Tony Bennett & The Art of Following the Instructions
On a cool day in mid-April 1986, with a light rain falling on the streets of Manhattan, Tony Bennett was musing about everything, artistic and otherwise, that had brought him to record a new album he loved, the boldly titled Art of Excellence.
“Here’s my lesson in life,” said Bennett, who was wearing a black suit with a green tie. “You finally have to get back to following all the instructions.”
He learned that most clearly, he said, from painting, which like music he practiced every day and on which he estimated he spent about 35% of his artistic time.
“If you create the proper form at the start of a painting,” he said, “it’s almost impossible to ruin it. If the form is wrong, you end up with a giant Chinese puzzle.”
Bennett’s paintings ranged from portraits of Duke Ellington and Lady Gaga to studies of Central Park, of which his airy apartment on the park’s Southern edge gave him a breathtaking view. Among other things, he painted an annual Christmas card that benefited the American Cancer Society.
Still, Tony Bennett’s death on Friday, at the age of 96, primarily and fittingly triggered a more widespread flood of appreciation for his eight decades of music, wherein he sold maybe 60–70 million records, won 20 Grammy awards and became one of the most admired singers in modern popular cultural history.
He hit the scene smoking in the early 1950s with three №1 songs, “Because of You,” “Cold Cold Heart” and “Rags to Riches.”
While those would be his only №1 hits, they didn’t trap him — as early hits trap so many popular singers — into having to sing only those memories for the rest of his life. They ended up as just a corner of his legacy, and in fact he became more defined by a 1962 song that only reached №19 on the charts, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Best of all, he became most revered for his collective recording of the Great American Songbook — Porter, Berlin, Gershwin et al — as well as collaborations with artists from Barbra Streisand to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Tony Bennett didn’t soar like Josh Groban, he didn’t stamp as bold a signature on a song as Sinatra, he didn’t have the vocal range of an Ella.
What he did was sing in a way that anyone with a radio or a record player could understand. “I had an uncle who was as hoofer,” he said. “He told me, ‘Play to the last row of the seats. That’s where the real fans are.’ ”
Bennett at his best picked solid songs, assembled great backup musicians like Bill Evans or Count Basie, and sang so directly it almost seemed plain — except he was putting just enough into his interpretation and phrasing to make them distinct. It wasn’t easy. It just sounded that way.
He spoke of his admiration for Bing Crosby, who pioneered the art of singing softly because he knew the microphone could deliver the nuances.
“I loved listening to Crosby,” Bennett said. “You could tell he just loved to sing. You could hear the spirit.”
There was still some Crosby in his own voice, Bennett said — one part of his lifelong effort to follow the instructions.
“When I started (around 1946, after he was discharged from the Army), I was an amateur,” he said. So he began to take training in bel canto singing, an operatic style whose scales he still practiced daily in 1986. But more importantly, he said, he began analyzing and absorbing the music and the art to which he was already drawn.
“When I started hearing musicians like Art Tatum, I had my ears knocked back,” he said. He began incorporating what he heard from Art Tatum’s piano into his singing, the same way the Mills Brothers adapted sounds from their backup orchestra or Frank Sinatra took phrasing from Tommy Dorsey’s trombone.
Thanks to Pearl Bailey and Bob Hope, Bennett was signed to Columbia Records, where he scored those smash hits but also had to contend with Columbia’s autocratic head of A&R (Artists and Repertoire), Mitch Miller.
Miller was convinced the public wanted light breezy pop and novelty records. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but singers like Bennett, Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney often thought this forced them to sing inconsequential throwaways instead of music that could matter.
“Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, the Gershwins, Johnny Mercer, they were writing music that would last forever,” Bennett reflected in 1995. “They were writing America’s classical music.”
Instead, Miller had him sing “Rags to Riches,” which over the years would be recorded by everyone from Dinah Washington to the Dominoes to Elvis Presley, but which Tony Bennett hated.
“I got used to it,” he said years later. “I never liked it.”
In contrast to Sinatra, Bennett would stay with Columbia until well into the 1960s, eventually recording songs he liked more. But by then those songs had been marginalized by the 1960s sea change in pop music culture that swept most of the old guard away.
Bennett acknowledged his songs were no longer mainstream pop. But 30 years later he still said they were what he should have been singing.
“They kicked me off Columbia because they said my records weren’t selling,” he said in 1995. “But when you listen to them now, you see I was right. The music holds up.”
Bennett did not resist occasionally recording contemporary pop songs that might catch the ear of a new audience. He re-recorded “Rags to Riches” with Elton John in 2006 for his acclaimed Duets album.
But there was, he said, a line: “You can’t compromise too much. You have to be yourself. Staying yourself is what keeps you different from everyone else. There are a lot of artists, but there’s only one de Kooning.
Bennett also ran into personal troubles in the 1970s, with a broken marriage and a serious drug habit. What saved him, he said in 1995, was his son Danny, who became his manager in 1979.
“Danny,” he said, “pulled me out of it,” and that relationship remained an anchor bond for the rest of his life. Beyond the personal side, Bennett said in 1995, Danny also became his musical sounding board.
“He could listen to a track,” said Tony, “and say something to me like, ‘That’s not your voice. That’s almost pretentious. Sing it in your normal voice.’ I’m so lucky my son turned out to be a great editor.”
Danny Bennett, along with a small close team that included long-time publicist Sylvia Weiner, also steered Tony Bennett to perhaps the most impressive part of his career: the second act that all artists want and 95% never get.
For starters, he cleaned up his act. “I watch what I eat,” he said in 1986. “I make sacrifices. I play a couple of sets of tennis a day. I try to paint every day, which is different from singing because it’s something you do alone. Taking care of myself helps keep me sharp and focused.”
It also kept him singing, which was the door through which, around the 1990s, Tony Bennett became hip again. The vehicles included those artistic collaborations and gigs like MTV Unplugged, where his easy charm made him the cool Grandpa of a new generation. While he didn’t storm top-40 radio, he regularly won Grammys and found himself in great demand for live shows, peaking at more than 200 dates a year.
“I love singing live,” he said. “Every night is a little different. When you play with great musicians, no two shows are exactly the same, and I love that. Sometimes what some people might call mistakes lead to the most wonderful moments.”
While Bennett is chronicled among the great pop singers of the late 20th century, he said he never measured himself against his peers.
“There are no rivalries,” he said in 1986. “I’m happy for every singer who does something well.”
He dedicated Art of Excellence to Mabel Mercer, one of his particular favorites. “When she was young,” he said, “she had a nightingale voice. When she was older, she spoke the songs. I’d see her in a club with maybe three other people, and I’d get goosebumps from how she delivered a song. She understood everything about phrasing.”
His range of admiration ran from Citizen Kane and City Lights (“the two best movies of all time”) to the dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the stage flair of Al Jolson, the portraits of John Singer Sargent and the singing of Ella Fitzgerald.
“Seeing great artists inspires me to do better,” he said in 1999. “I often ponder how long it takes me to learn.
“If you’re stretching the way you should, you will never say, ‘I made it.’ Every day is in search of competence.”
There’s pretty good evidence Tony Bennett found some. And a little more.
