The Ultimate Tony Bennett

How come we've never had a thread on this guy on ILM anyway?

fuck, googled for anti-italian racism and found this

http://www.getoffourisland.com/

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Happy Birthday Tony Bennett (born Anthony Dominick Benedetto; August 3, 1926), he is 85 years old.

Tix just went on sale for Tony & Gaga at Radio City Music Hall on June 19. That's what I call confidence!

They are preparing a Hologram just in case...

I'm glad Mr B is still breathing and working, but the mortician who made him up for this Barnes & Noble ad w/ Gaga should never work again.

http://images.enstarz.com/data/images/full/86088/lady-gaga-and-tony-bennett.png?w=580

is this the only Tony Bennett thread? I never thought much about him one way or another until I listened to his album with Bill Evans, which is pretty damn amazing.

Just announced that he’s passed on. 96, quite a run, but of course the recent years were difficult ones. By chance I finally got the MTV Unplugged disc for a buck the other week.

The NYT obit ends on an amazing anecdote:

“I like the funny things in life that could only happen to me now,” he said. “Once, when I was singing Kurt Weill’s ‘Lost in the Stars’ in the Hollywood Bowl with Basie’s band and Buddy Rich on drums, a shooting star went falling through the sky right over my head and everyone was talking about it, and the next morning the phone rang and it was Ray Charles, who I’d never met, calling from New York. He said, ‘Hey, Tony, how’d you do that, man?’ and hung up.”

Firing up the first album he did with Bill Evans tonight. That was his pinnacle achievement, IMO.

RIP

For my 19th birthday in 1995 I took myself to see Tony Bennett in concert at the Regent in Melbourne. Grand venue, recently renovated, red carpets, lush & old timey. It was a real one off event for me.
(Mum helped pay for the ticket because even then it was $$$)

It was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. Just him & Ralph Sharon on the piano, I think? Or maybe full band too, it was so long ago the specifics are hazy. But everything about it felt so beautiful and grand, the way everyone clapped at the beginning of almost every song, every big note that he hit, every twinkling solo by Sharon - my hands were so sore by end but I was so giddy with happiness & awe I didn’t care.

I had never before or since seen a performer like that, aside from maybe Tom Jones, who could have turned off the mike & still stunned the crowd acapella

Such a beautiful voice.

RIP Tony, he endures forever in the stars

(internet seems to have no record of this show & i can’t find my ticket stub now but I swear it happened lol)

Really enjoying the records with Bill Evans.

IIRC those Evans records were also Bennett's favorites among his own work. They really are great.

Here's the Canadian TV special that was broadcast between releases with songs from both:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LIW7q_cFeA

Holy Shit: Bennett was the first celebrity to cameo as themselves on The Simpsons!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZTZ-jm2XB4

yep! Dancing Homer episode!

Jesus, what a guy.

I tweet about this from time to time, but read Tony Bennett (@itstonybennett) on war, and the lessons he took from it, and the lessons he took from seeing American racism during the Allies’ occupation of Germany. It’s powerful stuff & hugely instructive: https://t.co/mcb117RP7G pic.twitter.com/ziNYZwgI8n

— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) September 2, 2018

I should have said "Tony Bennett, what a guy" instead of setting up a Mel Brooks routine.

spinning the Bill Evans stuff

so beautiful

Gah, they haphazardly cut off the climax, but STILL, Bennett's last public performance of his signature song and my God he sounds marvelous! Think about it, he's 95 - Sinatra only made it to 82 and his voice was rapidly going downhill before then. I feel so envious of everyone who went to this show, I can't even pretend to have sour grapes over it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXHsif5Q8_k

“You are beautiful!”

The Bill Evans records are heartbreaking and sublime. True favorites. And that Canadian television performance, which I hadn’t seen until yesterday, is a gem. So wonderful. Just pure poetry in my estimation. Rest In Peace.

Glenn Kenny recommended the Rodgers & Hart album above everything else (actually two albums, but it was eventually combined into one in the digital age). Totally forgot about it and it's pretty great - like the Evans albums, it was done in the '70s when he was more or less an independent recording artist and free from Columbia's misbegotten direction.

I can't overstate how crazy it is to consider how long he was around. As mentioned upthread, the guy fought Nazis and liberated concentrated camps, then decades later marched in Selma and attended MLK's most famous speech, but even his career is astonishing for its longevity. His second #1 hit was a Hank Williams cover...when Hank was STILL alive and at the top of his game. Pair that with his last album, also a chart-topper, which was a duet with Lady Gaga.

i love the way his voice sounds in his early hits, you can hear the italian, like early Dino

The indelible imprint of this man.
How can we possibly express our gratitude?
Only perhaps by understanding the power of a good song, and the generosity of a great singer.
I cherish you as my friend.
And as my teacher.
Swift rebirth Tony. ❤️🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/HQUQA2sSFd

— k.d. lang (@kdlang) July 21, 2023

Absolutely amazing Steve Roach story about him:

In grateful memory of an artist who lived beyond boundaries: My day with Tony Bennett.
We have lost another monumental Icon. While this might seem out of left field for some, here at my page, life is rich and the paths we travel are forever full surprises when we follow our bliss. I have to share this story that lives deep in my heart.
In 1982, I was in San Francisco for a few days setting up the music environment I was commissioned for as part of an art installation - The Grounding Place. (That music is available on the release Emotions Revealed.) While exploring the city in the early afternoon with my girlfriend at the time, Anthea Izzart, we found ourselves at the historic Fairmont Hotel on Knob Hill. Not far from Grace Cathedral where I would perform many years later.
Anthea immediately saw the poster board in the lobby presenting Tonys' singing engagement. This was the hotel where he first sang “I left my heart in San Francisco” in 1962.
Then she said in her whimsical songbird British accent, “I know him and his family. I worked for them.” The next thing I knew she was on the front desk phone, and he excitedly invited us up to the top floor of the hotel which was all his. Quite surreal as he opened the door. He was alone that day in the sprawling environment of room after room: classic old world architecture, massive library, dining room for 20 people, and post card views of the beautiful (fogless that day) San Francisco bay... of course!
Tony was known for his paintings, and right there looking out onto the bay in his living room was an easel with an in progress painting of the San Francisco Bay he was working on as we arrived. He quickly called down for a bottle of wine and from that point forward some catching up occurred with Anthea. Eventually we moved to music. I was sharing my passion for the emerging electronic music I was immersed in, the installation I was in town for. and with out missing a beat, Tony was talking about the music of German minimalist composer Peter Michael Hamel he had heard on John Diliberto's Totally Wired radio show. From there we were off into the world of the avant garde and beyond. I can still feel his gentle, fully engaged and eclectic sense of hunger for the ocean of music beyond boundaries we were swimming in at the point. After few hours, and just before leaving, I presented Tony with a just released cassette copy of my first release NOW. He was among the very first few to receive a copy. As we left ,I glanced back and Tony was back to work at the easel. He bid us farewell as he was placing brush to canvas.
Reflecting back 41 years later, the track from the NOW release I gave him that day titled “The Ritual Continues” seems fitting on a few levels - I still feel his welcoming sense. I still feel the common ground as artists he expressed as he embraced us with the sense of dedication to one’s life work. The ritual continues indeed.. paint in eternal peace Tony!

My kid will be a freshman at Frank Sinatra this fall #gratitude

A lot of outlets have been telling the story of Tony Bennett marching with MLK.

But have you ever heard the story about how “wokeness,” DEI, Jesus, an actual anti-racist, 2 church choirs & 1 of the greatest dance moves of all time got Tony Bennett into show biz?

A thread

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) July 22, 2023

Great thread, though it botches one detail - Bennett's stage name at that point was Joe Bari:

"When Bob Hope came down to take in Ms. Bailey’s act, he liked Joe Bari so much that he asked him to open for him at the Paramount Theater. Hope had a condition, however: He didn’t like the name Joe Bari, and insisted it be changed. Dismissing the name Anthony Benedetto as too long to fit on a marquee, Hope christened the young singer Tony Bennett." (Bruce Weber for the NY Times)

Okay, this bit from his son/manager Danny about Mitch Miller from a Variety piece is great:

Mitch called me up two months before he died, and he was like, “Oh my God, jazz, that’s all he wanted to talk about. Jazz, jazz, jazz. I told him not to sing jazz, and jazz is a thing that saved his career. You gotta tell Tony — I was wrong.” And I was like, wow, OK. okay. I was meeting with Tony a couple days later, and I said, “Hey, by the way, Mitch Miller called and he wanted me to tell you….” Our meetings often consisted of him painting while I’m talking… I said, “Mitch wanted me to tell you that he was wrong.” And Tony didn’t even look at me. He just said, “Tell me something new.”

Just saw this story Lois Gilbert posted after Bennett passed away:

Around 1983 or '84, I was hanging out at the club, Lush Life. One night, Tony Bennett walked in, and I went over to him saying, "Don't I know you from SCTV?" (Tony had recently appeared on the tv show, as himself). He chuckled and complimented me on the clever introduction. He asked me my name and asked what I did. I told him, I had been on the air at WRVR and currently in-between jobs. He then took my hand, led me over to the bar at Lush Life and said, "Lois Gilbert meet Jim Lowe, program director of WNEW-AM. Jim, Lois would make an ideal addition to the station." I started on-air the following week.

Fast forward to 2012 (about 30 years later), and I'm in the green room at the United Nations working for them conducting interviews for International Jazz Day (thanks to the Hancock Institute). I went over to Tony and said, "I'm sure you don't remember, but I want to thank you for getting me a job at WNEW-AM." To which he replied, "I didn't get you the job, you got it yourself by being talented, smart and witty. Don't let anyone take credit for who you are."

Even so, I say thank you once more, Tony, with love and gratitude.

<3 <3 <3

That’s an amazing story!

Lovely. Just the other day listening to the 500 songs podcast I learned Tony Bennett was a Sly & The Family Stone fan!

my paternal grandmother had a favorite story she loved to tell in which she ran into tb in a busy airport sometime in the mid 70s. they were both wanting to buy a newspaper, but there was only one copy left. tb says to my grandma, "i've got a few minutes before my flight and there's a coffee shop right there. will you join me for a discussion of the day's events over a cup of coffee?" she was a fan who recognized him immediately, so she of course accepted. they went about and had a nice chat for about 20 minutes. he requested to take the front section of the newspaper with the weather report and, according to grandma, never stopped smiling throughout the whole thing.

That's awesome. People like that are in woefully short supply.