Tony Bennett, singer, is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist. You’ll hear him and his music in a 1955 interview. Bennett has released over 70 albums during his career. The biggest selling of these in the U.S. have been I Left My Heart in San Francisco, MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett, and Duets: An American Classic, all of which went platinum for shipping one million copies. Eight other albums of his have gone gold in the U.S. Bennett also charted over 30 singles during his career.

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EARLY YEARS & WAR

At age 10, Tony Bennett sang at the opening of the Triborough Bridge in New York City, standing next to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia who patted him on the head.

He began singing for money at age 13, performing as a singing waiter in several Italian restaurants around his native Queens.

Drawing was another early passion and he saw himself having a career in commercial art. He attended New York’s School of Industrial Art studying painting and music . He later appreciated their emphasis on proper technique.

He dropped out at age 16 to help support his family and worked as a copy boy and runner for the Associated Press in Manhattan

He then set his sights on a professional singing career, returning to performing as a singing waiter, playing and winning amateur nights all around the city, and having a successful engagement at a Paramus, New Jersey, nightclub

As an infantryman in the US Army from 1944 during World War 2 in Germany, Tony Bennett narrowly escaped death in combat several times. The experience made him a pacifist. He later wrote, “Anybody who thinks that war is romantic obviously hasn’t gone through one…It was a nightmare that’s permanent. I just said, ‘This is not life. This is not life.'” At the war’s end he was part of the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp near Landsberg.

Upon his discharge from the Army and return to the States in 1946, Tony Bennett studied at the American Theatre Wing on the GI Bill. He was taught bel canto singing which has kept his voice in good shape for his entire career.

NEW AUDIENCE

Around 1990, Tony’s son, Danny Bennett, (who you will hear as a 17 month old in the 1955 Tony Bennett interview in this week’s Phantom Dancer) felt that younger audiences who were unfamiliar with his father would respond to his music if given a chance. No changes to Tony’s formal appearance, singing style, musical accompaniment or song choice (generally the Great American Songbook) were necessary or desirable.

Danny began regularly to book his father on Late Night with David Letterman, a show with a younger, “hip” audience. This was subsequently followed by appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Simpsons, Muppets Tonight, and various MTV programs.

In 1993, Bennett played a series of benefit concerts organized by alternative rock radio stations around the country. The plan worked; as Tony later remembered, “I realized that young people had never heard those songs. Cole Porter, Gershwin – they were like, ‘Who wrote that?’ To them, it was different. If you’re different, you stand out.”

Bennett was seen at MTV Video Music Awards shows side by side with the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Flavor Flav, and as his “Steppin’ Out with My Baby” video received MTV airplay, it was clear that, as The New York Times said, “Tony Bennett has not just bridged the generation gap, he has demolished it. He has solidly connected with a younger crowd weaned on rock. And there have been no compromises.”

His 1994 MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett album went platinum and, besides taking the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance Grammy award for the third straight year, also won the top Grammy prize of Album of the Year.

TECHNIQUE

Bennett had no intention of retiring until his announcement on stage in 2021, saying that he had to retire due to health reasons. He was 95.

Refering to artists like Pablo Picasso, Jack Benny, and Fred Astaire, Bennett said “right up to the day they died, they were performing. If you are creative, you get busier as you get older.”

Regarding his choices in music, Bennett stated his artistic stance in a 2010 interview:

“I’m not staying contemporary for the big record companies, I don’t follow the latest fashions. I never sing a song that’s badly written. In the 1920s and ’30s, there was a renaissance in music that was the equivalent of the artistic Renaissance. Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and others just created the best songs that had ever been written. These are classics, and finally they’re not being treated as light entertainment. This is classical music.”

22 NOVEMBER PLAY LIST