Tony Bennett
Anthony Dominick Benedetto
BORN: August 3, 1926, Queens, NY
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. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide