Jazz: Happy Birthday, Tony Bennett

Singer Anthony “Tony” Benedetto was born on
August 3rd, 1926 in New York City, New York.

After fighting on the frontline of WWII, he
returned to the States to pursue a career in
singing and adopted the stage name Bennett.

Tony Bennett was born in Astoria, Queens, New York, on August 3, 1926. Bennett had his first hit, "Because of You," in 1951, and made a career singing standards, including his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Bennett's career waned in the mid-1960s, as rock music became dominant, but rebounded in the 1990s.

Early Life

Bennett grew up in a poor family, in circumstances made more difficult by the Depression and by the death of his father when he was 9. While he attended the High School for the Industrial Arts in New York City, Bennett began working as a singing waiter. After serving in the Army infantry during World War II, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill and studied singing and acting at the American Theatre Wing. During this period his vocal coach Mimi Spear offered some advice that he took to heart: Don't imitate other singers; emulate instrumentalists instead.

Early Hits

The young singer was discovered by Pearl Bailey in Greenwich Village and subsequently hired by Bob Hope in 1949. Hope advised him to take the name Tony Bennett (rather than the name he had been using, Joe Bari) and put him in his road show. Bennett told Billboard in 1997, "I've been on the road ever since." He signed with Columbia Records in 1950 and started working with record producer Mitch Miller. His early hits included "Rags to Riches," "Because of You" and "Stranger in Paradise." His most famous song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," was released in 1962 as a B-side on a single; it also earned Bennett his first Grammy Award.

By the early 1950s he had established himself
as a pop singer and formidable jazz performer.

Bennett's success led to some artistic differences between the singer and his record company. His interest in singing quality material made him want to try new songs and new kinds of music. Columbia, however, wanted to repeat the style of his early hits. For some time, Bennett and Miller compromised by each selecting one half of the material to be recorded. After 20 years of recording with Columbia, however, he was told not to do any new songs. Company management wanted Bennett to cover top 10 hits. Soon thereafter, Bennett ended his relationship with the company, formed his own label and recorded on others. Bennett ended up taking a long hiatus from recording, staying away from the studios for some 10 years before he made the 1986 album The Art of Excellence.

Bennett's break from recording coincided with some difficult times for the singer. He moved to California in the late 1970s and began using cocaine and marijuana, drugs that were an integral part of the celebrity party scene. A near-death experience passing out in the bathtub and the memory of Lenny Bruce's drug-related death scared Bennett into changing his habits. Bennett was also struggling with a change in the public's taste in popular music, with the increased dominance of rock and roll. When he began his career, pop music appealed to all ages. Bennett asserts that young listeners were being taught that rock music belonged exclusively to their generation and that this alienated children from their parents. Moreover, music marketing was so focused on young listeners that it was squeezing adults who bought Bennett's albums out of the record stores.

Career Revival

Bennett has weathered such troubles and completely revitalized his career. He credits his son Danny, who is now his manager, with making many key decisions. Danny put Bennett on television, on the animated series The Simpsons, on talk shows with David Letterman and Jay Leno, and on MTV Unplugged. The last appearance earned the singer a flock of young fans. He now has a recording contract with Columbia that allows him to simply turn in his finished record, with no corporate input on content. Among Bennett's later recordings are the Grammy-winning MTV Unplugged; a series of tribute albums, Bennett/Berlin (Irving Berlin), Perfectly Frank (as in Sinatra), Tony Bennett on Holiday (Billie Holiday) and Here's to the Ladies (miscellaneous female singers); and the children's album The Playground. he releasedSteppin’ Out in 1993 which went on to win a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance.These recordings demonstrate that Bennett still has plenty of ideas about the music he wants to sing, and that he is in fine form. With a half-century of professional singing under his belt, Bennett credits learning bel canto technique with preserving his voice; he told Billboard, "It teaches you how to breathe properly and how to sing so that you don't push and you don't destroy your voice."

During the 1990s Bennett published two books that gave fans an inside look into his personal life and career. Tony Bennett: What My Heart Has Seen(1996) is a coffee-table book of his paintings, exhibiting a very serious pastime for a man who once aspired to be a painter. His autobiography The Good Life(1998) details his childhood, singing career, personal life and friendships. Signing his name "Anthony Benedetto," he began showing his paintings in 1977 and has since sold his work for as much as $40,000 a canvas. What My Heart Has Seen includes a number of portraits of famous people, as well as still-lifes, landscapes, and cityscapes that are dominated by scenes of New York and San Francisco.

To mark his 80th birthday in 2006, he released Tony Bennett: Duets - An American Classic, recorded with a collection of stars including Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Bono and Sting. The project proved to be such a success that he did another celebratory album in 201l for his 85th birthday.

Bennett released Duets II in the fall of 2011, and his work with Lady Gaga on "The Lady Is a Tramp" proved to be one of its highlights. The album also featured another distinctive track—the late Amy Winehouse's final recording. She and Bennett sang together on "Body and Soul." Their collaboration won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group in 2012. That same night, Bennett also took home an award for "Who Can I Turn To?" his duet with Queen Latifah.

One of the best known entertainers of the 20th
century, Bennett’s success continues today.

Live Music: at Jazz in the Gardens, Voices carried

Though Jamaican audiences are far more primed for vocal than instrumental live acts (which makes this writer somewhat of a contrarian), a well executed vocal cabaret can be a genuinely extraordinary thrill.

The most recent edition of Jazz in the Gardens at the Pegasus was just that, with every act on the roster delivering a sterling set (despite two artiste's protests of a failing voice) of well-chosen numbers that offered variety and  virtuosity in almost equal measure.

First up though, the band. Drummer Desi Jones led an amalgamation of EMC (Edna Manley College) alumni through an invigorating curtain-raiser of standards before the first vocal act took the stage.

Nina Karle Levy (below) took advantage of her famous name to reel off a fine trio of songs by her storied namesake, Nina Simone: a sultry yet cheerful  "Feelin Good" the crowd-pleaser "My baby Just Cares For Me" and this writer's favourite,"I Put A Spell On You"

She was followed by Montana, who busying himself on the hotel circuit, arrived in less-than-perfect vocal nick. Still, he managed to belt out more than creditable renditions of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" and a Spinners medley  ("Could It Be I'm Falling In Love/ I'll Be Around") before backing off the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic 'A House is Not A Home".

There was no backing off for erstwhile sportscaster Ian Andrews(right), who came in between two women vocalists I'll get to in a little while. Dapper in grey, he dove straight into "My One and Only Love" before teasing with Doris Day's "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" and giving the required full emotional treatment (even dropping to one knee) to the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody".

Alisa and Christine are the aforementioned ladies and whilst their repertoires differed considerably, the quality, professionalism and flat-out commitment to their respective crafts was equally unquestionable.

Clad in a fetching black pantsuit, Alisa ran through (OK, she didn't "run") a number of her favourites and was not merely pitch perfect musically, but in terms of the emotions conveyed. The inclusion of the long-missed "Old Friend" by Phyllis Hyman (who took her own life by drug overdose) and the much misconstrued "Hallelujah" (written and recorded by Leonard Cohen, but more famously covered by Jeff Buckley, who drowned) meant that two of her selections had tragedy attached to them, but there was everything joyful in hearing the delivery, as there was in her rousing rendition of Emeli Sande's 'Next To Me".

Sartorially the antithesis of Alisa, Christine Fisher took the stage in flowing, glowing white and delved into the blues. Roberta Flack's "Tryin Times" and the classic 8-bar composition "Trouble in Mind" (often recorded but perhaps most famously by Dinah Washington) set a somber mood that undoubtedly resonated with the audience (and with the organizers) and was not completely erased by a joyously funky reading of  the Tracy Chapman smash, "Give Me One Reason"

No to be outdone by the ladies, closing Rojah changed the tempo and the tenor of the evening completely, with a stirring mix of reggae and r n' b gems (including Jimmy Cliff's "Harder They Come" theme and "Trapped") accompanied by near-manic movement and frequent raps with - and throws to - the audience. He showed no signs of having overcome - as he explained - throat surgery just days prior, except for giving the audience a bit too many cues for sing-alongs and fill-ins.

All told, it was a night, worthy of the Jazz in the Gardens brand, precipitating great anticipation for the next instalment, come September 6.


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