by Tony Bennett
Whenever I worked with Duke—or with Basie for that matter——I deliberately violated some advice that Louis Prima had given me years earlier in Vegas. He’d said, “Whatever you do, wherever you work, make sure you get top billing. Go ahead and work a smaller room, but even if it’s a sawdust joint, be the headliner.” But I went against his great advice where Basie and Ellington were concerned because I wanted to show respect for them. The only other times I settled for second billing were when I played with Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra, and I’m sure I don’t have to explain why.
Duke was a mystic. He told me that after he’d read the Bible, he knew everything he needed to know. We were on a plane together once and he told me a story about writing an upcoming concert of sacred music. When he started working, he called his writing partner, Billy Strayhorn, in New York and told him he wanted to start the concert with a musical motif inspired by the Book of Genesis. A month later he called Billy to see what he had come up with. Amazingly, they had written the exact same notes to the same opening words, “In the beginning there was God.”
Another time, Duke and I were both working in Boston and staying at the Somerset Hotel. I was hanging out in my room with Bobby Hackett, who was talking about how he’d really love to have a jam session. The phone rang, and it was Duke. He said, “I’m downstairs and I have a song for you. Come to the Grand Ballroom.” When Duke began playing he realized that the middle octave of the piano was shot. But that didn’t deter Duke: he played for us anyway, using the remainder of the keyboard. That song was “Love Scene.” He played a whole hour for us, everything he could think of. I looked over at Bobby, who was so moved he was quietly crying tears of joy.
Duke had a lovely habit of sending me a dozen roses whenever he’d written a new song. It was a beautiful gesture from a great man, and it later inspired me to do a watercolor painting of Duke in front of a bouquet of roses, which I entitled “God Is Love.” To this day it’s one of my favorite paintings, and though I always show it, I would never sell it. In fact, it’s the only one of my own paintings I’ve hung in my home. I’ve sung so many of his songs over the years, including “I’m Just a Lucky So and So,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Love Scene,” and “Reflections,” to name only a few. I’ve concluded many concerts with a special medley of Ellington songs, always climaxing with “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” When the great Louis Bellson was playing with me, that medley was a feature for him, and we still do it today to spotlight my wonderful drummer Clayton Cameron. Few people know that Duke composed more music that anyone else in the history of music, including ballet suites, tone poems, sacred concerts, and popular songs.
We got together whenever we could, whether it was on the road, in a club, or staying up all night jamming. Duke and I celebrated his seventy-second birthday together. I was working at the Waldorf-Astoria that night, and Duke was out in the audience. I introduced him and he came up and played a few numbers, charming the entire room. I brought out a huge cake, and everybody sang “Happy Birthday.” What a night!
By 1968 my life was in a complete uproar. My divorce battle with Patricia was raging in the courts, and in April, Sandra told me she was pregnant. My mom started to get really sick and became bedridden; all I could do was think back to the time when we were all in Astoria and she worked so hard to take care of us. Now the tables were turned. I ran back and forth between New York and Jersey to see her whenever I could. After every visit I rode back to the city thinking it might be the last time I’d ever see her. It was about as much as I could take.
My first daughter was born on January 9, 1969. At the suggestion of my friend and television producer Dwight Hemion we named her Joanna, inspired by my song “When Joanna Loved Me.” I’d always thought that was a lovely song and an enchanting name. Joanna was a beautiful child and it was really exciting and comforting to have a new daughter in my life.
In the late sixties, a new pop star’s career lasted about a year and a half; as soon as he started slipping, the label would drop him and move on to the next guy. It got to be like a supermarket. I called those kind of artists “overdogs” because they were so heavily promoted they couldn’t lose. It didn’t matter whether or not they had talent or how long they lasted; they were forced down the public’s throats.
After much disagreement, Clive Davis convinced me to do the kind of record he wanted. The album was called Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today, a collection of contemporary cover tunes. I started planning the record by listening to as many current hits as I could stand. I mean, some of these songs made me physically ill. Even Clive Davis says in his book that I became so nauseous before the first recording session that I literally threw up.
Wally Gold was the producer, and the poor guy was in the difficult position of having to serve as a buffer between me and the company. These songs just weren’t my style. The only good thing to come out of that project was that we hired the great orchestrator Peter Matz. He was perfect for the job.
Clive made sure to promote Great Hits so well that it sold more than my other recent albums had. I thought it was pretty corny because first he got me to do it his way, and then he printed up more copies of that album to make it look like the public was demanding it. Give me a break!
It wasn’t long before he wanted a follow-up, But there was no way I would go through another Great Hits of Today session—I just couldn’t do it. Instead I took the George Harrison song “Something” and made it the title song on my next album.
Peter once again did the orchestrations for Something, and this time everything turned out right. All twelve songs were my kind of contemporary songs, the best the times had to offer.
I ended the Something album with Louis Armstrong’s last hit, “What a Wonderful World.” Instead of just covering the song, I made it into a tribute to him, ending the song by imitating him: “Yeah, Louis Armstrong was right. It’s a wonderful world.” The album was released in October 1970. For the cover, I chose a shot of me cradling infant Joanna in my arms. It’s the best album cover I ever saw.
At the end of 1971 my divorce with Patricia became final. For all practical purposes my relationship with Patricia had been over for years, since that lonely Christmas in 1965. Patricia and the boys stayed in the house in Englewood, and as hard as it was to accept, I was determined to stay involved with my boys, and though at times it was tough to work everything out, I didn’t disappear from their lives.
While the pressure at the label continued to mount, I hired Derek Boulton, an Englishman, as my manager. Derek was also Bob Farnon’s manager; we’d met when I was working with Bob and we hit it off right away. We both agreed that it was time for me to put the “two shows a night” phase of my career behind me. I’d been doing nightclubs for twenty years. It was time to graduate to venues like Carnegie Hall, the Palladium, Royal Festival Hall, and Royal Albert Hall. When I worked in Vegas, the rooms were the size of concert halls, and I’d been gradually expanding my stage show so by this time I was using a thirty-two piece orchestra. I was also showing back-projection film clips during my performances, like scenes from the city of San Francisco, or scenes from Chaplin’s film City Lights when I performed “Smile.” Mr. Chaplin was so impressed with my version of “Smile” that he mailed me the last ten minutes of his film Modern Times, in which Chaplin gives a flower to Paulette Goddard and walks down the road into the sunset.
The old-time clubs like the Copa and Chez Paree were on their way out anyhow, since by the late sixties all the action had moved to Vegas. I was happy with my decision to stop playing the small nightclubs, and on Saturday, October 9, 1971, I gave a concert at Carnegie Hall. I was working with Bob Farnon, who conducted the fifty-piece orchestra and included some of his original compositions as well as his imaginative orchestrations of other works, like his wonderful suite based on Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
The first half of the show went gre
at, but by my second or third number of the second half, I could see that the audience was getting up and leaving. Then I noticed a funny smell in the air. At first we thought it must be a fire, but eventually we figured out that somebody had sabotaged the concert by putting a stink bomb into the ventilation system.
Once we knew there was no fire, everybody calmed down. It was a warm autumn night, so the audience went outside while the Carnegie management cleared the air. After ten minutes everybody came back for the rest of the show—not one person gave up and went home. The great opera singer Richard Tucker was in the audience that night and came back stage and encouraged me to relax. His talk inspired me to come back out and sing my heart out! To this day I don’t know who it was that tried to break up my concert with a stink bomb, although I figured it was one of “the boys” trying to put a scare into me: it didn’t work.
Things were pretty much still at an impasse with Columbia, even after the release of Great Hits of Today and Something. We were soon embroiled in another disagreement, this one because of my longtime friendship with composer Alec Wilder.
Alec wrote “serious” concert pieces, mainly for chamber groups. I especially loved his song “While We Were Young.” He was a great wit, and a fixture on both the jazz and cabaret scenes and I’d met him in the early fifties. I had been doing his songs ever since.
In the late sixties, I introduced Alec to friends of mine in England, Ken and Renee Gordan, whose young son liked to write poetry. Alec was so taken with the boy’s poems that he decided to set them to music. The Vietnam War was on everybody’s mind back then, and the boy’s poems addressed the war from a child’s point of view: why he didn’t want his father to go into battle, why war was bad for children. Alec’s idea was to compose an octet around this boy’s recitation of his poems. He eventually included other children’s poems, and by the time he finished The Children’s Plea for Peace it had music for a full orchestra, a children’s chorus, and a narrator.
I was determined to record it. I wanted the part of the narrator, and Alec planned to compose some pieces for me to sing as well. He was thrilled that I wanted to do it. But when I brought the idea to Columbia, they immediately decided the piece was too controversial and too uncommercial—without ever hearing it. So I had to explain to Alec that Columbia just wouldn’t go for it, and he never quite forgave me for not getting that composition recorded. He later wrote about his life and criticized his closest friends: Whitney Balliet, Marian McPartland, and yours truly, and he let me have it in print for not coming through on The Children’s Plea for Peace.
But I had fought like crazy to record Plea for Peace. I fought, and I kept on fighting. I stormed out of the studio one day after an argument with Clive and his cronies, and on my way out I heard one of them say, “We gotta get rid of that wop!” The proverbial straw broke the camel’s back: I went to Columbia brass and said, “I want out. I don’t want to play this game anymore. I don’t want to make the records that sell the most, I want to sell the most records that are the best I can make. The public deserves it.”
After some long and loud negotiations we finally worked out a deal we both could live with. I was to give them two more albums, which I’d produce myself, and that would fulfill my contractual obligation to them. I decided to do both of these projects with Bob Farnon, and the first album would be live.
The Royal Albert Hall was celebrating its one hundredth anniversary in 1971, and Derek arranged for Bob and me to perform at one of the special concerts being given to commemorate the centenary. The London Philharmonic Orchestra was featured, and I supplemented them with fifteen of the best jazz musicians we could find in London, like the fabulous drummer Kenny Clare. The program included a lot of my big numbers, as well as some standards.
It was a sold-out concert, and one of the most exciting nights I’ve ever enjoyed in show business. The audience went wild; it sounded like all of Britain was there. We made arrangements for the BBC to videotape the concert, directed by Yvonne Littlewood, and Derek worked out a deal for NBC to broadcast it in the United States. It got top ratings. When it came time to design the album cover, I chose my boyhood friend Rudy DeHarak. His design was based on a black-and-white image of me taken off the TV screen. It was great.
On November 15, 1971, I had my final recording session for Columbia Records. It consisted of a single song, “The Summer Knows,” the theme from Summer of ‘42 by Michel Legrand and Alan and Marilyn Bergman. It was a fine song, and after twenty-two years it was an appropriate way to conclude a long relationship. Sandra and I were finally married in December of 1971. I was relieved because I really wanted the three of us to become a family. I had to believe that everything in both my personal and professional lives was going to work out for the best.
CHAPTER TEN
I left Columbia Records voluntarily because I wanted to create a catalogue that would be a legacy for my fans. I wanted to make records that would stand the test of time. I’m not concerned about the criticisms of the pencil pushers at the record company; the public is my only critic. I go by their reaction, and if their reaction to my live performances was any indication of how they felt, then I was doing something right. My goal was to become the consummate concert performer.
I looked around for another record company. My manager Derek Boulton worked out a deal for me with Mike Curb, head of A&R in the American division of Polygram Records. They offered me more than Columbia had, and promised that the rights to the masters of my albums would eventually revert back to me. According to the terms of the new contract, my albums would be released on the Philips label in England, and on MGM/Verve in America.
I started my recording contract with MGM/Verve the same way I ended with Columbia: by making the best album I possibly could. Once again I worked with Bob Farnon. The album, The Good Things in Life, began and ended with a wonderful title track by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley from their musical It’s a Funny Old World, I thought this song really expressed the way I’d been feeling for the last few years, and ending the album with a reprise of the same song was a musical concept that appealed to me.
I went back to England in 1971. Derek had made a lot of show business contacts there over the years, my new record company was located in London, and we figured that concentrating on that market for a while would be time well spent. So Sandra, baby Joanna, and I packed up and left for what would turn out to be a yearlong stay. Ted Lewis, the famous vaudevillian and bandleader had told me—this was before I’d ever played England—“Do yourself a favor. Play England every year. The fans there are unlike anywhere else. They’re loyal. They never forget you.”
Mr. Lewis was right. I’d gone back in 1958 to do a television broadcast, Sunday Night at the London Palladium, and I’d made my proper London nightclub debut at Pigalle, in Piccadilly in 1961, to smash reviews. Each time I toured the British towns—London, Manchester, Liverpool, Harrogate—my fans came out to support me. My recording sessions for MGM/Verve were done in England, and between sessions I did a provincial tour with a big band featuring Kenny Clare on drums, Arthur Watts on bass, and my pianist John Bunch, who’d accompanied me from the States. All my engagements were “standing room only” In February of 1972, I gave concerts all over England and set a record when tickets for the shows sold out in thirty-five minutes. It was truly rewarding to be so enthusiastically welcomed by the British public. England has been good to me over the years; I’ve done six royal command performances, and I go back to perform as often as I can. In fact, my biggest fan club, or “appreciation society” as they like to call it, is based there.
I taped a television series—thirteen half-hour shows done in a concert format—at Talk of the Town, a restaurant theater in London. The guests were fabulous—I had Annie Ross, Matt Monro, and one night I had both Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine. You can’t get any better than that! Every show featured one segment that took place outside the studio: a camera followed me while I went sightseeing with Joanna, and these sce
nes were accompanied by some gorgeous instrumentals by Bob Farnon.
I worked hard while I was in England, but I also took some time out for my personal life, something I hadn’t done in years. Sandra, Joanna, and I took in the lovely English sights and got to spend some good times together. I’d been painting whenever I could, but it was during this year in London that I really started to get serious about it. I found a wonderful professor of art, John Barnicort, who gave me private instruction. I was staying in a flat next to the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, and he’d come over to my place and give me some lessons on technique. I became more serious about painting than I’d ever been, and I’ve never looked back I was determined to become a skilled painter, no matter how hard I had to work at it.
I took up tennis too. Whenever we got to a new town, the first thing John Bunch did was find out where a game of tennis was going on. I’d never really played before, but I’d enjoyed watching the game as a kid, and the fact that John felt so passionate about it really got me interested. John’s girlfriend Chips (who’d been raised by Winston Churchill) took me to a very nice tennis court the first time I played. I later found out that it was center court at Wimbledon! Soon I started taking professional lessons, and it wasn’t long before I was hooked. Today I play at least twice a week. Whenever I’m in New York, I head out to the courts at the East River Tennis Club in Astoria, usually with my drummer Clayton Cameron—who plays tennis better than he plays the drums, which is saying a lot!
I also had some time to tape another television show, a one-hour TV special at the Palladium with the fabulous Lena Home. To me Lena is synonymous with class, and when someone proposed the idea that she and I should do a concert together, I jumped at it. The show was produced by Lord Lew Grade, and featured John Bunch on piano and the great English drummer Jack Parnell. After the show, we toured our act around England during 1972 and 1973, toured the States with the package in 1974 and 1975, and then brought it back to the Palladium in London in 1976.
