Mel Torme - Cocktail Hour (1999)

Tracklist

CD1:

01. What Is This Thing Called Love (3:01)
02. Little White Lies (3:02)
03. Get Out of Town (3:15)
04. A Little Kiss Each Morning (2:56)
05. I Cover the Waterfront (4:29)
06. A Cottage for Sale (3:05)
07. The Best Things in Life Are Free (2:53)
08. Gone with the Wind (2:58)
09. But Beautiful (2:45)
10. You're Driving Me Crazy (3:10)
11. Willow Road (2:59)
12. Try a Little Tenderness (3:07)
13. A Foggy Day (2:54)
14. Until the Real Thing Comes Along (2:52)

CD2:

01. I Got the Sun in the Morning (2:59)
02. Night and Day (2:42)
03. Fine and Dandy (3:07)
04. Careless Hands (3:15)
05. I Can't Give You Anything But Love (3:04)
06. Three Little Words (2:44)
07. The Day You Came Along (2:46)
08. Again (3:11)
09. Love, You Funny Thing (3:04)
10. Blue Moon (3:11)
11. You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me (3:06)
12. Born to Be Blue (2:38)
13. A Stranger in Town (2:56)
14. It's Easy to Remember (2:58)

Torme's performances are superb, but this two-disc compilation has no track information whatsoever -- no composer or musician credits, no session dates, nothing. The package is part of a generic Allegro series; other "cocktail hour" discs feature the likes of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, and Dinah Shore, with uniformly ugly cover art. So this is anything but a classic Torme title, although many of the individual tracks are classics. The recordings are clearly old -- probably from the '40s or '50s -- although the sound is quite good. A handful of tracks feature background vocalists singing close harmonies, but Torme is alone in the spotlight for the most part. There's a glockenspiel or celeste on quite a few songs, which becomes irritating, but there are some excellent clarinet and guitar performances -- uncredited, of course. Torme's scat vocal on "Night and Day" is not to be missed. For a quick and easy sampling of Torme's style, this compilation will suffice, but serious fans would do better to seek out the original recordings.~David R. Adler