On a sweltering 1946 day in the San Fernando Valley, two musicians listed wintry images to cool off and wrote The Christmas Song in 45 minutes. This episode explains how that financial safety net gave Mel Torme the freedom to pursue demanding jazz, and why he spent his life resisting the nickname 'The Velvet Fog.' We start in Chicago in 1925, where a four-year-old sang with the Coon-Sanders Orchestra for $15 a night, and where caretaker Alberta, a Savoy Ballroom pianist, immersed him in South Side jazz.

We follow his teenage hit for Harry James, drumming and arranging for Chico Marx, the Mel-Tones and their tightly clustered close harmonies, his place in cool jazz, the R&B hit Comin' Home Baby praised by Ethel Waters, and his dismissal of rock and roll as 'three chord manure.' Then come his gunfighter role in Walk Like a Dragon, the tur ...