jazz

Mel Torme

Bill Thompson

Does this song help put you in the Christmas spirit?
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That song was written by Mel Torme. He was born and raised in Chicago. He first sang in public and at age 4, wrote his first song at age 13, and was an actor in a radio show by his teens.

From the 1940s through the 1990s, Mel Torme established himself as one of America’s favorite and most popular singers, songwriters, and the Rangers.

He acquired a nickname: The Velvet Fog. In 1988, when he wrote his autobiography, he actually called o. Ot Wasn’t All Velvet. And that’s what I met him.

So here now, from 1988, Mel Torme.

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Mel Torme died in 1999 at age 73.

Lionel Hampton

Bill Thompson

When you begin to list the greatest American Jazz percussionists of all time, near the top of that list has to be the great Vibe the harpist and drummer Lionel Hampton.

In a career that began in the 1920s, when he was a teenager, Lionel Hampton rose to primnence in the jazz community, playing alongside such names as Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman.

Later, Hampton became a bandleader himself.

He wrote a memoir in 1989, and that’s what I met him

So here now, from 1989, the great Lionel Hampton.

Lionel Hampton died in 2002. He was 94.