by Tony Bennett
Ray got me a spot on the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts program, which was in the tradition of the famous radio program, Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour and its TV successor, the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Godfrey was a giant on radio and early television, the Jack Paar of his day. The Godfrey show differed from the Bowes and Mack shows in that the focus wasn’t on pure amateurs but on “rising” young talents who hadn’t made it yet, I appeared on the show with another unknown singer by the name of Rosemary Clooney. Freddy Katz wrote out a special arrangement for me, and it went over well, but I lost to Rosie, who by that time was already touring with Tony Pastor and his Orchestra. It’s funny: I remember she sang a song called “Golden Earrings,” but I can’t recall what number I performed.
Rosie has always been good, a natural singer, and she was the first big star to do a whole album with Duke Ellington. We worked together a lot over the next few years. She jokes that I more than got even with her for beating me on that show: for most of the last decade we’ve been competing in the same category at the Grammy® Awards, and she likes to kid about losing to me every year. She says, “Maybe I’m in the wrong category I should be in the category for women over sixty who were born in the Ohio Valley.” Around the time of the 1998 Grammy Awards, Rosie was very sick. She ran a temperature of 107 degrees, and the doctors didn’t think she was going to make it. She later told me that when she was unconscious she had fever dreams, and in one dream she was surrounded by fifteen Tony Bennetts, all walking up to her and handing her the Grammy! What a great person she is, my buddy, I’ll always love her.
I appeared on the Arthur Godfrey show right around the time Pearl Bailey came to Greenwich Village to check out the Village Inn. The club owner would let me come down, hang out, and perform whenever they had an open spot. I was sitting at the bar one night and I overheard him say to the bartender that he was planning to turn the club into a more legitimate showroom and that he was trying to persuade the legendary performer Pearl Bailey to headline the room. After the show, the club owner came up to me and, much to my astonishment, said, “Miss Bailey agreed to play the room on the condition that you, ‘that Joe Bari guy,’ stay on the bill.” I couldn’t believe it! “Can you beat that?” he said. “If you don’t stay, she ain’t gonna play the room. And I was gonna tell ya’ to take a hike.”
That was, as they say, my first big break. It was also the beginning of a long and wonderful friendship between Pearl and myself, a relationship that grew even closer when she married my dear friend, the wonderful drummer Louis Bellson, in 1952. Pearl wanted me to know just how much hard work lay ahead of me. She said to me, “I can start you out, kid, but it’s going to take you ten years to learn how to walk on the stage.” It was great advice, but she probably underestimated how long it actually takes to get everything right. I think all performers starting out today should be given the same advice, so that a little bit of success early on doesn’t go to their heads and screw up their future careers.
I learned a lot from Pearl, especially how not to take any nonsense from anybody. There was a girl in the chorus line at the Village Inn who was very jealous of Pearl’s success and had it in for her. One night when Pearl was dancing, this girl got behind her and started mimicking her dancing, trying to make a fool of her. So Pearl, without missing a beat, just turned around and knocked her out! Then she turned to the audience and said, “That’s the end of the show, folks. I can’t top that!” Classic Pearl Bailey.
She always took great care of me and had me work with her whenever she could. She once hosted her own TV special for PBS and brought in Sarah Vaughan and myself as her guests. She had a fifteen-week series on ABC and she invited me to come on. It was really special, since Louis Bellson was playing and conducting the orchestra; it was so comfortable I felt like I was hanging out with friends and jamming. Pearl was a great lady who treated me very kindly. She gave me a copy of her autobiography that was inscribed: “To my son Antonio—Mama Pearl.” What an honor.
In the spring of 1949, Ray arranged for my first record date for a small label called Leslie Records, owned by Sy Leslie. Their claim to fame was that they had made a couple of successful records featuring famous baseball players.
I was thrilled to find out that George Simon would be producing my recording session. George, the head writer for Metronome, the greatest music magazine of all time, was already a legend in the business. He always knew who the best bands and singers were. It was thrilling to be in a full-fledged recording studio for the first time, and I was grateful for the opportunity to work with George. He knew more about music and had a bigger record collection than anybody I ever met. Spending an evening with him at his place in the West Fifties was like taking a course in the history of jazz.
The recording from this session was a two-sided 78 RPM disc, as all records were then. One side was an original composition by George, an Italian-style novelty called “Vieni Qui.” The other side was the Gershwin standard “Fascinating Rhythm.” I’m proud that I sang a Gershwin song at the very start of my recording career—for me, that really was beginning at the top! We did it at the New York Decca studios on Fifty-seventh Street, the same historic place where Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Woody Herman, Count Basie, and so many others made so many classic recordings.
There was a vocal group backing me up who had recently worked with Bing Crosby on his recording of “Jamboree-Jones,” a Johnny Mercer song. The group had earlier been known as the Skyriders but had, by this time, changed their name to the Tattlers.
“Vieni Qui” and “Fascinating Rhythm” by “Joe Bari” went absolutely nowhere, but it was still a kick for me to have a record of my own. My friend John Cholakis had a cousin who owned a bar called the Rainbow Bar and Grill out in Far Rockaway. As soon as we got a copy of the disc, John and I hopped on the Long Island Railroad and went straight to the bar and put the record on the jukebox. That was a thrill too. It’s been almost fifty years since I made that record and I can’t say I remember what it sounds like. The one copy I had literally crumbled in my hands in the 1960s.
There’s another record I made a few months after the Leslie record that’s been completely lost. This was a “demonstration disc” of two old songs I loved—another rhythm song, “Crazy Rhythm,” and a great old standard I remembered from the early thirties, “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”
Ray was trying everything he could to get some attention for me. He used every contact he had in the music business, one of whom happened to be a very smart show-business lawyer named Jack Spencer. Spencer had a number of famous clients, the biggest of whom was Cole Porter, Mr. Spencer was friendly with Hugh Martin, the composer who had written the great score to Meet Me in St. Louis for Judy Garland (which included one number I later recorded, “The Trolley Song”). So they sent me over to Hugh Martin’s apartment with my demo disc of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and told me “When he plays the record, have him call us and tell us what he thinks.”
Mr. Martin called and said, “This kid is another Martha Raye!” Now, lately people think of Martha Raye strictly as a comedienne, and of course she was one of the best. Charlie Chaplin, in his whole career, hardly ever hired another comic to work opposite him—Jack Oakie in The Great Dictator and Buster Keaton in Limelight were practically the only ones, and Martha Raye in Monsieur Verdoux. She was also a truly great vocalist. So I was very flattered by Mr. Martin’s comparison. That comment also confirmed for Ray that he had made the right decision in taking me on.
Through Ray, I eventually found a vocal coach who was just right for me, and he was about the most spontaneous guy I ever met. A tremendous musician and a great person, his full name was Tony Tamburello, but he sometimes worked under the name “Tony Burrell,” and usually everybody just called him Tony T. When I first met Ray, he had me and two other singers audition for Tony T., who immediately pointed to me and said, “This guy is the one you want.” I was always grateful for that.
Tony T. was one of the first
to teach me one of the big lessons of my life: he told me never to compromise and to stay with good music; a sentiment that Frank Sinatra would reaffirm years later. Tony T. was a terrific coach. We just rolled up our sleeves and got to work, full of ambition to make something happen. We spent hours working on a song or an arrangement, never thinking about the time.
Tony T. could play every great song ever written, and his playing was as smooth as silk, just brilliant. He was like a character in a Fellini movie, way ahead of his time. As an example of his sense of humor, he started his own label, which he called “Horrible Records,” and the company’s slogan was “If it’s a horrible record, it’s bound to be a hit!” He also started a company called “MOB Records,” which featured a singer named “Al Dente.” The discs were pressed at “45 Caliber Speed.” He rented space in the famous Brill Building, but when the rents got too expensive for him, he got one of those huge old dry-cleaning trucks and put a little spinet piano in the back. He rigged up a staircase so people could get in and out, and he gave vocal lessons in the truck! Students would call to make an appointment, and he’d say, “Meet me at the corner of Seventh and Forty-ninth at three o’clock.” That was the address of the Brill Building, and when his students got there, they were surprised to find they’d be having their lesson outside the building. He even had someone paint “Fresh Fish and Music” on the side of the truck.
For years Tony T. was practically my musical conscience. When songwriters came around with something they wanted me to hear, Tony T. acted as a buffer, helping me find the good songs, which I sang and recorded. I like to think that after fifty years of singing professionally I know what I’m doing, but I still wish I had Tony T. with me.
Ray had one other connection that was to prove important to me: a man named Charlie Cooley, who worked for Bob Hope. At the beginning of Hope’s career, Bob had a vaudeville act opening for Charlie, who had given him one of his first breaks. Bob had been a tough kid; he came right from the streets and had done time in reform school, so for Charlie to give him a break meant a lot to him, and he never forgot it. Bob’s a wonderful man. Anybody who ever did Bob Hope a favor of any kind has had it repaid tenfold. Anybody who helped him, any of the girls who went on the USO tours—he always made sure to use them in one of his movies or on one of his NBC-TV specials. Charlie stayed on Bob’s payroll for the rest of his life.
Ray waited until Bob Hope was in town playing the New York Paramount, then he called Charlie and got him to come down to the Village Inn and catch the show with Pearl and myself Charlie liked what he heard well enough to bring Bob back with him. So the same week Pearl Bailey saw me at the Village Inn. Bob Hope came down to check out my act. He liked my singing so much that after the show he came back to see me in my dressing room and said, “Come on, kid, you’re going to come to the Paramount and sing with me.” The Paramount! Talk about the big time! Bob Hope and Pearl Bailey, all in the same week! But first he told me he didn’t care for my stage name and asked me what my real name was. I told him, “My name is Anthony Dominick Benedetto.”
“Oh, no, too long for the marquee,” he said. (Little did he know that someday there’d be a performer named Engelbert Humperdinck.) He thought for a moment, then he said, “We’ll call you Tony Bennett.”
And that’s how it happened. A new Americanized name, the start of a wonderful career and a glorious adventure that has continued for fifty years.
It was an honor to be part of Bob Hope’s troupe. I could hardly believe it: here I was performing with the man I felt had saved my sanity during the war and who had inspired me to go into show business. It was a dream come true.
He had a great bunch of people working with him: Jane Russell, the great tap dancer Steve Condos, and Les Brown and his wonderful Band of Renown. They were all very supportive. I was young and didn’t know what to do with myself while I was singing. Between Bob Hope and Pearl Bailey, what an amazing education I had! They showed me the value of being positive: when you walk out on a stage, the audience has to know that you want to be there, that you want to entertain them. I’m still using what they taught me fifty years later.
When I finished my number, Bob said to the audience, “Well, I was getting tired of Crosby anyhow!” It was a great line and helped me win over the audience at the Paramount.
It was also a thrill working with Les Brown. His was the first major band I ever sang with. I remember being so excited about that gig that I ran out and bought myself a brand new zoot suit for the occasion. Working with great musicians like the kind Les had in his Band of Renown really rubbed off on me. I sang a couple of songs a night, mainly tunes from the early recordings I had done—“Crazy Rhythm,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” But I kept working hard to become a better singer.
When the gig at the Paramount ended. Bob took me and the rest of the troupe on a brief six-city tour. Everywhere Bob Hope went, people went crazy; in each town the local sheriff and the entire police force escorted us to the theater. Every night was an event.
That tour was the first time I ever flew. Bob did everything first class. He was one of the first entertainers to fly from city to city, which I guess he got a taste for in the war. The tour ended when we reached the West Coast. I didn’t do Bob’s radio show at that time, but I got to attend a broadcast, and meet Margaret Whiting, one of my favorite singers, who was a regular on Bob’s show at that time. At one point I sang for her, and her reaction was one of warm approval. Bob also introduced me to Bing Crosby when he dropped by the show one day, and that was one of the greatest thrills of my life.
It wasn’t long after I got back from the coast that I had another happy surprise coming to me. Ray had been sending out copies of my demo disc to anybody he thought would listen. As it turned out, the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” disc had attracted the attention of a gentleman named Mitch Miller, who had just taken over as head of the “pop singles” division of Columbia Records. I didn’t know exactly what was in store for me, but I did know that getting a recording contract was the next big step.
CHAPTER SIX
By the time I arrived in 1950, Columbia Records was the oldest record company in business. William S. Paley, who owned CBS radio, bought Columbia Records in the late thirties and quickly established it as a major label by releasing recordings by some of my favorite acts: Count Basie, Kay Kyser, Mildred Bailey, Gene Krupa, and Benny Goodman. He even signed Harry James’s “boy singer” Frank Sinatra.
The label grew throughout the big band era, then signed the pop singers who succeeded those bands in the late forties. Mannie Sachs headed “artists and repertoire” (A&R), the department responsible for discovering and developing new talent for the label. He launched the careers of Sinatra, Dinah Shore, and Buddy Clark, acts that ended up selling more records for Columbia than any other artists before. At the end of the forties, Mannie was offered a better deal at RCA Records, and he took it. Columbia went into a panic.
Paley decided to restructure the company and brought two men into the picture who would have a tremendous impact on my recording career: British-born Goddard Lieberson, a composer who went into the business side of music, and producer Mitch Miller.
Goddard Lieberson had a reputation for fighting hard to ensure that the business side of music never overwhelmed his artists. He was appointed Columbia’s executive vice president, and started recording cast albums from original Broadway shows. He was the first to realize that the original cast package was perfect for the new medium known as the LP, or long-playing record, which Columbia had recently introduced, South Pacific became their biggest album, selling over a million and a quarter copies, unheard of sales at that time.
Mitch Miller had recently headed A&R at Mercury-Records, where he’d been responsible for making that company a major force in the industry. Lieberson persuaded the top management at Columbia that Mitch was the guy to replace Mannie Sachs. Mitch had started out as a classical oboe player and gradually reinvented himse
lf as perhaps the single most influential producer in the history of recording.
Not long after Mitch took over as head of A&R, he heard my demo discs of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Fascinating Rhythm.” This was around the same time that he had his now-infamous feud with Frank Sinatra. They constantly fought over what songs Frank should record. The industry was beginning to give Mitch a lot of flack for that, and I always suspected he signed me partially to show people that he wasn’t prejudiced against Italian singers! He had never heard of me, but he was so impressed by the way I sang “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” that he signed me to the label sight unseen, and selected “Boulevard” as my first single for Columbia, As it turned out, it would be one of the few times that Mitch and I saw eye to eye on the subject of repertoire.
Mitch was very supportive of me. He believed in my talent, and he wanted to make my career happen. He tended to like novelty songs, so everybody associates him with the “square” side of the pop scene, but that’s not really fair. Mitch innovated the “Sing Along with Mitch” records that became so popular that the concept was turned into a television show, making “Mitch Miller” a household name. His trademark was his goatee and his cigar, and pretty soon other producers were growing goatees and smoking cigars. Everybody was imitating Mitch, so obviously they felt he had something cool going on.
The modern incarnation of Columbia Records had only been around for eleven years, so these were still the early days of the record business. I loved those days, when things were much looser and less bogged down by big business. I was still a star-struck kid back then.