Bennett Tony - Just Getting Started

Central Park

Flowers

To my wonderful partner, Susan Benedetto

The Hills of Tuscany

Contents

The Plaza Hotel

T ony Bennett has seen us through seven decades of life: falling in and out of love, breaking hearts, and many long, restless nights. Thats what great singers do. They carry a tune for all of us. And no singer has carried more of our dreams for longer than Tony Bennett.

Tony Bennett has been my friend since the days of our youth and the streets of Queens. He was Anthony Dominick Benedetto when we were teenagers. Tony had to quit school and go to work as a singing waiter. That is your fate when your father dies young and your family needs money more urgently than you need a classroom. Soon, Tony was old enough to carry a rifle in a war that engulfed the world. He lived through desperate fighting at the battles end, and was in a unit that liberated prisoners of a concentration camp. That taught Tony a lifelong lesson about the crime of hate.

When Tony got back from the war, he began to appear where he could do more singing than serving platters of pasta Bolognese. Pearl Bailey heard him once and asked him to join her at the Village Inn, downtown in New York. Who should come backstage one night but a guy Tony had once seen entertain thousands of other soldiers in Germany: Bob Hope.

He comes backstage and announces that he is not offering but telling Tony that he will sing in his shows at the Paramount Theatre. Means only a job as star. By the way, Hope says, he has a better name for the kid, who has been working under the stage name of Joe Bari, a show business name: Tony Bennett. How do you like it?

It turned out to be a name for now and forever. Ever since, on every day of his life, Tony Bennett has sung. And this great voice has not faded, from his first million-seller, Because of You, a mere sixty-five years ago, until today, when he sings with a huge young talent with her own platinum records, Lady Gaga.

And theres no sign that hes running out. Tony Bennett today, an artist at age ninety, has a voice that soars as if he were twenty-five and still a kid, with young passion and love and a name thats still fresh on the scene. As Tony has gotten older, his voice has gotten finer, filled with more feeling with the more hes seen of life. That cant be said of any other singer. Tony Bennetts is a voice to reach from Astoria, Queens, to every corner of the city, the country, and the world. A voice in a book now, too, yes, to sing to us again, my friend.

JIMMY BRESLIN

The Spanish Steps, Rome

I know Im lucky. I am lucky to have been born in America and in the most vibrant city in the world. Im lucky to have had parents who loved me unreservedly, and though I lost my father when I was just ten, my mother devoted her life to me and my brother and sister. And Im lucky to have had an older brother and sister who always looked out for me.

Im lucky to have grown up during the Great Depression and now to live in a place that overlooks Central Park.

Im lucky to have served in a war and survived. I know a lot of people who didnt.

Im lucky to have lived to sing and make a living at it. Im lucky to have come along at a time when I could sing some of the greatest songs of all time, by some of the greatest songwriters, and lucky to have worked alongside some of the truly great talents. I am lucky to have known, among so many names I cherish, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Lady Gaga, Louis Armstrong, Amy Winehouse, and the queen of England (who is even a little older than me).

I am lucky to have found love and have four amazing children and seven incredible grandchildren.

I am lucky to have had success, lost my way, had some rough times, and been able to come roaring back. I am lucky to have met people all over the world and been able to bring something into their lives.

I am lucky to have worked with my pianist, Ralph Sharon, for fifty years, and that he found a song that he left for years in his shirt drawer called I Left My Heart in San Francisco. And Im lucky to still be working with magnificent musicians who tour with me along the way through so many great venues around the world.

I am lucky to still be singing, performing, and entertaining people all over the world at an age that is long after many great performers have retired. And Im just getting started.

This book is about people who have helped, influenced, and steered me along the way. Some, like my parents, I knew very well. A few I didnt know at all. But Ive been lucky that their lives, their work, their words, their example have helped inspire and steer me.

Ive learned a lot about singing from composers and instrumentalists, but also from artists, painters, and looking at the trees in Central Park. And Ive learned a lot about life from my own family, the people with whom Ive worked, names youve heard and those you havent, and people Ive met along the road and on the street (and these days by e-mail). I hope Ive learned from my own experiences and evenespeciallyfrom my own mistakes. As I come singing, happily and steadily, into my ninety-first year, this book is about some of the lives that have made mine the blessing it has been to me.

No one is aloneonstage or in life. A singer is lucky to be in the spotlight. But each breath and note are a partnership between the talents who write the song, the musicians who bring it alive, and only thenfinallythe man or woman who gives the song a voice. I try to put everything into that songand into life.

Life abounds with lessons, if were lucky enough to be alert to them. But theyre not always what we think theyre about. Experiences leave marks in our minds and hearts. Years later, we find that they snap into place.

Tuscany

M y mother taught me the most important lesson of my life: quality lasts.

My mother, Anna Suraci Benedetto, sewed dresses. She worked in a factory by day and brought home dresses at night because she was paid by the piece and had to support my brother, my sister, and me. My father had died when I was ten. Every night, wed meet my mother at the Ditmars Boulevard el train stop, the north terminal of the lines from Queens, when she returned from Manhattan and help her carry home a big bundle of unsewn dresses. Wed climb the stairs, and shed start to sew as soon as she got home. Shed stop to make us dinner, and after that, while we kids read or listened to music, she would bend over her sewing machine again to continue stitching dresses.

Sometimes shed get her thumb caught under the sewing needle. Shed cry out in pain but put on a bandage and go back to work. She couldnt afford to stop. Watching her made me vow, in my heart, to be so good at something I loved that my mother wouldnt have to work again.