STAGE REVIEW

"The Velvet Fog," Mel Torme.

Yes, Torme recently celebrated his 70th birthday. Yes, he's likely to be the last pop vocalist of his generation still working as a legitimate entertainer rather than a nostalgia act. Ignore his well-earned status as a living legend. Ignore his incredible catalog of creative accomplishment, his half-century as a recording artist and his 66-year career in American show business. Judged strictly by what he did on stage last night, Mel Torme gave the audience a perfect show, quite possibly the best concert of any kind that Honolulu will see this year.

Torme made time fly last night. His 75-minute set seemed to pass in a twinkling.

He sang, clowned, played drums for one number and piano for another, told jokes, shared memories, and proved more than deserving of the title "high lord of scat singers." He spit out individual nuggets of melodic sound with an articulation and speed a rap artist would envy - and stretched out and crooned individual notes with the ease of a spider spinning silk. What talent, what style, what craftsmanship!

Torme last night proved a consummate gentleman from start to finish. He took time to identify and acknowledge not only his personal conductor, Bob Krogstad, and the members of his jazz trio, but also local soloists David Choy and Honolulu Symphony Concertmaster Claire Sakai Hazzard, Hawaii Theatre Executive Director Sarah Richards, Gov. Ben Cayetano, the Symphony, the venue and the audience - especially the audience.

The audience loved him too.

"I guess I haven't quite worn out my welcome yet," he commented between two standing ovations, maroon lei adding a splash of color to his crisp black-and-white formal ensemble.

Torme won the hearts and minds of the audience with the opening bars of his first number, "Hooray for Hollywood." That song and the medley that followed set the theme for the evening - it was " Music from the Movies, " including several that Torme had appeared in as an actor and/or musician.

A jump to the early 1980s tapped Torme's brilliant reworking of "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" and the first of several expansive flights of scatting.

Torme tugged at the audience's emotions with a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald; it was the last scat flight of the night and a salute to his ailing friend and colleague. Poignant, but not contrived.

Hearing Torme sing "The Christmas Song" was likely the high point for many. I was hoping for his brilliant 15-minute "Gershwin Medley" but the performance was perfect even without it.

ON "The Mel Torme Collection," the label and artist are a perfect match. Both are known for the loving care and acute attention to detail that go into what they produce. Faced with a formidable challenge of putting together songs that represent the sound, style and spirit of a living legend who cares more about posterity than prosperity, they succeed in every possible way - except for some remastering glitches.

Engineering snags aside, "The Mel Torme Collection" is in a league far beyond the too familiar "let's slap-it-together-and-see-if-it-makes-us-a-buck" retrospective. Painstakingly researched, this four-CD, 92-track box set is handsomely packaged with a 62-page booklet. Chief writer Will Friedwald wisely chronicles Torme's life as a means of explaining the music he produced.

Perhaps most important is his clarification of set's title, which ends at 1985. As he explains, Torme's career the past decade has blossomed with albums on such labels as Concord Jazz and TelArc. This music is supposed to represent his "classic" period, but "One cannot tell a story until it's finished," Friedwald notes in the booklet. Given Torme's ongoing relationship with Concord Jazz, "this compilation would be obsolete as soon as the next ... Concord release came out."

Born in 1925, Torme was a precocious child, singing in public at 3, on the radio at 9 and publishing his first song at 15 ("Lament to Love," which was a hit for Harry James). During World War II, he played drums and sang in the Chico Marx band. That lasted until 1943, when he formed his own vocal group, the Mel-tones, for whom he would write extraordinary arrangements which he'd use when the ensemble played with Artie Shaw.

From the late '40s, Torme enjoyed a solo singing career, the pinnacle of which was his "Christmas Song," which he co-wrote with Bob Wells in 1946. It was covered first by Nat "King Cole" and since then has been recorded by nearly 2,000 other artists.

What's so arresting is both the quantity and quality of material included in "The Mel Torme Collection." Disc 1 highlights "County Fair" (which he co-wrote for the Disney film "So Dear to My Heart," "Careless Hands" (a big hit for Capitol in 1949) and "Got the Gate on the Golden Gate Bridge" (which he wrote as part of his amazing 1950 "California Suite" album).

Torme's ability to capture all the life in a song is reflected on Disc 2's "Isn't It Romantic" (with Al Pelligrini's Orchestra), "The Lady is a Tramp" (from the "Mel Torme and Marty Paich 'Dek-tette' " album) and "Cheek to Cheek" from a record that salutes Fred Astaire.

Disc 3's dominant tracks are "Frenesi" and "Malaguena" (both found on his 1959 album, "Mel Torme Goes South of the Border With Billy May") and "On Green Dolphin Street" taken from his 1962 opus, "Comin' Home, Baby!"

It's impossible to pick stand-outs on Disc 4, since it's filled with highlights. "The Folk That Live on the Hill" (1965), "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" (1962), a 16-song Gershwin Medley (1975), "42nd Street" (1963), "Zaz Turned Blue" with Was (Not Was) (1983), his Barry Manilow duet "Big City Blues" (1984) and a previously unissued "Theme From Arthur" (1985) each have their special breed of magic.

As you sit back and listen, you'll learn from Friedwalk's notes that singing was only one of Torme's many accomplishments. He was also a songwriter and arranger, a first-class drummer, a distinguished pianist, a record producer, a TV and film actor, a best-selling author (with one autobiography and biographies of Judy Garland and Buddy Rich), a TV talk show host, an Emmy nominee and two-time Grammy winner.

True, he hasn't done a gangsta rap or garage band album. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.