The view from Tony Bennett’s studio high above Midtown Manhattan suggests a fine oil painting, the lush acreage of Central Park stretching as far as the eye can see.
In this room, Bennett, a lifelong painter, creates his portraits and still-lifes, thinks about music and reflects on nearly half a century in show business.
From this window, Bennett savors the northerly light that artists consider ideal. And when he glances at his studio walls, he sees exquisitely detailed photos of Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and other jazz legends who came before him.
Call him a crooner, a belter, a reborn pop icon, whatever–on this afternoon, Bennett is abuzz with all things jazz.
Pointing to the Tatum picture, Bennett says, “There are some people who are so great, you have to put them on a shelf, because no one again will ever come close.
“But it’s like (playwright) Arthur Miller said one night on `The Charlie Rose Show’–We in America are not into tradition, we don’t know how important it is, we’re too young a country. We’re still in the gold rush era, we’re going for the bread, everybody’s saying `show me the money.’ But when this millennium comes in, it’s going to shock everybody, because they’re going to be asking themselves: What did we create?
“And they’re going to find out it’s jazz.”
Certainly jazz has been a driving force in Bennett’s roller-coaster career. It often set the tempo for his music when he was at the top in the ’50s, and it coursed through his work when the record industry turned its back on him in the ’70s and ’80s. Listen to Bennett’s best recordings, such as “Jazz” (with Basie, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock and others) and “The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album” (with pianist Evans), and you are hearing the rare crooner who genuinely knows how to swing.
“It’s funny, but of all the things we’ve done in America, all the money that’s been made, it’s really jazz that’s our own invention, that belongs to the United States,” Bennett continues.
“Yet it’s always on the back page, always on the back of the bus. There are a lot of great jazz composers–Jack Segal, Dave Frishberg, Cy Coleman, and they’re not getting played on the radio, and it’s not fair. The marketing people say that’s all finished, that’s old.
“But it’s not old, it’s just timeless.”
Bennett, who returns to the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park on Aug. 4, has proved that himself. The five Grammy Awards he picked up in the last five years (including best album for “MTV Unplugged,” in 1995) and the cameo appearances his music has made in movies as far-flung as Marlon Brando’s “The Freshman” and Julia Roberts’ “My Best Friend’s Wedding” have placed Bennett’s jazz-flavored pop back into the mainstream.
For those who considered Bennett’s MTV success a fluke, note that his Emmy Award-winning Valentine’s Day TV special on the A&E cable network garnered large enough ratings to inspire a sequel, while his recent “Tony Bennett on Holiday” CD has been riding high on the charts.
Furthermore, Bennett made a bit of music history earlier this year, playing–of all places–the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas, an alternative rock bash not normally given over to tuxedoed crooners of the ’50s.
Clearly there’s more than marketing at work in Bennett’s re-emergence. If there weren’t, we would be seeing major comebacks by the likes of Steve Lawrence, Eddie Fisher and Jerry Vale.
“I think what has happened is that the young people have come to Tony, rather than he going to them,” says pianist Ralph Sharon, who has been accompanying Bennett for more than three decades. “You can say that because Tony never compromised, he never would. Columbia Records (Bennett’s label beginning in the ’50s and again in the late ’80s) wanted him to sing rock songs; they pressured him, but he wouldn’t do it.”
Bennett never gave in to musical fashion and paid a steep price for it. Signed to Columbia in 1950, the 24-year-old Anthony Dominick Benedetto seemed poised to conquer the world. After struggling for years as a singing waiter in New York under the stage name Joe Bari, he had been rescued from oblivion by Pearl Bailey, who used him as “the only white guy in an all-black revue,” recalls Bennett with a laugh.
Bob Hope spotted him there, suggested he annoint himself Tony Bennett and began featuring him at New York’s Paramount Theatre–the same room where Frank Sinatra had become America’s first teen idol in the ’40s.
“Here was a guy who was so good, even as a kid in the early ’50s, that I signed him sight unseen,” Mitch Miller once told this writer, recalling his years as a Columbia Records executive. “I had just heard a demo record of him doing `Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ (which became Bennett’s debut single in 1950), and that was good enough to earn him a spot.”
Though “Boulevard” instantly marked Bennett as a singer with a musical ardor and vocal control matched only by Sinatra, his career did not exactly skyrocket.
On the contrary, “After one year of recording on Columbia,” remembers Bennett, “Mitch Miller and Percy Faith, who were the two A&R men at that time, said: `Tony, you can do one more record (session), and if you don’t come up with something (successful), we’re going to have to drop you.’
“Well, my heart sank, but I was able to get three hits in a row right after that. In those days, you did four sides in 2 1/2 hours, and I had `Blue Velvet,’ `Cold, Cold Heart’ and `Because of You,’ and they all hit at one time.”
But this was well before the MTV era, and a hit record or three did not neccessarily make a star. In fact, Bennett was barely getting known in the New York-New Jersey area when a jazz-tinged crooner from Chicago opened a few doors.
“It so happened that Nat Cole and I had the same agent, and we met at the agent’s office one day.” remembers Bennett. “So Nat said to me, `Where do you live?’ And I said, `Englewood, N.J.’ And he said, `How’d you get here, did you drive?’ And when I told him I took a bus, he couldn’t believe it, he couldn’t believe that a singer with hit records would just take a bus into the city.
“From that day on I was `in’ with Nat, and when he was going to sing for President Eisenhower in Washington, he said he wanted me to take his place at the Chez Paree (nightclub) in Chicago. I had never been to Chicago, but they liked it so much that they booked me back, and that opened up Chicago for me, which led to playing the West Coast.”
That was just the beginning. As Bennett’s fame grew, his art deepened, the occasionally overwrought ballads of the early ’50s giving way to the sublime poetry of “Lazy Afternoon,” the reverie of “It Amazes Me” and the introspection of “Lost in the Stars.”
Pop music sung at this level was as rare in the ’60s as it is today, prompting no less than Sinatra himself to dub Bennett “the best singer in the business” in a Life magazine article. “He’s the singer,” added Sinatra, “who gets across what the composer has in mind and probably a little more.”
The late Judy Garland echoed the sentiment, noting in Billboard that Bennett was “the epitome of what entertainers were put on Earth for. He was born to take people’s troubles away, even for an hour.”
What made Bennett sound so striking? To Bennett, his singular approach owed to the advice of his music teacher, “who taught me not to imitate other singers.
“He said, `If you do Sinatra or Dick Haymes or someone, you’re just going to be one of the chorus. You’ve got to imitate the musicians (instrumentalists) that you like, and I liked (pianist) Art Tatum, because he’s a dramatic virtuoso, and (saxophonist) Stan Getz, with that honeyed sound of his.
“I put those two together, and I got something that came out different.”
So Bennett was ascending, soon counting the likes of Sinatra and Garland among his personal friends.
“I was very close to Judy, we liked–we loved one another, actually,” says Bennett. “We had so much fun, and she was so misunderstood. She had the best training at MGM, and she could do anything, plus she was so funny.”
Bennett’s heady days amid Hollywood’s royalty, however, were bound to come to an end. With teenage rock all the rage, he was going to have to start singing a new tune or find a new label. Never mind that he had made 80-plus albums for Columbia during the course of 21 years, earning millions for the label in the process–his gig was up.
“I was gone from Columbia by the time they got rid of Tony, but they got rid of all the great singers,” Miller recalled. “It’s incredible, the stupidity of the record companies. They thought there is only one kind of music at a time.”
In 1971, Bennett was cut loose. He tried to recover by making profound records such as “10 Rodgers and Hart Songs” and “The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album” on his own Improv label. Alas, as with most such ventures, Bennett’s label collapsed because of distribution problems.
For fully 15 years, then, he was not heard by most of the record-buying public, though his concerts remained popular.
It wasn’t until 1986, when Columbia/Sony re-signed Bennett, that he was back in the game.
But Bennett’s comeback album was not going to be some nostalgia bash. In fact, “The Art of Excellence” documented just how much he had evolved artistically during his long years away. On tracks such as “Why Do People Fall in Love?” and “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” he brought an operatic sweep to the pop-jazz idiom. And with each subsequent album, the groundswell of popular and critical support only grew.
When he played the Rosemont Theatre earlier this year, Bennett astonished listeners with the control and suppleness of his vocals. Could this man really be turning 71 next month?
“Singing has sustained my life,” says Bennett, walking a visitor to the door of his Manhattan aerie.
“But you know what? It all depends on how lucky I get, but I think that because I’m 70 and I still have my voice, I might be able to sing when I’m 100–I mean, sing without wobbling.
“If I’m weak, I’ll just become a painter completely. But I think I could sing all the way through to 100. Now wouldn’t that be something?”
BENNETT’S BEST
A few highlights from Tony Bennett’s immense discography:
“Tony Bennett on Holiday” (Columbia, 1997). Bennett proves himself a kindred spirit of a singer he has long admired, Billie Holiday.
“Tony Bennett: Here’s to the Ladies” (Columbia, 1995). Bennett tips his hat to Judy Garland, Doris Day, Liza Minnelli and other divas.
“Tony Bennett: Steppin’ Out” (Columbia, 1993). Bennett sings tunes introduced by Fred Astaire.
“Tony Bennett: Perfectly Frank” (Columbia, 1992). Here are sometimes radical reworkings of Sinatra anthems.
“Forty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett” (Columbia/Legacy, 1991). This four-CD boxed set documents the evolution of Bennett’s art.
“Astoria: Portrait of the Artist” (Columbia, 1990). Bennett looks back on his youth in the Astoria section of Queens.
“Bennett/Berlin” (Columbia, 1987). The singer offers lean, pared-down readings of classics by Irving Berlin.
“The Art of Excellence” (Columbia, 1986). Bennett’s comeback album of 1986 could not have been more aptly named.
“The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album” and “Together Again” (DRG/Improv, 1975 and ’76). A great singer meets an innovative jazz pianist.
