by Tony Bennett
It was at that time that I started working as a singing waiter at a restaurant in Astoria. A customer would request a song, and I’d run into the kitchen to work out the arrangement. There were a couple of great Irish waiters who taught me all the best standards. You know, it’s a funny thing; now whenever I go to Italy, I notice that all the waiters are great vocalists—they perform at the drop of a hat. They actually give me a complex, they’re so good.
Cutting my teeth as a singing waiter was the most valuable experience I ever had as a performer; it was a real trial by fire. I was literally singing for my supper. It was the best way for me to learn to follow my artistic instincts as I worked for the first time in front of a live audience that I had to win over. The experience was not unlike when I ended up singing in the armed services band a couple of years later.
It was during my stint overseas with the Special Services Band that I really caught the bug for entertaining. When I returned home, I was determined more than ever to do what I needed in order to be a performer—even if that meant knocking on the doors of every club and promoter in New York City. I went to audition after audition, but I got turned down every time. This was kind of surprising to me, since I’d received such good feedback when I was with the band in Germany. But the rejections didn’t stop me; I just kept at it. I even tried out for a chorus part in a Broadway show, but I didn’t get that, either.
I took every opportunity to sing in any club or restaurant—unpaid, of course—just to have the experience, and to work with some terrifically talented jazz musicians. I did many things the wrong way, but that was how I learned. Only by sticking with it would I accomplish what I wanted. Everyone is faced with challenges; I realized that I simply couldn’t lose heart.
It was tough getting started—it took about seven years to really get going. When I listen to early recordings of myself before I was signed to Columbia, I can’t believe how much I had yet to learn back then. But certain people were wonderfully supportive and encouraging. One was Barbara Carroll, the jazz pianist and vocalist. She’d always say, “Come on, get up and sing with me. Maybe somebody important will come in and listen to you, and give you a break.” For years she helped me out; she’s such a magnificent person, and a big talent in her own right.
Around this time I was hanging out with a friend from Queens, Jack Wilson, who also wanted to make it in the music business. Jack was a songwriter, and we scraped our money together to buy the latest records and memorize all the tunes. We’d sing on the street corners sometimes, and we’d go into midtown Manhattan and catch the big band shows. I also met Abby Mann, a struggling young screenwriter and director, and the three of us talked about doing a musical comedy. (Abby later won the Oscar for his great screenplay of Judgment at Nuremberg.)
Another friend from this time was Freddy Katz, whose parents were like family to me and hosted jam sessions in their home on Friday nights. I introduced Jack to Freddy, and we combined our efforts: Jack wrote the words, Freddy wrote the music, and then the three of us visited record companies in the city to perform our compositions in the hopes of getting a contract. Freddy was so talented that eventually he wound up playing with Lena Horne and Vic Damone.
I finally got a gig in a nightclub that was located right under the el train in Astoria. I had sung informally at the bar, and the band’s trombonist, Tyree Glenn, let me sing with them for a while until he joined Duke Ellington’s orchestra. Then I took another job as a singing waiter, and I got to perform at some bars and clubs in Manhattan. A tiny place in Queens, the Nestle Inn, let me sing with Stan Weiss’s group, which was playing there. During this period I’d go with my friends to hear great jazz on Fifty-Second Street, where all the best clubs were, and just dream about the day when I could be a professional performer. I never did get a paying gig on Fifty-Second Street, although I practically lived there for several years and sang for free in a few places, just to try to get some exposure.
All this time, I was living on one dime per day. My mother gave me some change before she left for work, but I never took more than ten cents. I’d go to the city and make my rounds, using the money to buy a bite to eat. Some family members, such as my mother’s relatives, complained about my pursuing a career as an entertainer; they thought I should buckle down and do something more useful. But I was determined to make it as a performer, even if I wound up being a singing waiter for the rest of my life. In fact, that’s exactly what I would have done if I hadn’t ever gotten a recording contract.
Eventually through Freddy Katz I found my first manager, Ray Muscarella, and finally I felt as if someone could get me some legitimate bookings. Ray thought my singing was a little rough around the edges, so he hired a coach to help me hone my act. After a while he got me a paying gig at a club called the Shangri-La in Queens, and then a spot on the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts program—the one I appeared on with Rosemary Clooney, and the model for shows like American Idol. As I mentioned before, Rosie and I wound up working together on a summer television show.
A while later, we both were signed to Columbia Records. Even though Rosie and I each ended up having a couple of million-selling albums, when we’d run into the masters, like Jack Benny or George Burns or Bob Hope, they’d say, “You’re doing great, but it’s going to take time before you really know how to handle an audience.” They told us not to rest on our laurels, and that we were just going to have to learn the hard way. They all had come from vaudeville; that’s where they cut their teeth. They would play in theaters all over the United States and the world on a nightly basis, where the people in the seats became the teachers. The audience let the performers know right then and there what they liked and what they didn’t like, if they were onstage too long, and how to give the audience just enough. I would learn from the audience, too, but it would take time. Sure enough, about six years later, Bob Hope came to see me at the Fairmont in Dallas. When the show was over, Hope confirmed, “You’ve finally become a consummate performer.”
My song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” from my first recording for Columbia Records, was a big hit, and I thought I had it made. I felt elated by my success, so I took two weeks off and went on vacation in Puerto Rico. After I returned, I released eight singles, one after the other, but none of them took off.
Columbia was about to let me go, and I was desperate. Thankfully, my next single, “Because of You,” went to number one on the charts. I relaxed quite a bit and the record label was happy for a while, but I had learned an invaluable lesson: never take anything for granted. I still had to earn my stripes every day. Almost being dropped from the label spooked me so much that I didn’t take another vacation until I was well into my seventies. That’s the honest truth! Finally I’m confident enough to travel every year to Italy with my wife, Susan, for at least a month. I relax, paint, and enjoy the food and the people. Better late than never, I guess.
But back then, I was still paying my dues. I started having a string of number-one hits, and I was playing clubs all day and all night; places like the Paramount and the Copacabana. At the Copa, you did three shows a night. We’d start at eight p.m., and we wouldn’t get out of there until four in the morning. If there was a blizzard, we’d go out the back entrance and have to wade through huge drifts of snow. Then at the Paramount, which was considered the big time, we’d do seven shows a day, ten thirty in the morning until ten thirty at night. That really separated the men from the boys. Nowadays it’s usually one show a night, which is a much better pace. But that kind of grueling schedule, as inhuman as it seemed, forces you to hone your performance.
By the mid-fifties, I was recording two or three albums a year, a pace I kept up for the next two decades. On top of this I was performing around two hundred dates a year. I’d come home, make a record, and leave; it wasn’t great for my family life. But there weren’t as many artists back then, so in order to meet the demand, you had to put out new material constantly. There were a lot of deadlines to meet, and it was a shock
to me how challenging it was to make each record better than the last one. We singers aren’t machines; you can’t just crank it out every single time. Some records are right in there, and others you feel could have been a little better.
That said, unconstructive criticism can have a strong effect on even the best performers. It seems that many people who fail at what they try to do wind up critiquing. Recently I read a book about Fred Astaire that said that early on in his career, he was extremely upset by the harsh words of a bad review. It made such a deep impression on him that it haunted him for years. And that man was a genius!
I had a similar experience when I did my first concert at Carnegie Hall. I had prepared for that show like nothing ever before, and the audience loved the concert. But a critic from a major newspaper lambasted the performance, and it affected me for quite a while afterward. Yet fifty years later, the show is now widely acclaimed as one of the best concerts ever recorded. That just goes to prove that you have to believe in yourself.
Another test in perseverance came during the period from 1977 to 1986, after I recorded the second Bill Evans album. Although I continued to do concerts, this was a quieter time for me, and I didn’t put out any new material. My career began to take off again in the early eighties, but even so, it took a few years before my son and manager Danny set up recording The Art of Excellence and we truly hit our stride again. It felt great to be back in the studio, and more than anything, the experience showed me that if you stick to your guns about doing quality work, you will always have an audience.
Despite being told by my teacher that I had the voice of a crow, I ended up performing for every U.S. president since Eisenhower. I’ve come a long way. (Of all the presidents I’ve performed for, Bill Clinton has put me at the greatest ease. I don’t have to stand at attention, or feel that I’m talking to an emperor; he always acts like a human being. And by the way, Clinton is also fantastic at harmonizing. Once at a fund-raiser, I saw him waiting to go onstage while a band was playing, and he was humming right along in perfect key. He is a real musician.)
With all of my command performances, Grammys, and other awards, many people assume that I’ve been on top for my entire career. However, everyone has dips and curves, peaks and troughs. Still, I’m living proof that if you stick to doing what you love, and believe in yourself, you will come through victorious in the end.
The Zen of Bennett
Be determined to persevere, even in the face of criticism.
Realize that everyone has setbacks, particularly when starting out.
Don’t let the naysayers get you down.
Obstacles are necessary for success. Be persistent and you will reach your goals.
San Francisco
17
Life Is a Gift
So many people I know are riddled with regret. It seems they are always hung up on what they could have done or should have done. I think this causes undue stress, and stress is a real killer. I’ve always tried to take any struggles or mishaps as life lessons and apply them to who I am at the moment, and to who I want to be in the future. In other words, these times of hardship are the events that can make us better people moving forward.
We all tend to take things for granted, so I strive to live each moment as if it’s my last. That way I eliminate the possibility of having regrets. We are put on this planet for only a certain amount of time, and then in a flash, it’s over—so I feel it’s best to always make the most of the gifts that we have been given. There are miracles around us all the time; all you need to do is take chances and experience what life has to offer. Yes, we all make mistakes, but it’s not where you start that matters; it’s where you end up.
Having lived through the Depression, I count my blessings every day for the fact that I’ve wound up with such a successful career. When my father died, my mother had to work like a slave doing piecework for a penny a dress as a seamstress, in order to put food on the table for her three children. Everyone in our neighborhood was very poor back then, so we were all in the same boat. Even still, seeing my mother struggling alone to support us made an indelible impression on me.
Coming from such humble beginnings and yet being able to achieve so much are in essence the American dream. What a magnificent gift I have been given to seek out truth and beauty through my art.
That being said, over the years I had to learn to be ready to receive the bounty that came my way; it’s important to meet opportunity with preparedness. I was not always as prepared or open as I should have been. I was granted an amazing bonus early on in my singing career—but at times I didn’t recognize when I was holding too hard a line. When Mitch Miller played me Hank Williams’s hit “Cold, Cold Heart,” I didn’t think I should attempt to sing it; Hank’s version was great, but it was so different from the kind of songs I did, with the country fiddling and his yodeling voice. “It’s a good song, but I’m a city guy, and I wouldn’t know how to sing something like that,” I told Mitch.
Mitch objected strongly, declaring, “If I have to tie you to a tree, you’re going to do it.” He emphasized the beautiful words and melody, and after a while, he convinced me that I should try it. We made the record and the song hit the airwaves, starting out slowly. But then it caught on and climbed up the charts, and eventually it reached number one.
Back then there was no such thing as “crossover” music. It was either blues or country or jazz or pop; never country-rock or that sort of thing. But because of my putting out “Cold, Cold Heart,” Hank’s songs caught on everywhere. It was the first time a country tune had crossed over to the top-forty charts, and eventually it went on to be the first international country hit. We sold 2 million copies, and I’m sure he did well with it, too. One day Hank himself called me up and jokingly said, “Hey, what’s the idea of ruining my song?” Later I was told that he would play my version of it when he was with friends, which made me feel wonderful.
And if you can believe it, I almost missed out on recording the career-defining “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
George Cory and Douglass Cross were a songwriting team who lived in New York City. They were always pitching their new pieces to singers and musicians, trying to get them recorded. One day they ran into Ralph Sharon, my accompanist, and handed him a batch of sheet music. Ralph was so busy that he put it in a dresser drawer and forgot it was there.
Two years later, Ralph was packing to go to a concert we were doing in Hot Springs, Arkansas; from there we’d head to the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, where I’d never before performed. He was rummaging through his dresser for clothes to bring on the trip and came across the songs from Cory and Cross. Right on the top was “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Since we were going to be playing there, he snatched it up along with his shirts.
We did our gig at the club in Hot Springs, where former president Bill Clinton later told me he watched our show through a window, since at the time he wasn’t old enough to be admitted. After the show, Ralph and I went down to the hotel bar to run through some things, and he played “I Left My Heart” on the piano. I thought it was great, but what really clinched it was the bartender’s reaction. “If you record that song, I promise I’ll buy the very first copy,” he said.
I’d heard that San Francisco audiences were a bit hard to warm up if they weren’t familiar with your act, so I figured this song about their town might help. Marty Manning wrote a fantastic chart, and I sang it on the opening night at the Fairmont. The crowd absolutely loved it. That could have been all she wrote, but a Columbia rep heard it and thought the sales in San Francisco alone would make it a good idea to record it. I got it down in a single take, and Ralph called Cory and Cross, who were thrilled that I’d finally done one of their tunes.
In those days, you had an A side and a B side on records. The A side of this one was a song called “Once Upon a Time,” and the B side was “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” The funny thing is, you never know how a song is going to do out
in the world. You might think, Oh, this one really has potential, but you never know until it gets out there. So I was promoting “Once Upon a Time” like anything for about six weeks, because it was the A side. The Columbia people called me up and said, “Turn it over and plug the San Francisco side; it’s selling like hotcakes.” I did, and I guess the rest is history.
“I Left My Heart” sold thousands and thousands of copies every week for the next several years, and it became the biggest song of my whole career. People in San Francisco treat me like a king when I’m in town, and the Fairmont Hotel just gave me the top suite, which they’re calling the Tony Bennett Suite; they’ve even put some of my artwork in there. The B side of that record, “Once Upon a Time,” also became a trademark song of mine, and I’ve always loved performing it onstage.
“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was my first gold record, and because of it, I won my first Grammy. I think one reason for its popularity is that the lyrics represent the fulfillment of a dream. There is one special place in life that embodies all that you feel and believe in, and it remains an anchor of sorts that reminds you of your values and what’s deeply and permanently important. We’d all like to be successful someday; the lines about coming home to the city mean that the person’s dream did come true. Often people ask me if I ever get tired of singing it, since it’s a standard part of my repertoire. I always reply, “Do you ever get tired of making love?”