Mel Torme Complete Concord Recordings CD

It was a match made in heaven. In the early '80s, velvet-tone jazz vocal master, Mel Torme, teamed up with elegantly swinging jazz pianist, George Shearing, for a recording collaboration that would result in six already-classic Concord Jazz recordings over the course of eight years. Winning Grammy awards for the first two outings (An Evening With George Shearing & Mel Torme and Top Drawer) and garnering nominations for all six releases. This perfect match of musical wits brimmed with virtuosity, humor, refined taste and, of course, swing, on each and every recording. Concord Jazz is proud to present all six of these timeless Mel Torme/George Shearing albums in a special box, replete with a bonus disc featuring 17 previously unreleased tracks! Housed in a hard-back book style format with CD sleeves as pages. 2002.

THE COMPLETE CONCORD RECORDINGS contains AN EVENING WITH GEORGE SHEARING AND MEL TORME (1982)/TOP DRAWER (1983)/AN EVENING AT CHARLIE'S (1984)/AN ELEGANT EVENING (1986)/A VINTAGE YEAR (1988)/MEL AND GEORGE "DO" WORLD WAR II (1990) as well as a bonus disc of unreleased recordings.
Personnel: Mel Tormé (vocals); George Shearing (vocals, piano); Don Thompson , John Leitham, Neil Swainson, Brian Torff (double bass); Donny Osborne (drums).
Liner Note Authors: Don Heckman; Philip Elwood; Chris Albertson; Leonard Feather; Grover Sales; Leonard Matlin; Felix Grant.
Beside Marty Paich, none of Mel Tormé's collaborators exerted such a large influence on the singer's career as George Shearing, the pianist whose understated, expressive accompaniment contributed to Tormé's resurgence during the early '80s. Their six excellent albums together -- two of which, An Evening With... and Top Drawer, earned Grammy awards -- proved that classic vocal music had outlasted the long night that was the '70s, and emerged to become a timeless American genre. The pair's work for Concord was usually recorded live in a trio or quartet setting; leaving much space for Shearing solos, Tormé occasionally reprised his big standards ("A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," "Lullaby of Birdland," "The Folks Who Live on the Hill"), but often searched for more obscure material he could make his own, and often succeeded. Tormé and Shearing were restless innovators, taking on a full album of World War II standards, medleys devoted to songs about New York and by Duke Ellington, and a stunningly broad range of material: "Oleo," "Lili Marlene," "How Do You Say Auf Wiedersehen?," and "Dat Dere." The Complete Concord Recordings of Mel Tormé and George Shearing is a tight, bookbound box set, similar in style to Columbia's series of Miles Davis sets, compiling each of their six original albums onto a single CD with a seventh full of bonus tracks, many of them also live. Setting the brilliant music heard within, this set isn't much more than the sum of its parts, with only a short essay and a bare few additional photos (plus the bonus CD) tacked onto the package. If you like Mel Tormé enough to get this, you'll probably have at least a few of the albums included in this set, and little here justifies the hefty price tag. ~ John Bush