Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas Read Online Free Page A

music and play drums for the Marx Orchestra. Soon after, he worked with Frank Sinatra.
    In 1944, Torme got together with two other talented musicians, Les Baxter and Henry Mancini, to form the vocal group the Mcl-Toncs. The trio was among the first of the jazz-influenced vocal groups. Five years later, Mel scored a solo number one hit with “Careless Hands” and quickly gained recognition as one of the top jazz artists in the world. Ethel Waters once said that Torme was “the only white man who sings with the soul of a black man.” Soon, without realizing it, Mel—whose views of life and music were never complicated by racial prejudice—would serve as the key in opening a holiday door previously closed to African Americans.
    Over the course of the next fifty years, Torme influenced generations of singers, sold millions of records, acted in dozens of movies and television shows, wrote a couple of best-selling books, arranged music for some of the greatest names in the business, and took a few years off to fly airplanes as a commercial pilot. Yet the one facet of his career that is often overlooked was his ability to write music. If the singer-songwriter hadn’t decided to visit his friend Nat King Cole’s house one hot summer day, “Born to Be Blue” would have probably gone down as his most remembered composition. But a July drive across Los Angeles changed all that forever.
    Robert Wells, a lyricist, was one of Torme’s best friends. They had written together for several years and had just been hired to produce the title songs for two movies, Abie’s Irish Rose and Magic Town. When Mel arrived, rather than working on the assignments, he found Wells trying to drive off the California heat with fans and positive thinking. The fans were doing little good, and the positive thoughts—which consisted of writing down everything that reminded Wells of cold winters in New England—were only making Wells warmer. Many years later, Torme recalled what happened.
    “I saw a spiral pad on his piano with four lines written in pencil. They started, ‘Chestnuts roasting…Jack Frost nipping…Yuletide carols…Folks dressed up like Eskimos.’ Bob didn’t think he was writing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse himself in winter he could cool off.”
    It had been chestnuts that started Wells’s strange train of thought. He had seen his mother bring in a bag of them to stuff a turkey for dinner. Wells was thrown back to the days when he saw vendors selling chestnuts on New York City street corners. Yet while Wells was after nothing more than an attempt to “think cold,” Mel caught a glimpse of a song in the phrases he had written. With the temperature in the nineties and both men sweating through their clothes, they got to work on what was to become a Christmas classic. It took just forty minutes. The assigned movie title songs were pushed aside as Wells and Torme climbed into a car and drove away to show off their latest song.
    Torme knew all the great singers who worked in Los Angeles. They all liked and respected Mel’s work and most of them palled around with the singer. So when Wells and Torme dropped by Nat King Cole’s home uninvited, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. It was just old, friendly Mel being Mel. Yet theresults of that visit were monumental. After a brief greeting, Torme took a seat at King’s piano. On the hottest day of the year, Mel played the new Christmas number. It might not have cooled anyone off, but Cole was deeply impressed.
    Nat King Cole had begun his career as a jazz pianist and was one of the best. Yet by the 1940s, it was his smooth baritone that had mesmerized fans all over the world. Even at a time when some of the greatest balladeers in history ruled the airwaves, Cole stood out. The young black man from Chicago’s voice and styling set him apart; his voice and stage presence earned him the nickname “King.”
    Cole’s first huge hit came in 1946 with “I Love