| Tony
Bennett's career has enjoyed three
distinct phases, each of them very
successful. In the early '50s, he scored
a series of major hits that made him one
of the most popular recording artists of
the time. In the early '60s, he mounted
a comeback as more of an adult-album
seller. And from the mid-'80s on, he
achieved renewed popularity with
generations of listeners who hadn't been
born when he first appeared. This,
however, defines Bennett more in terms
of marketing than music. He himself
probably would say that, in each phase
of his career, he has remained largely
constant to his goals of singing the
best available songs the best way he
knows how. Popular taste may have caused
his level of recognition to increase or
decrease, but he continued to sing
popular standards in a warm, husky
tenor, varying his timing and phrasing
with a jazz fan's sense of spontaneity
to bring out the melodies and lyrics of
the songs effectively. By the start of
the 21st century, Bennett seemed like
the last of a breed, but he remained as
popular as ever.
Bennett grew up in the Astoria
section of the borough of Queens in New
York City under the name Anthony
Dominick Benedetto. His father, a
grocer, died when he was about ten after
a lingering illness that had forced his
mother to become a seamstress to support
the family of five. By then, he was
already starting to attract notice as a
singer, performing beside Mayor Fiorello
La Guardia at the opening of the
Triborough Bridge in 1936. By his teens,
Bennett had set his sights on becoming a
professional singer. After briefly
attending the High School of Industrial
Arts (now known as the High School of
Art and Design), where he gained
training as a painter, he dropped out of
school at 16 to earn money to help
support his family, meanwhile also
performing at amateur shows. Upon his
18th birthday in 1944, he was drafted
into the army, and he saw combat in
Europe during World War II. Mustered out
in 1946, he went back to trying to make
it in music, and he attended the
American Theater Wing on the GI Bill. By
the end of the 1940s, he had acquired a
manager and was working regularly around
New York. He got a break when Bob Hope
saw him performing with Pearl Bailey in
Greenwich Village and put him into his
stage show, also suggesting a name
change to Tony Bennett. In 1950,
Columbia Records A&R director Mitch
Miller heard his demonstration recording
of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and
signed him to the label.
Bennett's first hit, "Because of
You," topped the charts in September
1951, succeeded at number one by his
cover of Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold
Heart." Following another five chart
entries over the next two years, he
returned to number one in November 1953
with "Rags to Riches." Its follow-up,
"Stranger in Paradise" from the Broadway
musical Kismet, was another
chart-topper, and in 1954 Bennett also
reached the Top Ten with Williams'
"There'll Be No Teardrops Tonight" and
"Cinnamon Sinner." The rise of rock &
roll in the mid-'50s made it more
difficult for Bennett to score big hits,
but he continued to place singles in the
charts regularly through 1960, and even
returned to the Top Ten with "In the
Middle of an Island" in 1957. Meanwhile,
he was developing a nightclub act that
leaned more heavily on standards and was
exploring album projects that allowed
him to indulge his interest in jazz;
notably 1957's The Beat of My Heart, on
which he was accompanied mainly by jazz
percussionists, and 1959's In Person
With Count Basie and His Orchestra. By
the early '60s, although he had faded as
a singles artist, he had built a
successful career making personal
appearances and recording albums of
well-known songs in the manner of Frank
Sinatra.
In 1962, Bennett introduced "I Left
My Heart in San Francisco," a ballad
written by two unknown songwriters,
George Cory and Douglass Cross, who had
pitched it to his pianist, Ralph Sharon.
Released as a single by Columbia, the
song took time to catch on, and although
it peaked only in the Top 20, it
remained on one or the other of the
national charts for almost nine months.
It became Bennett's signature song and
pushed his career to a higher level. The
I Left My Heart in San Francisco album
reached the Top Five and went gold, and
the single won Bennett Grammy Awards for
Record of the Year and Best Solo Vocal
Performance, Male. Bennett's next studio
album, 1963's I Wanna Be Around, also
made the Top Five, and its title track
was another Top 20 hit, as was Bennett's
next single, "The Good Life," also
featured on the album. For the next
three years, Bennett's albums
consistently placed in the Top 100,
along with a series of charting singles
that included the Top 40 hits "Who Can I
Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)" (from
the Broadway musical The Roar of the
Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd) and
"If I Ruled the World" (from the
Broadway musical Pickwick).
By the late '60s, Bennett's record
sales had cooled off as major-record
labels like Columbia turned their
attention to the lucrative rock market.
Just as Mitch Miller had encouraged
Bennett to record novelty songs over his
objections in the 1950s, Clive Davis,
head of Columbia parent CBS Records,
encouraged him to record contemporary
pop/rock material. He acquiesced on
albums such as Tony Sings the Great Hits
of Today!, but his sales did not
improve. In 1972, he left Columbia for
MGM Records, but by the mid-'70s he was
without a label affiliation, and he
decided to found his own record company,
Improv, to record the way he wanted to.
He made several albums for Improv,
including a duet record with jazz
pianist Bill Evans, but the label
foundered in 1977.
By the late '70s, however, Bennett
did not need hit records to sustain his
career, and he worked regularly in
concert halls around the world. By the
mid-'80s, there was a growing
appreciation of traditional pop music,
as performers such as Linda Ronstadt
recorded albums of standards. In 1986,
Bennett re-signed to Columbia Records
and released The Art of Excellence, his
first chart album in 14 years. Now
managed by his son Danny, Bennett
shrewdly found ways to attract the
attention of the MTV generation without
changing his basic style of singing
songs from the Great American Songbook
while wearing a tuxedo. By the early
'90s, he was as popular as he had ever
been. The albums Perfectly Frank (1992,
a tribute to Frank Sinatra) and Steppin'
Out (1993, a tribute to Fred Astaire)
went gold and won Bennett back-to-back
Grammys for Best Traditional Pop Vocal
Performance. But his comeback was sealed
by 1994's MTV Unplugged, featuring guest
stars Elvis Costello and k.d. lang,
which went platinum and won the Grammy
for Album of the Year. Bennett became a
Grammy perennial, also taking home Best
Traditional Pop Vocal Performance awards
for Here's to the Ladies (1995) and On
Holiday: A Tribute to Billie Holiday
(1997). In 2001, he released Playin'
With My Friends: Bennett Sings the
Blues, an album of duets. |
