Music: Out of the Fog

Now that he is 37, Mel Tormé can look back with ease upon a bountiful life in music: lots of money, dozens of cars, two wives, three psychiatrists. In person, though, he has always been a sour-luck man whose glance wilts a flower. As a result, he managed to overwhelm his great talents as crooner, composer, actor, drummer, pianist and arranger and become an engaging failure. Good old Mel, his friends in music say, the public never liked him. But he is also a singer of jazz, and in that difficult and unfriendly medium, he has lately become one of the...