于芝加哥的一位神童。他首次在电台上演唱时还是个蹒跚学步的孩子。到了十多岁时，已作为歌手、钢琴手、鼓手、舞蹈演员等多种身份出现在舞台上。他很早就开始作曲，为Chico Max乐队编过曲，还曾为Harry James乐队创作了《Lament To Love》，时常在电台上和电影中独唱，并组建了他自己的组合‘Mel-Tones’；这个组合曾和Artie Shaw合作录制过《Sunnyside Of The Street》的歌曲。 Mel Torme在50年代成为有独特风格的歌手之一，为他伴奏的多是Marty Paich Dek-tette之类的爵士乐队；他们曾合作出过专辑“Lulu’s Back In Town”。他在欧、美开过多次引起轰动的音乐会，还经常在电视上，表演他本人的节目，他的演出简直无暇可击。这种情形一直持续到60-70年代，期间还制作了多张精选的流行歌曲专辑，其中部分是以爵士乐队伴奏的，如由Shorty Rogers乐队伴奏的“Round Midnight”专辑，Al Porcino乐队伴奏的“Live At The Maisonette”专辑，Buddy Rich乐队伴奏的“Together Again-For The First Time”专辑，Gerry Mulligan乐队伴奏的“Mel Torme And Friends”以及和Rob McConnell乐队合作的“Mel Torme With Rob McConnell And The Boss Brass”等。 Mel Torme的音乐活动，最为成功的应属长系列的音乐会、广播及电视演出。其中许多都在George Shering乐队的伴奏下制成了专辑唱片。90年代初他还在不断地写唱片评论，和George Shering乐队一起在加州和Channel Islands的狂欢节，以及和Bill Barry乐队一起，在好莱坞音乐厅显现身手。身为作曲者，他写了好几百首歌曲。最成名的是和Robert Wells合写的《The Christmas Song》。这支歌曲首先是由Nat King Cole录制的，后来再录的就不计其数了。他也时常在架子鼓方面大显身手。多年来他使用的架子鼓是原来Gene Krupu使用过的，在他的敲打下显得摇摆味十足。 作为歌手，他的歌声柔和甜美，带着点沙哑，被绰称为“柔蛙”。一直到90年代初，他都保持着出色的高音和稳定的音域控制，所选择的歌曲绝对都是有格调、音乐性很强的。他所演唱的歌曲，伴奏部分绝大多数是他自己编的曲，这在美国流行音乐史上成为一座里程碑。1996年他突患心脏病，严重影响了他的生命里程。1999年他被授予格莱梅终生成就奖，就在那年，他为世人留下了巨大的音乐财富和两篇文学性很强的自传后，于6越5日与世长辞了。 by William Ruhlmann Mel Tormé was a jazz-oriented pop singer who worked at his craft steadily from the 1940s to the 1990s, primarily in nightclubs and concert halls. In his 1988 autobiography, It Wasnt All Velvet (its title a reference to his nickname, The Velvet Fog, bestowed upon him by a disc jockey in the 1940s to describe his husky, wide-ranging voice), he mentioned a wish that he had been born ten years earlier, that is, in 1915 rather than 1925. If he had had his wish, Tormé would have been an exact contemporary of Frank Sinatra, and like Sinatra he might have had a full-fledged career as a big-band singer. In fact, given the breadth of his talents, he might have been a bandleader since, in addition to singing, he was also a drummer good enough to have gotten offers to go on the road as early as his teens, a songwriter responsible for one of the perennial Christmas standards, and an arranger who wrote the charts for much of the music he performed. Amazingly, this is still only a partial list of his accomplishments, which also included acting in more than a dozen feature films and on radio and television; hosting radio and TV shows; and writing television dramas, numerous articles for periodicals including Down Beat and The New York Times, and six published books of fiction, biography, and music criticism.