Torme Gets Hip to 'Zaz Turned Blue'

Mel Torme -- aka the Velvet Fog -- was an impressive singer, arranger, actor and author known for his impeccably smooth voice. He was also the composer of the holiday standard known simply as "The Christmas Song" -- the one that starts with the line: "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."

In the early 1980s, writer, musician and avid golfer David Was, co-founder of the oddball pop music group Was (Not Was), was working as a jazz critic and gave Torme a glowing review for a performance at the Hollywood Bowl. In gratitude, Torme called up Was to offer his services.

Was took him up on the offer in an unusual way: He convinced Torme to sing a song on an upcoming Was (Not Was) album. That song, "Zaz Turned Blue," was not destined to belong in the canon of great American tunes -- it was a quirky little number about a high school pal who fainted when another kid put the so-called "sleeper" wrestling hold on him.

It took some cajoling, but Torme agreed to cut the single. "Two weeks later, Mel and his pianist, Mike Renzi, would record a version that turned the maudlin tale of a wrestling hold gone wrong into something with the wry poignancy of 'Send in the Clowns,' recalls Was.

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Torme eventually added the song to his concert repertoire, and it wound up on the four-CD Rhino Records boxed set of Torme's work collected a few years before his death in 1999.

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