"Hello, Martin. This is Tony Bennett."
His resonant tone easily carried through the line from his New York apartment, and I was reminded of the last time I had seen him perform: September 16, 2002, at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of his first public performance of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," and the concert gave me goose bumps more than once. It was easy to grasp how this Italian from Queens, New York, became one of America's most famous jazz singers; hard to understand how he nearly vanished from popular consciousness; and a breeze to see why he was rediscovered by new generations.
That resurgence was in large part thanks to the work of his sons, Danny and Dae Bennett, the first the elder Bennett's manager and the second his recording engineer. It was Danny who got his dad recording with Columbia again, resulting in The Art of Excellence, which sold 100,000 copies, and it was Danny who got him on MTV.
"It's been just brilliant for 25 years now," pater Bennett says about Danny. "He's been managing me, and he's really straightened me out financially. I could retire now, but I don't want to retire. I want to keep performing."
Not to sell Dae short; it was his work at Bennett Studios that earned Dad six Grammys in February, including one for A Wonderful World, his 2003 album with k.d. lang.
Bennett is continuing to build on his success with the release of his umpteenth album, The Art of Romance, this week. From the opening track, "Close Enough For Love," it's classic Bennett, exhibiting the vocal skill and style of a master. It's the same vein he's been mining since 1950, when he was under contract at Columbia, and some would say under the thumb of producers Mitch Miller and Percy Faith. Some might say that, but not Bennett.
"I had a number of hit ballads with Mitch Miller under Columbia," Bennett graciously says, waving aside the question of whether his career was helped or hindered by the men some have called "champions of mediocrity." It was his longtime musical director and pianist Ralph Sharon who gave him some invaluable advice: "He said, 'You know, Tony, if you keep doing this, you're going to become predictable for doing ballads. You have a talent for jazz, so make sure you do some jazz.'"
The result was, first, Cloud 7, and then the creatively daring, heavy-on-the-percussion The Beat of My Heart.
"A lot of dancers, even in Vegas, told me they'd use it for practice a lot because of the beats," Bennett recalls. "This was in the day before rock 'n' roll." Ever the performer, there is a pause on the line, a beat, if you will, and then: "You know, I've been recording a long time now."
Bennett struck a compromise with Miller, doing two light-pop sides and then two jazz sides. And as much as some might dislike Milller for "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover" and "Tiptoe Through the Tulips With Me," we have to be grateful, also, according to Bennett.
"If not for Mitch Miller, I would have become a painter," he says, naming his favorite pastime. Much like his music, Bennett's paintings are all about taking chances, playing with composition ("Golden Gate Bridge"), light ("Sunday in Central Park") and technique ("Duke Ellington—Black Rain").
Bennett often works with watercolors when traveling. "If I really like it, when I get back home to my studio, I'll do it over again in oil or acrylic," he says.
His other traveling companion is his female white Maltese, Boo. "I got Boo on Halloween 15 years ago for my lady love," he says, a reference to Susan Crow. "She always travels with me. She's got a little bag and she goes with me."
And in a life of accomplishments, Bennett added another one three years ago when he opened his Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens. The arts-intensive public school just saw its first graduating class this June. Bennett sees it as a much-needed arena where students can get their chops, and as a way of giving back to the borough of his childhood. "All the secretaries, writers, firemen, policemen, elevator operators, all the people who make New York work, live there."
And now, so does Tony.