Tony Bennett salutes the good life
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Aug. 30, 1998) -- Since the early 1990s, he’s had a string of Grammy Award-winning, best-selling albums. He’s been a regular on David Letterman’s TV show, had his own MTV special, and he’s even appeared on the TV cartoon “The Simpsons.”

With a new family-themed album about to be released and an autobiography due out in stores in early November, the 72-year-old singer is not only more popular than he has ever been before -- he is also our only bona fide, multi-generational pop star.

That, at least, is the view from the vantage point of an outsider. But from where Tony Bennett stands, he’s simply doing the same things he has always done.

“I always was popular. I never went away,” said Bennett -- who performs tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Shed at Tanglewood as part of the weekend jazz festival -- in a recent phone interview from his New York City apartment.

“We’re so immersed in demographics it’s a fiasco,” said Bennett, masking his exasperation in a veneer of good cheer.

Addressing all the hoopla surrounding his so-called comeback, a term which he utterly rejects, Bennett said, “I was always sold out in the world completely. The only thing that changed was I went off the top 40 lists, but my fans were loyal enough for me to be sold out around the world.

“But by putting me in touch with young people again, they just came to me. I didn’t go to them. And of course it built from that. Every six months it gets stronger, and the young people are completely supporting me, plus my loyal following, so there’s more enthusiasm and spirit and energy from the young people in the audience creating a whole new feeling on stage. They just cheer us on.”

By now the story has been often told of how Bennett’s son and manager, Danny Bennett, took hold of the reins of his father’s career in 1979 and with slow and steady persistence guided him toward a larger and more youthful audience.

By taking advantage of Tony Bennett’s timeless, hip quality and his considerable cachet of cool, the younger Bennett was able to present his father to a whole new generation of fans without having him change his tune or pander to an audience, as Bennett’s record company, Columbia, would have had him done in the early ‘70s, before dropping him from the label.

“Years ago I was just taught to sing, and today everything is chopped up like a salad or something,” said Bennett. “You have children’s music, gospel, country, jazz. To me I always remember what Toscanini said about music -- it either is or it isn’t.”

In Bennett’s case, the playbook he draws from is the so-called Great American Songbook, the standards written by the likes of the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern and Duke Ellington.

They are the songs that Bennett has built his career upon, and he has been paying tribute to them ever since. Indeed, his hit albums in the ‘90s have all been tributes: “Perfectly Frank” in recognition of the late Frank Sinatra, “Steppin’ Out” saluting Fred Astaire, “Here’s to the Ladies” for Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae and Peggy Lee, and “On Holiday” for the jazz legend Billie Holiday.

Of Sinatra, Bennett said, “He was my best friend. I wasn’t part of the Rat Pack, but he just supported me right through my career. He was ten years my elder, but his close associates said he thought of me like a brother. The master is gone now. His was the best music that America has ever produced.”

While Bennett is comfortable being grouped in the tradition of Sinatra, he insists that although he is frequently invited to perform at jazz festivals, he is not a jazz singer.

“I’m a Bing Crosby singer,” he said. “I’ll sing jazz songs, but I sing an Irish song, an Italian song, any song I feel like singing, the same philosophy of Bing. If a song sounds good I sing it.

“I admire jazz because it’s the only thing that has ever been created in the U.S. that we can say it’s our tradition. It’s the most important, my favorite kind of music. It’s spontaneous, exciting and thrilling. It’s of the moment, not something that’s pre-planned and pre-thought, spontaneous, on the spot performance. It takes a tremendous amount of talent to do that.

“I know how to improvise, but I’ve always had jazz musicians to perform with, like the late Bill Evans. And I was the first white guy to sing with the Count [Basie]. It creates vitality on the spot. It’s terribly exciting, and the public senses that.”

Indeed, the jazz artists Bennett has recorded with over the years include Art Blakey, Al Cohn, Tommy Flanagan, Bobby Hackett, Chico Hamilton, Jo Jones and Zoot Sims.

For the last three decades, Bennett has been backed in concert and on record by the impeccably swinging pianist/arranger Ralph Sharon, who will be at Tanglewood with his quartet.

Bennett’s family-themed album, “The Playground,” due out on Columbia on Sept. 22, will introduce the Astoria, N.Y., native to a whole new generation of pre-MTV fans. Included on the recording are duets with Rosie O’Donnell and Sesame Street’s Kermit the Frog and Elmo. Some of the music was written by Bill Evans with new lyrics penned by the songwriting duo of Alan and Marilyn Bergman; other songs are old favorites such as “Accentuate the Positive” and “Put on a Happy Face.”

Shortly after his new CD comes out, Bennett’s autobiography, “The Good Life,” co-written with jazz writer Will Friedwald, will be published by Pocket Books. Bennett said working on the book, which reviews his life and career, was not easy.

“It was a little difficult because I don’t…my nature is I don’t retrogress,” he said. “I just think about one day at a time.”

Nevertheless, he said, once he began the process of looking back over the span of his 50-year career, he began to see it anew.

“Even though I’m 72 years old now, it came kind of interesting that things start taking shape, and it became like a mosaic putting everything together.”

The comparison is apt, as Bennett’s alter ego, Anthony Benedetto -- his given name -- has been enjoying a flourishing career as a painter. Two years ago Rizzoli International published “Tony Bennett: What My Heart Has Scene,” a 151-page collection of Bennett’s paintings and sketches. An original Benedetto reportedly fetches upwards of $40,000. When Bennett spoke to the Eagle, he was in the midst of touching up landscapes begun on a visit to Tuscany, Italy.

Up until recently, Bennett maintained his grueling performance schedule of about 200 concerts a year. “I’ve been slowing down,” he said, “I’m spending a lot more time with my painting. For 50 years now I’ve been performing. Fifty years! It’s just one of these things where now I’ve just taken some time off. But I just love doing it. B.B. King and Tito Puente and myself are the artists that have been on the road the longest.

“You change. I’ve arrived at a very envious position. I’m very satisfied with life. So many people are full of regrets. I’ve been very lucky, fortunate in life doing the two things I love to do: singing and painting. I’ve done that my whole life. I’ve arrived, to quote a Fred Astaire song, at a point where life is beautiful to me.”

[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on September 4, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]

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