By Paul Freeman [1990 Interview]

We interviewed Mel Torme and George Shearing in 1990, prior to their concert at the outdoor concert venue Paul Masson Winery in Saratoga, Northern California. Torme passed in 1999; Shearing in 2011.

Take one velvet voice, add 10 silky fingers. Stir in the proper setting and you've whipped up a concert that's eminently smooth and satisfying. That's the case when singer Mel Torme and pianist George Shearing team up for their annual performance at Paul Masson.

Shearing has appeared at nearly every edition of the summer series. He introduced Torme to the venue nine years ago and they've been coming back year after year, issuing an elegant flow of jazz.

"It's like coming home for me," Shearing says. "The English are not receptive to change. Even though I became an American citizen in 1956, Mel Torme says I'm still British to the bone. My wife says the same thing. We enjoy coming up every year and staying at the Chateau. We know the ladies who take care of our food and other needs. It's home. The fresh air is wonderful. I do like it when they spray, so flies don't try to get into the act. After all, if the insects don't make the rehearsal, they shouldn't make the show," he says with a chuckle. "I've turned 70 years of age and I'm getting to the point where, if it's not fun, I don't want to do it. I have a lovely apartment in New York and, if it's not something I'm going to enjoy, I just don't want to do it. Paul Masson is fun and I do want to do it."

Torme declares, "It's a wonderfully romantic place to perform. When you're doing love songs, the ambiance is extremely important. It really gets me in the mood. I look forward to playing this particular venue like a kid looks forward to Christmas. The audiences are very special, very responsive. It's rather idyllic."

George Wein, who runs the Newport Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall, first combined the talents of Torme and Shearing. "It was his brainstorm," Torme says. "He knew that George and I had been close friends for years, but had never worked together. So, about 1977, he masterminded our collaboration and it worked like a charm. George Shearing and I think exactly alike musically. We like to say we're two bodies with but a single musical mind."

Of Shearing's wizardry, Torme says, "His strengths are manifold. In addition to being one of the greatest jazz players of all time, he is probably the single most beautiful purveyor of ballads in the world, from the standpoint of piano. We've learned a lot from each other."

Shearing returns the compliment: "Mel's ears are just so marvelous. I change a chord and he's there within a split second. We like the same kinds of music. It's a joy working with him. He knows to wait for a little change I make and vice versa. I don't think they come any greater than Mel. After all, he's a musician. He plays piano. He's not my favorite pianist," Shearing quips, "but I'm not his favorite singer either. He orchestrates. He plays drums. How many singers are you going to look at on the top rung of the ladder who've had that sort of diversification?"

Born in Chicago in 1925, Torme began performing at the age of four. "It was something I always badly wanted to do," he says. "I listened to the radio all the time. My parents took me to the Blackhawk Restaurant and the bandleader got me up to sing. It all came very naturally."

He became a Monday night regular at the spot. That showcase led to other opportunities. He became one of the busiest child actors on network radio from 1933 to 1941. At 15, he wrote a song called "Lament to Love," which became a hit for Harry James. Torme later worked as a singer/arranger/drummer in the orchestra of Chico Marx.

"It was thrilling to me, as a movie buff, to be working with one of the Marx Brothers. He was a wild and crazy guy, a great gin player, great bridge player, horse better, a fascinating man."

That association lasted for three years. Torme subsequently recorded on his own and with Artie Shaw. He continued to compose. In 1946, with Bob Wells, he co-wrote "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."). The tune has been recorded approximately 500 times.

Eventually Torme, the man often affectionately referred to as "The Velvet Fog," for his dulcet vocal style, turned his focus from pop music to jazz. "I had always been interested in jazz. The time came when I didn't want to make purely pop records anymore. I wanted to get my feet wet in the area that intrigued me most. I felt that the most challenging, interesting area was jazz. So I dug in with both hands.

"In jazz, you're singing extemporaneously almost all the time," Torme says. "You're not singing by rote. You're not consigned to just the melody. If I had to it note by note, night after night, I'd be bored stiff. When I sing a long, I do it a little different at each performance. That gives me a fresh perspective."

Shearing was also lured by the freedom, improvisation and spontaneity of jazz. Congenitally blind, son of a coalman and the youngest of nine children, he was born in London's Battersea district in 1919. Like Torme, his musical aptitude became evident early in life.

"I would listen through earphones to the old crystal set, which preceded the radio. I would pick out material I'd just heard and go over and play it on the piano. Well, I don't know if you could call it a piano. It was 85 keys surrounded by wood."

Primarily self-taught, he studied classical piano at the Linden Lodge School for the Blind from the age 12 to 16. There Shearing presumably had all 88 keys on which to play. In the late 1930s, he joined a band sponsored by the Royal National Institute for the Blind.

"A couple of guys in the band knew quite a lot about jazz and used to play a lot of jazz records in the dressing room while we were on tour. I was entranced.

"We were 15 blind musicians. The leader was the only sighted man. He had a huge baton which he could swish, so we could hear it. One night we were on stage and the leader said, 'All right, fellas, are you ready?' And one guy said, 'No, just a minute. I lost my eye.' His glass eye had fallen out and rolled across the stage. Fifteen blind guys got down on the floor looking for it. How we didn't massacre it, I don't know."

The eyes and ears of jazz aficionados have remained on Shearing and Torme for decades. And they're still making marvelous, mellifluous music.

BONUS: OUR 1996 INTERVIEW WITH MEL TORME

By Paul Freeman

The Rhino Records box set "The Mel Torme Collection" chronicles more than four decades of the crooner's music. But the 70-year-old Torme is far from finished.

The collection, which contains 93 tracks on four CDs, spans the years 1942 to 1985. Despite the set's nostalgic appeal, Torme also has become the darling of the MTV generation.

Torme tells us, "MTV called me and said, 'We've done Tony Bennett. Now we want you.' He has co-hosted the network's "Rude Awakening" and sings the title song for the MTV-Warner Bros, movie "Joe's Apartment." He played Seattle's Bumbershoot Music Festival, sharing the bill with The Ramones and Mudhoney.

"It was one of the most amazing afternoons of my life," Torme says. "I walked onto that stage and thousands of kids sent up a cheer that shook me. I did my own repertoire, not rock. The promoter said I got a bigger response than anyone else. That astonished me. I'm going to do more."

Why do teens respond to music that predates their parents? "Many of them, when they get to be 17, 18, look for something a little more challenging to the mind than rock 'n' roll," Torme says. "I'm not going to be a hypocrite and say I'm open to rock. I don't like it. It's too simplistic, frankly too childish." Songwriting, Torme says, is the root of the problem. Although he has praise for writers such as Donald Fagen, Billy Joel and Stevie Wonder, he finds most rock songs to be inferior stuff. "The lyrics are not invested with thought, wit, humor and insight. If you're singing three-chord music, there's not a lot of chance for feeling.

"That's why I fall back on the writings of the great craftsmen -- Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer -- those who elevated the popular song to an incredible pinnacle."

Torme knows songwriting. He has penned innumerable tunes, including the holiday favorite, "The Christmas Song." He now concentrates on arranging rather than composing, because there aren't many singers seeking classic pop-style songs.

"I can't honestly point to anyone and say that guy or gal is the next Bing Crosby or Ella Fitzgerald. That doesn't mean it won't happen. But today, I can't think of anybody trodding those boards. That's a tragedy."

Fitzgerald wasn't able to fulfill a dream of recording an album with Torme. But months prior to her death, Torme planned a tribute in which he'll use her classic tracks. "It'll be like Natalie Cole did with her dad. It's a shame this is the only way I can sing with Ella now."

Torme relishes new musical challenges. "As you go along through life, age and experience enter your work. I become a better singer... at least I hope I do."