Today is the 100th birthday of the legendary American jazz and pop singer, Tony Bennett – one of my personal heroes. The last of a breed of era-defining singers of the 20th century, he remained true to his artistic calling when everyone else was bending to the contemporary musical trends. He is a fitting riposte to the Marxist lie that ‘laws of history’ are more important than individuals. Bennett defied those historical forces that threatened to cast the Great American Songbook and its artistic riches into the dustbin of history. He deserves to be remembered for all time as one of the greatest vocalists in all of popular music, and a superlative interpreter of the jazz and pop standards that have defined American culture for over a century.
I remember where I was when I heard the sad news of his passing. As he had been battling Alzheimer’s for many years, it was only a matter of time, but it did not make the news any less painful. He stood a man alone, the proud standard-bearer of the old American musical tradition, in the face of all the monstrous noise that constitutes present-day ‘music’. He paid a price for his refusal to compromise. In the 1970s, Columbia dropped him from its record label due to flagging sales, and Bennett took the opportunity to set off on his own path, producing the celebrated albums with Bill Evans that are still prized by critics five decades later. It took until the mid-1980s for the musical world to once again see his worth. His career comeback, culminating in the celebrated duets with Lady Gaga, is one of the most dazzling and unlikely in the whole history of popular music.
Bennett represents a breed of individualism that I very much share. There he was, the unconquered artist, treading though the sludge and slime of contemporary music, bearing aloft the sacred flame of his superior artistry, lighting up the darkness of our modern existence. Philistines will dismiss his music as ‘boring’, ‘out-of-touch’, ‘dated’, and other such ludicrous adjectives. Those of us with more sense acknowledge him for what he was – timeless, brilliant, immortal. That is why I, a Briton by birth, doff my cap to this awe-inspiring American titan. Through it all, he was determined to be 100% true to himself, stubbornly clinging to the right path in the face of the mindless conformism all around him. This 1969 performance he made of the song ‘I’ve Gotta Be Me’ (from 1:21 onwards), recorded for his album of the same name (and already made famous by Sammy Davis Jr.), encapsulates his feelings (and mine) brilliantly:
Bennett was gifted with a powerful, classically-trained baritenor. It is always thrilling in his recordings to listen to him reach for his higher register. Even in his old age, he retained the capacity to do this. He would even show off his vocal prowess in his performances by turning off the amplification on stage, and would launch into a belt that could be held at the back of the hall – the traditional mark of a classically-trained voice.
Bennett was what you might call an ‘elitist’, even a ‘reactionary’. He had a strong sense of what was quality and what wasn’t. He felt this way about music, about clothes, about painting (for he was, among other things, a gifted painter). So do I. The cult of mediocrity that has overtaken our democratic societies is one which Bennett stood absolutely against. It is not popular to hold a position like that today. In this, I think of him, and men such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as being kindred spirits in the war against the values of the herd. Note that the much-vaunted USSR, beloved of Ted Grant and Alan Woods, did not produce a Tony Bennett or anything like him. So much for the Russian Revolution being the greatest event in human history. The birth of a Tony Bennett was a far greater one.
I first started listening to Bennett seriously shortly before I left the International Marxist Tendency. I knew of him, but had not troubled to probably probe his output. I began with his 1950s recordings, specifically, his 1952 album ‘Because of You’, named after his first ever hit. In these early recordings, his voice is at its rawest and perhaps least subtle, but it is a no less brilliant voice for that. I never get tired of him crooning romantically such numbers as ‘Because of You’, ‘I Won’t Cry Anymore’ and ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, the latter being one of my special favourites from ‘early Bennett’, which showcases the Bennett belt better than any other song on that album. It also contains his cover of country singer Hank Williams’ ‘Cold Cold Heart’, which earned him a congratulatory phone call from Williams himself, and an invitation to Nashville in the summer of 1956 to spend some time with some of my favourite country singers in a live, televised broadcast in tribute to Hank. The footage is now on YouTube – the kind of crossover I live for. He even exchanges words about the then-dead Williams with Ray Price, another one of my favourite country singers, and a close friend of Hank Williams.
The summer that I freed myself from the Grantite cult, I explored Bennett further. A reference that Gore Vidal made in an interview to the jazz standard ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’ sent me to Spotify, where I discovered Bennett’s version of the song – in my opinion, the best ever recorded, most especially for the breath-taking high note he reaches for at the very end, and holds for several seconds. I didn’t seriously engage with Bennett again until over a year later, in the months after completing my Master’s. I decided to try and listen to a bunch of his albums in chronological order on Spotify. From that moment, I was very much a Bennett fan. A particular favourite was his 1962 album ‘Mr Broadway’, a collection of recordings he made from 1953-1962 from various musical theatre productions. His recordings of ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’, ‘Begin The Beguine’ and ‘Put On A Happy Face’ are, as far as I am concerned, definitive. His recording of ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ gives me chills every time I listen to it, his voice soaring above the swelling orchestral arrangement like a figurative journey over a mountain! ‘Begin The Beguine’ will get you jiving and dancing along as Bennett thoroughly enjoys himself throughout this up-tempo number, and ‘Put On A Happy Face’ will not fail to make you do just that. One can hear Bennett practically smiling through the recording.
That is another striking thing about Bennett. He radiates joyful energy constantly. In his studio recordings and public performances. he always oozed a sheer enthusiasm that is infectious. My favourite example of this is his performance of the Judy Garland hit ‘Get Happy’ on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1970 (one of my favourite Bennett recordings ever, originally recorded for his 1968 album of the same name):
The ungodly tempo is almost certainly due to the constraints of the programming schedule, but Bennett just rolls with it like it’s the most natural thing in the world. One cannot fail to be charmed by the way he dances next to the orchestra and luxuriates in their magnificent solo work. (I love the shout-out to the cornet player most especially.) I am practically dancing along with him as I type this. Every time I listen to it, I indeed ‘get happy’. It is for this reason that some of my favourite albums by him are his live recordings, where he lets loose like never before. He lived to bring other people happiness through his music.
The 1970s was a nadir in Bennett’s fortunes. His albums were barely making the charts, and the world had turned away from his kind of music. Even Sinatra was having to record contemporary material in order to maintain any sort of commercial success. Bennett was therefore cajoled by Columbia into recording his worst ever album – ‘Tony Sings The Great Hits of Today!’. An album so dreadful, Bennett said he threw up before making the recording. His heart simply was not in the music he was being made to record. It should be said, however, that there is a gem even in this album. His recording of the Beatles’ hit, ‘Something’, by George Harrison, is one of the greatest things he ever recorded in my opinion. Better than any other version I’ve heard, even the original. (Sinatra’s cover is absolutely dreadful.) His 1971 album, ‘Love Story’, contains another masterpiece, his recording of ‘I Want To Be Happy’, another song in which Bennett’s natural energy and lust for life shines through the rather simple lyrics. It also contains his recording of the Leslie Briscusse/Anthony Newley song, ‘I’ll Begin Again’, from the musical Scrooge. Briscusse and Newley wrote two other songs of which Bennett made the definitive recording – If I Ruled The World (a solo effort on Briscusse’s part) and Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me).
‘I’ll Begin Again’ has great emotional resonance for me. He sings it again in the 1971 live album of him performing at the Royal Albert Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The lyrics remind me of my own determination to rebuild my life after leaving the evil cult that is the International Marxist Tendency.
I’ll begin again
I will build my life
I will live to know
I fulfilled my life
I’ll begin today
Throw away the past
And the future I build
Will be something that will last
I will take the time
That I have left to live
And I’ll give it all
That I have left to give
I will live my days
For my fellow men
And I’ll live in praise
Of that moment when
I was able to begin again
I did indeed begin again, and Tony Bennett was a big part of that journey. Thank you for all the memories, Tony.