Reinventing Romance

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

It’s not necessary for me to read papers or surf the Internet to find out that Tony Bennett is making one of his biannual appearances in New York: I just wait for the phone to ring. Whenever Tony has a concert coming up, I start getting besieged with calls from every woman I’ve ever dated. Women who wouldn’t give me the time of day the rest of the year – which is practically all of them – will bat their eyes and ask me to take them to hear Tony Bennett. Tony’s in town this week, starting Tuesday at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall, and the phone is ringing again.


Generally speaking, Mr. Bennett plays New York every other year, usually to support a new album and some key reissues. This season, however, marks a Bennett bonanza: the first CD release of his first album, the very jazzy “Cloud 7” (Columbia CK 85806) from 1954; two box sets, the career retrospective formerly known as “Forty Years,” expanded and repackaged as “Fifty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett” (Columbia C5K 92784), and his catalog from 1973-1977, “Tony Bennett: The Complete Improv Recordings” (Concord CCD4-2255); and his brand new album, “The Art of Romance” (RPM Records/Columbia CK 92820) recorded a few months ago at the studio of his younger son, Daegal Bennett, in Englewood, N.J.


I won’t comment on either of the box sets – my writing appears in both of the booklets, part of an association I’ve been proud to be part of ever since I co-wrote Mr. Bennett’s autobiography six years ago. Rather, I’d like to concentrate my attention on “The Art of Romance,” which I think is the vocal album of the year. This disc proves again Mr. Bennett’s undiminished status as the greatest of all artists currently performing the Great American Songbook. The first time you listen to it, you’ll feel you’re meeting a new friend, with whom you’re going to be spending a lot of time with from now on.


Maybe this is because the entire project is defined by the personal relationships between its creators. The orchestrations are by Lee Musiker, Mr. Bennett’s pianist and musical director for the last three years; Jorge Calandrelli, who has written the bulk of his string arrangements since his return to recording in 1985; and Johnny Mandel, perhaps the greatest of all living composer-arrangers, who collaborated frequently with Bennett in the 1960s. The great bebop saxophonist Phil Woods is also all over the album.


Three of the best songs, “Close Enough For Love,” “Where Do You Start,” and “Little Did I Dream,” are by Mr. Mandel. Other old friends, including the late Pearl Bailey and pianist Barbara Carroll, undoubtedly inspired Mr. Bennett to choose “Don’t Like Goodbyes” and Jerome Kern’s “All in Fun.” “I Remember You” and “The Best Man” come from the songbook of Nat King Cole, who was both a hero and close friend of Tony’s.


There are also a couple of ringers. “Time To Smile” is the only other song I’ve ever heard by Geoff Clarkson, the pianist and author of the standard “Home (When Shadows Fall).” “All for You,” Mr. Bennett’s own first lyric, is set to Django Reinhardt’s best-known composition, “Nuages” – the best of several texts I’ve heard to that melody.


“The Art of Romance” is my favorite of his modern-era recordings, outdistanced only by 1986’s “Art of Excellence” (and possibly “Astoria,” from 1990). I prefer the more lush, orchestral projects to the jazzier, triocentric ones – it’s not that Mr. Bennett isn’t a great swinger, but there’s nothing in the world as moving as the sound of his voice backed by a big string section. At 78 years old, there’s some increased raspiness in the man’s voice, and some of his long notes are less sure than they were in 1985, but like Sinatra in his 70s, he retains his ability to climb inside a song and make you believe it.


No one is better than Mr. Bennett at putting lyrics that have two levels of meaning, and “Romance” contains some choice examples: He can do poignant, as when he sings about the platonic “good-time-Charlies” of “All in Fun” who turn out to be lovers after all. He can do comic: The self-proclaimed ladies’ man of “The Best Man,” turns out to be a schlemiel (I can relate). He can do down-to-earth: On the opener, “Close Enough for Love,” aptly animating Paul Williams’s lyric about love arising from mutual imperfections and dysfunction between “an unmatched pair.” He can do heartbreaking: On “Where Do You Start?” he makes you feel every nuance of Alan and Marilyn Bergman’s knowing lyric about a divorcing couple who still have feelings for each other.


“Romance” is all love songs, and although some are medium and uptempo, the ones that really resonate are the slow ballads. Lee Musiker’s chart of “Being Alive” finds something new to do with this classic song. About a minute into the Sondheim classic, Messrs. Bennett and Musiker – with the help of Phil Woods – turn it into a samba in an approach reminiscent of Mr. Bennett’s great (but, alas, un-reissued) swinging version of “Losing My Mind.” It’s a risky, almost goofy treatment, but I find it grows on me with every listening.


Mr. Mandel’s orchestration of “I Remember You,” conversely, shows that sometimes the conventional approach is best – the slow, stately string arrangement is similar to those of Nat Cole (Ralph Carmichael) and Sarah Vaughan (Don Costa). Mr. Bennett makes it his own through sheer force of authority.


For me, though, the kicker is “Don’t Like Goodbyes” from “House of Flowers.” Composed by Harold Arlen – whom Mr. Bennett consistently names as his favorite songwriter – the words are by Truman Capote, who should have written more such lyrics. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Calandrelli carefully balance the sentimental and the casual, finding great emotion in the way the protagonist constantly tells us that emotion is precisely what he’s trying to avoid. The arrangement sets us up to expect a key change, and when it finally arrives, we feel like we’ve just climbed every mountain – and can see the view from the top.


I’m also glad it isn’t the last song on the album. That would have been a bit too much, and it also would have encouraged the assumption that the person saying goodbye is Tony Bennett himself. But even as it is, if you can get through “Don’t Like Goodbyes” with a dry eye, you’re a better man than I.


Until November 28 at Rose Theater (Broadway, at 60th Street, 212-258-9595).



The Essential Tony Bennett


The two new Tony Bennett packages are absolutely essential. “Fifty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett” samples Mr. Bennett’s entire career, including all of his major chart hits and signature songs, as well as choice tracks from almost all of his key albums. “Tony Bennett: The Complete Improv Recordings” includes all of Bennett’s recorded works from 1973 to 1977, as produced by the singer himself. The centerpiece is Mr. Bennett’s celebrated second album with Bill Evans – heard with all kinds of extra tracks and bonus material. The gravy is his intriguing collaboration with Marian McPartland, Ruby Braff, and the underappreciated orchestrator-pianist Torrie Zito. If you’ve already bought “The Art of Romance” and the two new boxes, and you want to hear more, I recommend the following (in no particular order).


“The Tony Bennett-Bill Evans Album” (Fantasy FCD-9489-2) This 1975 album marked the first of Mr. Bennett’s two inspired meetings with Bill Evans, generally regarded as the greatest jazz pianist of the 1960s and 1970s. Although most fans prefer the second, this one’s a classic from the opening words – the verse to “My Foolish Heart” – onward. Leonard Bernstein’s melancholy “Some Other Time,” which begins with profoundly simple bass notes from the pianist, is Mr. Bennett’s most moving recording.


“The Movie Song Album” (Columbia CK 9272) A whole new concept for a “concept” album, this 1965 album brought together 12 exceptionally beautiful songs written for films, mostly contemporary, arranged, and conducted by the composers them selves. Johnny Mandel, Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones, and David Rose all provided material. It’s one of the great jazz-pop albums of all time – buy it, beg it, borrow it, or download it if you have to.


“Tony Sings for Two” (Sony Music Special Products A 8242) and “When Lights Are Low” (CBS Sony Japan CSCS 5242) In 1959 and then in 1964, Mr. Bennett and his longtime musical director, pianist Ralph Sharon, recorded two daringly intimate projects. The first was a collection of voice and piano duets, in which the singer sounds unbelievably vulnerable and exposed. The second, his only studio date with his regular working trio of many years, offers further proof what a hard-swinger Mr. Bennett could be. Unfortunately, neither is adequately represented on CD – both should, by rights, be available domestically. But then, the vast majority of Mr. Bennett’s classic albums are still, unbelievably, unreissued.


“The Art of Excellence” (Columbia CK 40344) After making his fans wait eight years between albums, Mr. Bennett stepped up to the plate in 1986 and knocked one right out of the ballpark. It seemed he had been saving up great songs – mostly relatively new – for all that time, such as the belting opener “Why Do People Fall in Love?” and “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?”, which seems intimate and extroverted at the same time. His first collaboration with string orchestrator Jorge Calandrelli and producer-manager (and son) Danny Bennett produced an album that fully lived up to its extravagant title.


The New York Sun

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