The Good Life: The Autobiography Of Tony Bennett

by Tony Bennett

  “Glory Road” went over better than I could have hoped for, but the biggest hit of the concert was, not surprisingly, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Ralph is fairly unflappable, so when he told me he thought the show was a real winner, I knew I had hit the mark. Mary later told me that when the show was over, the audience was cheering for me to sing an encore of “San Francisco,” but I was already in my dressing room and didn’t hear what they were saying. If I’d known, I certainly would have obliged.

  My whole family was in the audience that night. I was particularly proud that my mother was there; that made me feel like a million bucks. It was the biggest night of my life. My mom couldn’t believe how far I’d come. She was sitting between Mary and Tom, and as the crowds were cheering for an encore, she kept turning to Mary and asking, “Why don’t they let Anthony go home and rest? He must be exhausted after two and a half hours of singing.” She was so precious, she meant everything to me.

  Columbia was able to get Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall released by the end of August. We got the greatest sound on our album, better than any other album I’d recorded. Frank Laico did a terrific job, not only recording the music, but beautifully capturing the enthusiasm of the crowd.

  I wouldn’t give up nightclubs for a while, but now that I had a faithful audience I wanted to encourage them to go to places like Carnegie Hall, to all the beautiful concert halls across the country, which are my favorite places to perform.

  That same great year President Kennedy invited me to the White House to appear with the leading modern jazz group of the era, the Dave Brubeck Quartet. The occasion was a special concert held on the White House lawn in honor of journalism students, and there were thousands of press people there. I’d done some campaigning for Kennedy during his run for president, and it was a glorious day for me. Kennedy was always kind and generous to me throughout his years in office and I later became one of the twelve founding fathers of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

  Later that year I appeared at the White House with Count Basie. The windows had luxurious green velvet drapes with rich tassels. Basie grasped the tiny ball hanging from a tassel, pinched it between two fingers, and said to me under his breath, “My taxes paid for this.” A typical Basie line. What a little devil he was.

  Between 1960 and 1961 I’d been in and out of every major American city at least six times. I was on the road constantly, and I only made it back to New York to make records during the day and work the Copa, the Waldorf-Astoria, or the Town and Country in Brooklyn at night. In 1962 I was away from home even more. Obviously there wasn’t much time to try to patch things up with Patricia, but I stayed in touch with her and the kids by telephone as much as I could. I felt we were making some headway toward a reconciliation, and so we decided to give it another try and I moved back into the house in Englewood. I was relieved.

  In addition to my jazz excursions I became part of another musical trend that year. I was working at the Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro for the first time. I wasn’t yet well known in South America. There were only twenty-five to fifty people a night in a thousand-seater house—boy, did I have the blues—so I decided to sing my heart out. The audiences were really wonderful and inspired me to do my best. I played for two and a half hours every night. At least a thousand people say they saw me at the Copacabana while I was there—talk about word-of-mouth! Now every other year I perform to huge audiences there.

  I fell in love with Rio. I still have great affection for that city and long to return. The beaches are forty miles of the whitest sand you can imagine, and Sugarloaf Mountain is one of the most spiritual places I’ve ever seen. In fact I recently did a painting of that very spot that I feel is one of my most successful. The whole country is filled with music and poetry. Each language has a philosophy, and there’s something about the rhythm and the sound of Portuguese that’s so poetic and truthful, and the people are full of life and love.

  One morning my bass player, Don Payne, woke me up and said, “You’ve got to come down to the beach right now.” Right there on that beautiful beach was where I met Joao and Astrud Gilberto, singing and playing. Later they introduced me to Antonio Carlos Jobim’s songs and there was no turning back.

  Bossa nova was a new soft and swinging rhythm very closely tied to jazz, and I fell in love with it instantly. Billy Exiner got excited about it because it was a whole new beat for him too. When I came back to the States, I opened in San Francisco and told the San Francisco disc jockeys about my discovery, and they raved. Bossa nova spread across the country like wildfire.

  Once when Joao Gilberto was in the States I invited him to my home in Englewood and he brought his five-year-old son with him. We had a jam session in my basement studio, and Joao took out his guitar and started singing as his son lay on the floor playing with a toy. It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining down on all of us through the window. I looked at his son, and the little boy was quietly crying. I asked what was wrong, and Joao asked him in Portuguese. He said something to his father that I’ll never forget. Joao translated it for me: “I hope this day never ends.” I felt the same way.

  In the early sixties I’d frequently appeared on Hugh Hefner’s TV show Playboy’s Penthouse. Cy Coleman had written and recorded an instrumental opening for Hef’s TV series. Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh had long been my favorite composers of that period. I’d done their songs “Firefly.” “Walk a Little Faster,” “On the Other Side of the Tracks,” “It Amazes Me,” and many others. I thought this new song was very catchy and wanted to sing it, so I called Cy to ask if there were lyrics. He told me there were, but he said if I liked his “Playboy’s Theme,” he had another song that had a similar groove that he thought I’d like even better.

  That song was “The Best Is Yet to Come.” Cy played it for me and I agreed that it was a great tune. I recorded it the next day. I couldn’t get any of my usual top-drawer arrangers on such short notice, though I did find a writer who was able to turn it around overnight. The next day he dropped by the studio and unceremoniously dumped the chart on me about an hour before the session and then split. We didn’t have a conductor, but Cy was there and when we started going over the orchestration, we realized it wasn’t what we wanted, so Cy rewrote it. When it was finally finished we knew we had a winner. “The Best Is Yet to Come” became one of my biggest alltime hits, and the next in a series of wonderful songs I had on the charts in the early sixties.

  Another big number from 1962 was “I Wanna Be Around,” a Johnny Mercer tune that I had the honor of introducing to the world. What a thrill when I found out that Johnny said my version was his favorite interpretation of any song he ever wrote.

  “I Wanna Be Around” has a particularly interesting history. The song was originally conceived by a lady in Youngstown, Ohio, named Sadie Vimmerstedt. Sadie wasn’t a professional songwriter, but she was a fan of great songs, especially Johnny’s. One day she came up with two lines: “I wanna be around to pick up the pieces/When somebody breaks your heart.” She thought they sounded like they belonged in a Johnny Mercer song, so she sent them to him along with a letter explaining how she thought the lyrics would make a good song. She had no idea exactly where Johnny lived, so she addressed the envelope, “Johnny Mercer, Songwriter, Los Angeles, California,” and somehow the letter got to him.

  Johnny agreed that the two lines made an ideal opening for a song, and he proceeded to write one (one of the rare instances when Johnny wrote the music as well as the lyrics), and then asked me to sing it. We recorded it in October 1962. I had Marty Manning arrange the song and conduct the band, and Ralph played a great piano part.

  Johnny very generously gave Sadie fifty percent of the publishing rights to the song, and she did very well indeed. For years I got postcards from Paris, Italy, and Spain; she was able to leave her job and travel for the rest of her life.

  Both those songs wound up on my next album, I Wanna Be Around, which was released in March 1963. One of my favorite s
ongs on that album was the opening track, “The Good Life,” a French tune by singer-songwriter Sacha Distel. I love the philosophy of that number, which is why I chose it for the title of this book. It’s intriguingly ambiguous: what does he mean by “The Good Life”? Is it to be single and unattached, or is it to have somebody and not be alone? The conflict between the two ideas makes it exactly the kind of lyric I love to do. My old friend Duke Niles, the last of the old-time song pluggers, gave me the first crack at this song in America, and I’ve always been grateful to him.

  Immediately after that record was released I decided to record a trio record for the first time using Ralph on piano, Billy Exiner on drums, and Hal Gaylord, who had by this time replaced Don Payne, on bass. We recorded twenty-four songs, and I chose Benny Carter’s tune When Lights Are Low for the album’s title, because of the intimate connotation.

  I found a wonderful illustrator named Bob Peak to do a picture of me for the cover, and it came out great, but I got flak from Columbia over the artwork. It was a battle every step of the way. The woman who ran the art department really blew her top! She told Goddard Lieberson, “If the artist starts telling us what to put on the album cover, I’m out of here.” She really wreaked havoc for me, and when it was all over, Bob’s illustration was out and I received quite a scolding from the front office for upsetting the art department. Bob later did the cover for Barbra Streisand’s Funny Girl, the cover for My Fair Lady, and the poster for Apocalypse Now. He was a great illustrator, and became one of the industry’s favorite graphic artists.

  In April, a week or so after we finished recording When Lights Are Low, Columbia decided that they wanted another live album, this time from the Las Vegas Sahara, with Ralph and conductor Louis Basil. Frank Laico flew in with all of his remote recording equipment, and he spent all day setting up. Milton Berle, Danny Thomas, and Mickey Rooney were all in the audience that night, and they came right up on stage and started kibitzing. It was hilarious, and the crowd went crazy. It’s all on the tape, but nobody’s ever heard it because Columbia has never released it! That year we also recorded and released This Is All I Ask, my third and last full album with Ralph Burns.

  The following year I got the chance to work with Judy Garland for the first time when she invited me to sing on her CBS television special. It was the beginning of a long and treasured friendship. Just like everyone else in America, I’d fallen in love with Judy in 1939 when I saw her sing “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz. She was always a fantastic entertainer, and like Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and Jimmy Durante, one of my major artistic influences. Judy was only a few years older than me, but since she’d been a child star, I’d been her fan my entire life.

  I first met Judy in 1958 when she came backstage after my show at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and congratulated me on my performance. It was a thrill that never wore off She was a true original, full of life and fun. She was intelligent, a one-of-a-kind lady, and a great artist, but sadly, she led a very troubled life. As we got to know each other, Judy told me stories about how badly she’d been treated when she was making movies at MGM. She was just a kid, but they gave her all kinds of uppers and other drugs so she could finish one of those high-energy movies in just five weeks. She also had to deal with the sexual advances of the executives and all kinds of verbal and psychological abuse. She had a reputation for sometimes being out of control, but how can you grow up normal if that’s how you’re forced to spend your childhood? It’s such a shame, because she was so wonderful.

  Judy told me there were only two people in her entire career who were really good to her: Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney. No one else befriended her during those early years at MGM. She told me Mickey would fight like crazy for her, and wouldn’t tolerate anybody insulting her. One night he ran into the famous society girl Brenda Frasier, and she made a lousy remark about Judy. Mickey pulled her hat over her face and pushed her into an ash can. The next day it made front-page news.

  Over the years, Judy talked to me about all aspects of her life and career, and once she said to me, “You know, I’ve never had money in my hand. Someone always gives a check to my accountant and he pays the bills.” One time, backstage before one of Judy’s shows, the promoter kept asking me, “What can I do that would make her happy? What would she like?” Remembering what she’d told me, I suggested he give her some of her fee in cash, that she’d get a big kick out of that. He said he’d do it. I went to her dressing room after the show, and there she was, jumping up and down on the couch, playing with the money, throwing it up in the air, rolling around in it—acting like a little kid. She said, “Tony! Look what I got! I got money. It’s the first time in my life! I’ve got money!” It was wonderful to see her so happy.

  She gave me an interesting piece of advice one night. She said, “You always have to do only the finest songs, but then every once in a while it’s okay to sing a number that just hits the back of the house, like ‘Mammy—give ‘em a real show stopper, one that everybody digs.” She had a really good point. That’s why I don’t mind singing a song like Cy Coleman’s “Firefly,” which is a real crowd pleaser.

  I went to see Judy every chance I could get, of course, but what surprised me was the number of times she came out to see me. It was always a pleasure to look out into the audience and see her. When Billboard did a special tribute issue called “Twenty Years of Tony Bennett” in 1968, Judy contributed an interview in which she talked for a whole page about how much she enjoyed watching me perform. Imagine how thrilling it was for me to read that she thought I was “... the epitome of what entertainers were put on earth for. He was born to take people’s troubles away, even if it’s only for an hour. He loves doing it. He’s a giver.” It’s the best compliment I’ve ever received.

  I don’t know if Judy treated everyone she knew so well, but she always made me feel special. There was a really “in” club in Hollywood called the Daisy. Judy wanted to check it out, so I escorted her there. We ran into the Rat Pack—Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Peter Lawford, and Frank Sinatra. They knew Judy was in trouble with drugs, so they gave us the cold shoulder. She turned to me and said, “Don’t ever forget this: someday they’ll regret that it was you instead of them that I was with.”

  I was opening at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan, and as I was walking through the wings, about to go on stage one night, the stage manager stopped me and told me I had a phone call. I couldn’t imagine what could be so important that he’d interrupt me at such a moment, but when he said, “It’s Judy Garland,” I grabbed the phone. She said, “Tony, I’m in my room at the St. Regis Hotel. There’s a man here and he’s beating me up!” She was crying and sounded terrified. We all knew Judy had a tendency to exaggerate, but she sounded desperate, and I believed her.

  I told her, “I’m about to go on stage, Judy. I don’t know what I can do.” Then I thought: I’ll call Frank. I put in a call to the Fontainebleau in Florida, where Sinatra was appearing, and explained the situation to him. He said, “I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes.” The second I got off the stage, the stage manager told me there was another call from Judy. I picked up the phone and she said, “I wanted help, but this is ridiculous! There are nine hundred cops downstairs and five lawyers in my room!” Frank certainly took care of the situation for her in grand style. He’d just finished making a movie called The Detective with my old friend Abby Mann, and since they wanted it to be as realistic as possible, they’d worked closely with the New York City Police Department. All the police loved Frank, so they rallied to Judy’s aid when he asked for their help. Sinatra called me back later and said, “Is that all right, kid?”

  I was glad that Judy knew she could count on me when she needed a friend, since many people in her life did nothing but take advantage of her. The last time I saw her was in London in April 1969, when I was there doing a TV special with Count Basie. After the show she came backstage to see me, and the last thing she said to me was, “You’re prett
y good!” She died two months later. I’ve never gotten over it. She was so kind, so talented, such a dear friend. When I look back, it’s hard to believe that most of the time she was just trying to hold on for dear life.

  By the time 1964 rolled around, America was becoming a hotbed of activity on all fronts. Like everyone else, I was shocked and appalled by Kennedy’s assassination. It was a sad time for this country, the end of the age of innocence. We had survived the Cuban missile crisis, but the Cold War and the threat of a nuclear confrontation still hung over our heads. The papers and the television were filled with news of Dr. Martin Luther King’s fight for civil rights. It was hard to comprehend the injustice and the discrimination that was going on right here in our own backyard. I was sympathetic to the movement and I did whatever I could to help the cause.

  At the same time America was experiencing a new wave of rock music called “the British invasion.” I’d managed to get through the first wave—the Presley phenomenon—relatively unscathed, and now they were cramming the airwaves with the sound of a new group called the Beatles, and the marketers were hard at work creating what would soon be dubbed “Beatlemania.” Rock music was becoming big business, and Columbia quickly jumped on the bandwagon. They signed bands called the Byrds and Paul Revere and the Raiders; I thought the world was losing its mind. This music was starting to take priority over artists like Barbra Streisand and Johnny Mathis, and I became more determined than ever to find songs that would break through the rock and roll hype like a blade of grass through asphalt. My efforts paid off. I found hit songs like “When Joanna Loved Me,” by Jack Segal and Bob Wells, and introduced it on my album The Many Moods of Tony.

  I also had hits with two songs by the great British lyricist Leslie Bricusse: “Who Can I Turn To,” cowritten with Anthony Newley, and the title track to my 1965 album, If I Ruled the World (Songs for the Jet Set), which he wrote with Cyril Ornadel. That album also included a song that’s always been very special to me: “Sweet Lorraine.” I dedicated it to Nat Cole, who had died a month earlier in April 1965. I was heartbroken when I heard that Nat had passed away. Bobby Hackett and I were working at the Palmer House in Chicago, and it seemed appropriate to pay tribute by recording Nat’s signature tune while we were in his hometown. (Bobby, whose instrument was normally cornet, surprised us all by playing ukulele on this record; his buddy Joe Marsala played clarinet.)