BILL CHERRY'S GREATEST DALLAS PARK CITIES REAL ESTATE BLOG: EVERY YEAR AT THIS TIME I MISS MY FRIEND MEL TORME

             I'm never sure exactly when it's going to happen, but every year at this time I realize how much I miss jazz singer Mel Torme. 

            Torme knew more about the mixing of cord harmonies than anyone did before or has since. 

             He was the one who taught that art to bandleaders Les Baxter and Artie Shaw, and singers Ginny O'Connor (Henry Mancini's wife), the Hi-Los and the Manhattan Transfer. 

             He's the one who wrote the arrangements for Chico Marx's band when Torme was but a teenager.

            He's also the one my business colleague of twenty-plus years ago, Boston real estate planner, Carol Todreas, and I tromped on  many bitter-cold snowy nights from our Central Park South hotel. the Essex House, to see at a small Manhattan dinner club called Marty's. 

             There we'd hear Mel along with pianist George Shearing and his Trio, in a packed house that held no more than 70 people.

             Marty's was carved out of the corner of a multi-story parking garage.  It was New York's best kept secret. 

             No way did the owner make any money, and it's for sure Torme and Shearing were working for not much more than a free meal.  But for them it was the perfect gig.  For the audience it was the venue of succes d'estime.

            Mel Torme wrote the tune and most of the words to the Christmas song that goes, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.  Jack Frost nipping at your nose."  And he did it when he was just 22-years old. 

             The following summer he appeared to a packed house in the Marine Ballroom at Galveston's Pleasure Pier.  And he had one successful appearance after another at the famed Balinese Room, although his name never seems to be included in the list of the B-Room's star performers like Phil Harris, Myron Cohen, Frank Sinatra and the like when someone speaks or writes about those days.

            The symphony did its annual Christmas Pops concert this past Saturday night.  The house was packed.  Looking around one would have thought every senior citizen within a fifty-mile radius of Dallas was in the audience, all the while the young people must have been somewhere else.

            The orchestra played arrangements of many of the favorites - Adeste Fideles, Little Drummer Boy, Deck the Halls, O Come All Ye Faithful and so on.  But before that, they played my old friend Mel's song. 

            And I sung along in my head, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.  Jack Frost nipping at your nose. Yule time carols...."  My tears began to flow.

            And while the orchestra and the rest of the audience moved on in the program, they left me behind, as they always do, to think of Christmases of the past when Mel was still singing his songs, Carol and I were tromping through the Manhattan snow to hear him at Marty's, and all of the members of the Cherry family were still alive and together awaiting that year's wonderful celebration of Christmas. 

             Those are the very special reasons I miss my friend, Mel Torme, who passed away in 1999. 

             His friendship, style and wonderful voice only remain with me in my memory, and through the recordings he made long ago. 

             And oddly, many singing "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire," this season don't know its real title is "The Christmas Song," and most probably have never heard of Mel Torme.

Copyright 2008 - William S. Cherry

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