Only two for tea, dear from this moment on

Continuing my trip back through the 1956 album charts.

12/08/56 : Mel Tormé At The Crescendo - Mel Tormé 

Two in a row for Mel (providing you ignore the two weeks we skipped over, with #1 being Carousel in one week and Frank in the other).  I've nothing to go on for this beyond the previous album, so let's just assume it'll be the same, shall we?

I said his last album was more 40s that 60s, but this is even more 40s (or earlier, "Blue Moon" was written in 1934 and "Get Happy" is from 1930) - they're nice enough tunes but they do sound dated with it all sounding very Bing Crosbyish to my uncultured ear.  It's all perfectly fine though and the sound quality is pretty good for a live album, particularly when compared with what they did for Salad Days. 

We're at #3 in the charts this week on his last of a four week run, with every week having been spent at #3 and the rest of the top five were Carousel, Frank Sinatra, Bill Haley and Mel again (a new entry).

Wikipedia appears to have an entry for the album, but it turns out it's for a different Mel Tormé At The Crescendo - apparently under no circumstances should this album be confused with the 1957 album with exactly the same name.  To make up for the lack of information, I checked out Mel - the man had quite a full life and I never knew he wrote "The Christmas Song" ("chestnuts roasting on an open fire...").  I also looked up The Crescendo - it was a nightclub in LA, which existed from 1954 to 1964 and it had quite the list of famous people who played there.

"Customers also listened to" June Christy, George Sheering, Keely Smith and Bobby Troup - and I can tell you nothing about any of them.  I am though, of course, an expert on Mel Tormé now - it's all very dated but charmingly so and I can quite see him being stupidly popular back then.

05/08/56 - A very peculiar album
02/09/56 - Odd, but perfectly fine