That's how Tony Bennett felt about his art. He'd sit beside her as a little boy in Queens, and saw how now and then she'd frown and set a piece of cloth aside. Tony often mentioned his mother, Anna Suraci Benedetto, who sewed dresses. As he told me many times, "Everybody's got their own story." But he never put a villain into his memories. I heard Tony tell stories about lustrous names, shady producers, and celebs whose lives were heralded in gossip sheets. Tony had to stand and sing on caskets borrowed from a local mortician because state troopers wouldn't let them use a theater or school for an integrated show. "Belafonte!" I'd say, and Tony told me about the time Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King asked him to do a show in 1965 for Civil Rights marchers along the Jefferson Davis Highway leading into Selma. Work hard for them, and they'll cheer hard for you." "Sinatra?" I'd suggest and Tony would recall how when he once told Frank he was nervous before a show, he said, "It's good. "Duke Ellington!" I'd say, and Tony would tell me how the Duke would send him a dozen long-stemmed pink roses whenever he wanted to Tony to record a song with him. I'd sit beside him in his New York art studio - he was also an accomplished painter - and throw out names of people he'd known over eight decades in show business, since the time he was ten years and sang at the opening of the Triborough Bridge, a gig he got because his uncle was a Queens ward heeler who said, "I got a nephew who sings." I had the blessing to do a book with Tony Bennett, as he turned 90 years old (in 2016). Millions of copies had been sold by the time Tony Bennett left us yesterday, at the age of 96. The Hot Springs bartender told them: "If you guys record that song, I'll buy the first copy." What Tony put across so powerfully from the first notes was the magic pull of San Francisco, the Golden City. Tony and Ralph noodled around at the piano after a show and tried a few bars of the song. The sheet music had been in the shirt-drawer of Ralph Sharon, Tony's longtime accompanist, when they were in Hot Springs, Ark., on a nightclub tour in 1961. Tony Bennett told me he'd scarcely seen a cable car before he recorded what became his signature song. To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars."
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |