by Tony Bennett
We cut everything on these big old wax discs; even a major record company like Columbia hadn’t begun using tape yet. Recording artists had to do four songs in a three-hour session, and we had to come into the studio with all of our songs memorized, and if you went over the three hours, Columbia would have to pay overtime to all the musicians in the studio orchestra. Sometimes it was crazy but usually we got the job done without going into overtime.
On my first recording date with Columbia, April 17, 1950, I was so nervous I couldn’t get through all four tunes like I was supposed to. I had to do two that first day, and the other two three days later. My engineer on that first date was the great Frank Laico, and he remained my engineer for the entire time I was at Columbia. We made all my records together in a magnificent old church on East Thirtieth Street that Columbia had bought and had converted into a recording studio. It was a beautiful building—the best recording studio on the planet. Many Columbia artists, including Igor Stravinsky, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, and Bill Evans recorded there until Columbia sold it in the late sixties. What a shame that was.
Right from the start Frank knew how to get just the sound I was going for, and though I’ve worked with other engineers over the years, he’s always been my favorite. He was able to get inside my brain and capture the essence of my performance on record. Mitch also paired me with the great arranger Marty Manning. Some musicians didn’t think his writing was “hip,” but all I can say is that every time I made a record with Marty, it was a hit, from “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” to “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
When “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was released on June 12, 1950, it wasn’t a smash, but it was a huge local hit and was well received by the critics. On the twenty-eighth of that month the single earned me my first notice in Walter Winchell’s popular entertainment column. It simply said, “Orchids, Tony, orchids.” I was working in Dallas at this time and I ran into the wonderful drummer Mickey Scrima, who for many years had played with Harry James. He pulled me aside and said, “Do you know what Sinatra says about you?” I said, “Does Sinatra even know who I am?” It turned out that Frank had said, “That kid’s got four sets of balls.” It was a little raw, but it was one of the nicest things anybody ever said about me. I was knocked out. With the attention I received in New York, and with Frank Sinatra bantering my name around music circles, I felt like I’d really hit the big time, and I decided to celebrate by taking my first-ever vacation. I went to Miami, hung around on the beach, and basked in my first real success.
I began getting some good work on radio and TV. A producer named Irving Mansfield, who was married to Jacqueline Susann (she was around the early TV scene before she became an author), came up with a concept for a summer replacement show called Songs for Sale, basically a talent contest for aspiring songwriters. Each week two popular male and female singers sang the songs of that week’s contestants, and then a panel of experts judged the songs they’d just heard. I was chosen as the male singer, and my great friend Rosemary Clooney was chosen as the female vocalist. Jan Murray was the host. The show started on CBS radio on June 30, and beginning on July 7, it was simulcast on CBS-TV.
Gary Stevens was one of the producers of Songs for Sale. It was Gary’s job to put together the panel of judges for each week’s show. He always made a point of having a well-known songwriter and at least one radio deejay in addition to “a regular guy” who would represent the opinion of the man in the street. Gary had several reasons for bringing in the deejays. For one thing, they knew as much about songs as anybody. For another, Gary knew that if they were going on a TV show on Friday night, they’d spend the preceding week promoting the show in their local markets. It was free advertising. A lot of famous jocks got their first TV exposure on Songs for Sale.
Gary did a great job assembling the panel of judges, but unfortunately the same thing can’t be said for whoever it was who picked the contestants. They were never selected on the basis of their songwriting ability. The producers made a point of picking the wackiest, weirdest people in the world for the show, and then considered it entertaining when these people made fools of themselves on national TV. I thought it was cruel.
Needless to say the songs these characters came up with were consistently mediocre but we had to sing them. We didn’t have time to actually memorize the songs, since they were different every week and eminently forgettable, so we had to rely on cue cards. This was before there were professional cue card holders, and the producers made the mistake of using the stagehands to hold the cards up. It was clear they’d rather be drinking or playing poker, and that they hated actually working, so they’d intentionally hold the cue cards sideways or upside down. Anything to make it more difficult for us, and these songs were already tough enough to sing! We were in a panic every week because we often had to make up our own lyrics, live on the air. It was a disaster.
I managed to slip in a good song once without the producers realizing I’d done it: the tune “Kiss You,” with words by my old friend Jack Wilson, Jack was a professional songwriter by this time, but we were able to get his song onto the show on the grounds that Jack’s collaborators, Georgie Brown and Alex Fogarty, were unknowns.
Only one song a week could win, and the losing songwriters inevitably blamed Rosie and me. They would corner us somewhere and harass us to no end. In order to avoid their attentions we were experts at finding sneaky exits out of the studio, taking our leave through basements and down fire escapes. All that for a hundred dollars a week!
But what was nice was, the three of us—Rosemary, Jan, and myself—got our picture in the New York Times as a result of being on that program. It was the first time the Times ever covered me, and I can still remember what a thrill it was. We also did a brief tour of the local movie theaters, the first time I worked that circuit since I was with Bob Hope’s show.
Around the same time, Hubbell Robinson, a top booking agent at MCA, called Mitch to see if he had any ideas for a radio series that could serve as a summer replacement for Bob Crosby’s daily variety show. Mitch said, “I’ve got two fabulous young people here, Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney.” So on Mitch’s suggestion CBS put together a show called Steppin’ Out It aired every weeknight from 7:45 to 8:00 PM, beginning on July 3, 1950, We did Steppin’ Out five nights a week, then on Friday night we’d stick around and go directly into the simulcast of Songs for Sale.
I guess Hubbell Robinson didn’t like how we handled the show, because after one week he called Mitch and tried to fire us. Mitch told him that we were the best young talents he knew, and that he was getting us for nothing, so the least he could do was to keep up his end of the bargain. Mitch talked to Goddard Lieberson, who then talked to William S. Paley. We were able to continue on the show, and as a last bit of advice Mitch told Robinson, “Enjoy them while you can. Next year, you won’t be able to afford either one of them.”
We were glad to do that show because the songs were first class, but it was only what they called a “sustaining series” there was no commercial sponsor, so we didn’t have the budget for a full orchestra. But we did have a great quintet led by Johnny Guarnieri, a masterful pianist who’d played with both Lester Young and Frank Sinatra. Steppin’ Out was a joy.
My career has covered the whole history of television. It’s wild to think about how much it’s evolved since 1950. I’ve worked with all the greats of the medium—Edward R. Murrow, Ed Sullivan, Dave Garroway, Jack Paar, and Steve Allen. I did the first Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and I did the first Merv Griffin Show. I’ve kicked off a lot of new television shows in my time, and it’s an honor I’ll always be proud of.
I went back into the studio on July 14, 1950. This time I worked with arranger-conductor Percy Faith. The folks at the label were looking for a song to build upon the success of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” There was a song floating around at that time that had been a country hit for Red Foley on Decca, and
for Kitty Kallen and Richard Hayes on Mercury, a semireligious tune called “Our Lady of Fatima.” My producers thought I should try recording my own version, since it was a proven hit.
In those days, “cover records,” the recordings of songs previously made popular by another artist, were standard industry policy. What usually happened was that a smaller label would have a hit, like pianist Francis Craig doing “Near You,” with a little outfit called Bullet Records, When it started selling, RCA got into the act and “covered” it with their own instrumental version by staff arranger Larry Green. Sometimes white artists “covered” Black artists, or mainstream artists “covered” country artists. Normally the big label’s profits would leave the independent label’s in the dust, so the majors were always on the lookout for successful independent tunes that one of their artists could cover.
One of the things I liked about Mitch was that he didn’t believe in making “cover” records, particularly the kind in which the original record was mimicked note for note, nuance for nuance. Mitch always said that he would rather spend the same energy creating original hits. But this was early in Mitch’s career at Columbia, before he became a power figure at the label, so when Columbia’s sales department wanted another hit, Mitch obliged by getting Percy and me together in the studio to record “Our Lady of Fatima.” It was a hokey tune, but it was an important record for me because it was the first time Percy and I worked together.
The song caused little fanfare when it was released, and Columbia sent me right back into the studio. I could sense that the label was becoming concerned, and we both knew that I needed another hit to keep my career moving forward. Although my live engagements were going well, I wasn’t selling records. I released eight singles between August 1950 and January 1951, and none of them went anywhere. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was a big enough regional hit for me to get jobs on the road as far away as Ohio and Pennsylvania, but nothing had broken through on the national level.
By the spring of 1951, I was told that if I didn’t get a hit soon I’d be dropped from the label. I went into Percy’s office and he said, “In this next session you really have to deliver. We have only three songs ready, so we need another song.” I remember that he looked through a bunch of sheet music on his desk, grabbed a song, and said, “Well, let’s do this one.” That song was “Because of You.” I was doing a lot of dramatic singing on my early records like “Sing You Sinners” and “Boulevard,” but Percy said to me, “Just relax. Use your natural voice and sing the song.” I took his advice.
When “Because of You” was released, the record company didn’t have much confidence in me. But then something interesting started happening; the record didn’t get on the radio right away, but people were playing it on jukeboxes so often that it started to build momentum, one nickel at a time. It was unusual for a song to become popular on jukeboxes before it got on the radio, but this one did. Listeners from all around the country began calling their local radio stations and requesting “Because of You,” and it reached number one on Billboard magazine’s pop chart on June 23, 1951. It stayed on the chart for thirty-two weeks-ten weeks at number one. I finally had my first major hit record.
It was amazing. Everywhere I went that summer I heard the song blaring from car radios, and record stores set up speakers outside and played the song to attract customers. My family was thrilled, of course, and couldn’t stop telling me how proud they were that I had made it. It was wonderful.
“Because of You” sold a million copies, and Billboard put me on the cover with Mitch Miller and Harry Siskind, owner of one of the country’s leading jukebox companies. Suddenly my songs were being played everywhere, and my records were selling. I was really enjoying my success, but the funny thing was, I couldn’t help thinking that I had jinxed myself when I took that monthlong trip to Miami right after my initial success with “Boulevard.” It taught me never to take a vacation when the public is clamoring for you.
We recorded fifteen more songs that year. Those sessions turned out to be a gold mine. “Cold, Cold Heart” also hit Billboard’s number one spot, and three other songs from those sessions were all in the top twenty: “I Won’t Cry Anymore,” “Blue Velvet,” and “Solitaire.” That was kind of the moment of truth for me. All of a sudden I had to deliver, and I did. I felt the way I imagine a baseball player feels when he hits a home run when the bases are loaded.
When Mitch first played me Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart,” I have to admit I didn’t think I should sing it. In those days country artists still used the old-time fiddle, and I told Mitch that I couldn’t do it. He told me just to listen to the words and music, pointing out how beautiful the ending was: “Why can’t I free your doubtful mind/And melt your cold, cold heart?” He convinced me, and I recorded it. The song started out slowly at first, but it caught on, and it kept climbing the charts until it was number one.
I’d never heard of Hank Williams before then, though I soon learned that he was the single most important figure in all of country music. Back then there wasn’t the “crossover” between different styles of music that there is today. If you listened to country music, you probably never heard pop music, and vice versa. Williams had reached the top of the country ladder in 1949 when he joined the cast of the Grand Ol’ Opry, and by then virtually all of his records were hits in the Bible Belt and the Midwest. All you have to do is listen to Hank’s records to understand why he was so popular. He was the greatest.
Thanks to “Cold, Cold Heart,” Hank’s songs finally caught on with the rest of the country. This was the first time a country song had crossed over to the top-forty mainstream chart-it even became an international hit. I never met Hank in person, but one day he called me on the phone and said, “Tony, what’s the idea of ruining my song?” He obviously had a sense of humor. We sold two million copies of “Cold, Cold Heart,” and I’m sure he did quite well by it. Later, Hank’s friends told me how much he loved my recording and said that whenever he passed a jukebox, he’d put a nickel in and play my version.
Hank died in 1953 when he was only twenty-nine years old. A few years later I had the privilege of being invited down to Nashville to pay homage to his memory on The Grand Of Opry TV show. In those days they were very strict about what was authentic country music and what wasn’t: just violin, bass, and guitar. Anything else, including drums, was off limits. When I passed out my arrangement to the Opry musicians, one of the guitar players put the arrangement aside and said, “You just sing and we’ll follow you.” So I sang it the same way I always did, and they accompanied me beautifully.
Mitch customarily reserved Monday afternoons to audition new material, and songwriters and demo singers lined up the entire length of the hall outside Mitch’s office. When songwriter Bernie Wayne got his chance to play “Blue Velvet” for Mitch, he got as far as the first line, “She wore blue velvet...” when Mitch interrupted and said, “How about Tony Bennett?” Bernie said, “Don’t you want to hear the rest of the song?” and Mitch answered, “Quit while you’re ahead!”
I was on a roll. With a second hit single I was getting a lot of bookings and having a great time on the road, but the one thing that made me unhappy was Columbia wouldn’t let me use my musicians when we recorded. Mitch and Percy Faith insisted on using their guys, who were great, but I was building up a rapport with my trio that’s hard to duplicate with studio musicians. My great drummer Billy Exiner had been with me from the beginning, but it wasn’t until 1955 that I was able to have him at my Columbia recording sessions.
Billy was something of a legend among musicians: he’d never even touched a drumstick until he was twenty-four years old. When he was a merchant seaman, he was at a dance when the drummer, who had to leave the stand, asked him to take over. He did, even though he’d never played before. He eventually became one of the great drummers of all time.
My pianist throughout 1951 was a fine musician from Boston named Jack Medoff. When Jack left in 1952 I was able
to get Gene di Novi, an old friend of Billy’s. I knew Gene from Charlie’s Tavern and the other musicians’ hangouts in New York. He’d been one of the original bebop pianists on Fifty-second Street in the late forties. Back in those days there were only a few piano players who could handle the new music, and Gene was one of them. He had the honor, at a very young age, of playing with jazz giants like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Lester Young, just to name a few.
All my records were hitting the charts at the same time. I was on a real lucky streak. While “Because of You” and “Cold, Cold Heart” were still hot, I was booked into the Paramount as a headliner. This was the first time I was the main attraction, and I was thrilled. I was on the same bill as Louis Prima and his Orchestra, featuring Keely Smith and the Vanderbilt Boys, and the movie feature was The Flying Leathernecks, starring John Wayne.
The shows were more fun to watch than they were to perform in, let me tell you: I did seven shows a day starting at ten-thirty in the morning—I’m still numb just thinking about them! There were at least three distinct audiences coming in to see the shows. In the morning we had kids, some who had probably ditched school the way I had in the early forties. In the afternoon came the senior citizens, and then in the evening the young lovers and married couples. Bob Whitman and Nat Shapiro, managers of the Paramount, insisted that we do material that would appeal to everybody not just one age group, so we had to find songs that everybody loved. Today It’s completely the opposite. I dislike the concept of demographics—targeting certain segments of the market—because it puts everyone in categories. There’s no reason that if you sing good songs the whole family won’t like them. On this subject, Duke Ellington always quoted Toscanini: “Music is either good or it isn’t. It’s not someone’s opinion.”