Watching modest, white-haired Tony Bennett clean up at the Emmy awards last month, I felt a special warm glow. In a medium that intensely values whatever’s young and hot, here was respect being paid to someone resolutely old and retro. And yet, after 50 years in the entertainment business, I think it’s safe to say that Tony Bennett’s success is anything but a fluke.

Of course, I'm prejudiced. I was raised in an anti-Sinatra household (yes, there are such things), and in our family, the party line was that Frank Sinatra got all the attention, but Tony Bennett was the real musician. As it happens, Sinatra himself was of the same opinion — in 1965 he told a reporter, “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business” — but as a kid, I didn’t know this. All I knew was that Bennett hits like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “If I Ruled the World” grabbed me a whole lot more than “My Way” or “Strangers in the Night.” Sinatra had attitude; Bennett had sincerity. No contest, it seemed to me.

Granted, big band arrangements and cocktail-lounge suavity were hardly my cup of tea in the late '60s once the British Invasion hit. In the 1970s, I never stopped to wonder what had happened to Tony Bennett (or, for that matter, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Al Martino, Jerry Vale, all those Italian crooners that had once been on the radio). Well, I wasn’t alone, apparently; changing musical tastes hit Tony Bennett hard in the '70s, and his life, not to mention his career, fell apart.

What brought him back was his son, Danny Bennett, who became his manager in the early '80s. Danny Bennett shrewdly decided to market his dad’s image – the tux, the standard repertoire, the whole works – not to the old fogeys but to a younger audience that had never heard Cole Porter or George Gershwin tunes. A brilliant move, to say the least.

Who needs new material when you can breathe life into the old chestnuts like no one else? So Bennett’s latest project, a planned multi-volume compilation of standards, is just brand extension, really. Tony Bennett Sings the Ultimate American Songbook Volume 1 not only has no new songs, it doesn’t even have any new recordings – the release dates listed range from 1958 (“Every Time We Say Goodbye”) to 1997 (“The Way You Look Tonight”). But it does represent a careful culling of his own best versions of the songs he loves, and who could quarrel with that?

Article Author: Holly Hughes

Holly A Hughes has been a rock 'n roll fan since February 9, 1964. She's heard it all, on vinyl, cassettes, 8-track tapes, CDs, and mp3 files. But so long as it's got a good beat, she'll dance to it.

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