Urban legends about singers and their songs

Was Nat King Cole's wonderful singing voice first heard when a belligerent drunk demanded he sang Sweet Lorraine?
Nat King Cole was a jazz pianist before he hit stardom as a pianist. Urban legend has it that a drunk customer demanded that he sing Sweet Lorraine. When he finally relented, his singing career took off.

This is a good story, but it is not true. Nat King Cole regularly sang with his combos before he gained acclaim as a singer. In Cole's own words, "[It] sounded good, so I just let it ride".

Did Louie Armstrong invent scat singing because he couldn't remember the words?
According to the legend, Louie Armstrong was performing and lost track of the words of the song. He improvised some nonsense syllables and so, invented scat singing.

Armstrong was one of the first artists to record scat singing with his 1926 recording of Heebie Jeebies. According to his memoirs, his sheet music fell on the floor during the recording so he picked up some scat. In another recording, of "I'm a Ding-Dong Daddy from Dumas", he improvised with the line "I done forgot the words".

Scat singing was certainly popularized by Satchmo, but Wiki reports eight singers (including Al Jolson and Jelly Roll Morton) who had recorded scat music as early as 1911. Jelly Roll said that the inventor of scat music was a comedian by the name of Joe Sims.

Is Billie Holiday's song "God Bless the Child" a religious song?
The word "God" appears all over this song. The first verse mentions the bible:

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news

This is a reference to Matthew 25:29 - "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." (King James Version)

This sure sounds like a religious song.

"God Bless the Child" is a song that Billie Holliday wrote following an argument with her mother. Her mother was always asking Billie for money. One night Billie asked her mom for money and "Mom turned me down flat. She wouldn't give me a cent.... Then I said 'God bless the child that's got his own' and walked out." (From her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues.) She stayed mad at her mom for weeks, and eventually took her anger out in this song. In her autobiography she wrote "This one will gas the Duchess, I thought. And it did."

Mama may have, and Papa may have, But God bless the child that's got his own.

Did Mel Torme love his song about chestnuts roasting on an open fire?
Mel Torme wrote over 250 songs. His best known song was "The Christmas Song". According to BMI, this is the most performed Christmas song. Surely he is proud of it?

In Torme's own recounting, the song was written during a very hot summer. Bob Wells (who he often collaborated with) was writing some lines down on paper to take his mind off the heat. The lines he wrote down became the opening of the song. It was written in 40 minutes.

But, according to Wiki,  "Tormé said that he wrote the music to the song in only 40 minutes, and that it was not one of his personal favorites." I would like to get a little context around this. Why was it not one of his favorites?
It is hard to say just where this phrase was first written down. I tried to find it, just to get some context. It you Google "not one of his personal favorites" - including the quotes - I get 14 results

Why wasn't he fond of the song?  This is speculation on my part, but perhaps it's because (as I have said in a previous post) Mel Torme is Jewish. I dunno. Maybe he is not all that nostalgic about Christmas.

That said, I found a wonderful little story about a group of carolers singing the song to the man himself. 

Did Barry Manilow write the song that made the whole world sing?
Barry Manilow started out as a jingle writer and is responsible for "I am stuck on Band-Aid, cuz Band-Aid's stuck on me", and "And like a good neighbor, State Farm is there". Needless to say, Manilow is Jewish.

"I Write the Songs" is one of Manilow's biggest hits. (From my own experience, it's not a big karaoke hit today, but yesterday I was requested to sing his song Copacabana.) When I first heard this song, it sounded more than a bit arrogant. Barry Manilow is saying that he wrote the songs that made the whole world sing? Ok, you did a few commercial jingles. And the Copa is a fun song, but did these songs make the whole world sing??!?!

But it turns out that this was one of the songs that Barry Manilow did not write. Bruce Johnston, who is with the Beach Boys has that honor. Actually, Manilow's big hits were generally written by someone else.

So, does the song say the Johnston is the one who writes the songs that make the young girls cry? Nope. According the to lyrics of the song "I am music, and I write the songs". I am not sure what this means, but the entity that writes the songs is Music.

MathewPng has a little different idea of what the song means. According to him, the devil is the one who wrote the songs. He urges everyone to be careful.