Mel Tormé

There are over 500 different records of the Christmas song that have been printed, published, pressed, whatever you want to call it.

But the Nat Cole version, not out of sentimentality, believe me, but out of the pure feeling that he got for the song and what it means to Bob and I, Bob and me, that's still the best record.

Well, not exactly a jet plane, but I could have bought a jet plane with it, because the royalties have, quite candidly, and I say this with tremendous gratitude...

been utterly enormous.

We both figured out, Bob and I, over the years, because we wrote it well over 30 years ago.

I remember we wrote it in 45.

It came out in 46, by the way.

We were a little bit too late for, even in July, we were a little bit too late for that Christmas season.

So it came out in October of 46.

We have each made over a million dollars a piece on that song.

That's on the level.

And it's staggering.

It staggers me when we finally figured out what our royalties had been.

And that, of course, covers records, sheet music, what we call the ASCAP performance ratings on it.

It's mind-blowing.

It just absolutely kills me.

Oddly enough, that's one piece of music that I've been involved in, Terry, where from the very get-go, from the very left-hand corner, from the top of it, they said, hey, this is going to be a big song.

I never dreamed, never dreamed, and neither did Bob, probably neither did Nat Cole, that it would become the monster, that it became, it's the biggest record that Nat Cole ever had.

That includes Nature Boy, that includes anything that Nat ever did.

It is the single biggest record he ever had.