Life Is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett

by Tony Bennett

  Amy said that “Body and Soul” was her father Mitch’s favorite song in all the world. When Mitch heard what song we would be singing and asked Amy if she knew it, she told him, “Of course I know it; I’m your daughter.” It’s a great classic by Johnny Greene, and she was singing true jazz on the day we did it. Amy told me that she first began with jazz guitar and that she learned to sing by listening to jazz artists.

  For the most part, contemporary musicians have listened to rock all their lives, but then along came Amy, who had such an innate sense and feeling for jazz.

  When Amy came to record with me, she was a bit nervous at first because she wanted to get everything exactly right. She told me that she wasn’t a natural-born performer, and that she got quite shy onstage. To relax her a bit, I mentioned Dinah Washington, and when Amy told me she was her favorite singer of all time, I told her that Dinah had been a good friend of mine. Amy was excited to hear that and asked me to tell her all about her.

  I told her that Dinah used to come in to the entertainment director’s office at Caesars Palace in Vegas without even having a booking; just with two suitcases in her hands. She’d come in and put the luggage down and say, “I’m here, boss.” He’d tell her, “All right, go to work,” and she’d stay as long as she wanted.

  Dinah would go out and sing, and the club would be jammed. It was just word of mouth; no publicity or anything. She would stay up until ten o’clock the next morning, and then she’d ask, “What’s everyone going to bed for?” After I had told her these stories, Amy commented on the fact that Dinah died so young, before age forty, and at the time we touched lightly on the fact that Dinah had had a rough life.

  Amy was truly one of the best artists I’ve ever known. She was entirely sober, focused, and professional the day we recorded “Body and Soul.” She was also a very spontaneous singer; she knew how to be in the moment. I sensed that in every note she sang, and I was knocked out by her voice; she was such a talent.

  Everybody in Britain was rooting for Amy. She’d had a tough time with alcohol and substance abuse. I knew she had managed to get clean, but I was going to try to talk to her about it, since it’s so easy to slip back into bad things. She seemed very impressed with me, so I was going to tell her to keep a clear head and slow down.

  Unfortunately, I never got a chance to do that. I was going to have her on the show with me when I did the Palladium for my eighty-fifth birthday in London. When she died, four months to the day after our recording date, she was just twenty-seven. I was on the road, and when Danny called me and told me, I started crying; I couldn’t believe it. After we recorded, I had told the BBC in London, “I want to talk to that girl because if she doesn’t keep clean, it’s going to kill her.” That’s the last thing I told them. She was a little angel; Amy was born to sing to us.

  Billie Holiday was another great artist who succumbed to drug addiction. I had gotten to see her play with Duke many years earlier, and she was such an inspiration to me that eventually I dedicated a tribute album to her, called Bennett on Holiday. So many people only knew about the sad aspects of Billie’s life, but on the record, I focused on the more upbeat songs such as “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Laughing at Life.” Bobby Tucker, Billie’s pianist for some time, helped me choose the songs for the record, which also wound up winning a Grammy.

  People like Dinah, Bill, Judy, Amy, Billie, and Whitney Houston all had a touch of genius in them, and yet they were hooked. The world lost a lot of great music when each of them died.

  The Zen of Bennett

  To take drugs is to sin against one’s talent.

  Go with truth and beauty, and forget everything else.

  Susan

  21

  Giving Back

  Being a popular performer in the public eye comes with much responsibility. All of your fans look up to you, and at times they will take what you say and what you do as examples of how they should conduct themselves. People often criticize entertainers for taking a political stance or a position on social issues. I think this attitude is completely off the mark. This great country of ours is built on the basic precept of the right to speak our minds. We often forget that the highest office one can attain under a republic is not president, congressperson, or Supreme Court justice, but that of citizen.

  Each one of us has the right to voice our opinions. It’s important to remember that our democracy is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” So I feel strongly that it is important for entertainers to use their popularity to further causes that help those who are less fortunate than we are. It keeps our world moral and strong. When you think how dedicated to world affairs people like George Clooney, Bono, and my dear friend Harry Belafonte are, you can’t ignore the positive effect that this has had on society at large.

  I’ve always admired the fact that Winston Churchill kept the paintings of the National Gallery in Britain during World War II, instead of shipping them out of the country, despite the threat of bombing. “Hide them in caves and cellars, but not one painting will leave this island,” he famously said. Churchill held strong beliefs about the importance of the arts in education, and to the morale of the entire country.

  When I was in Chicago a while back, I saw an entire city block filled with all kinds of great art. I learned that the artists were all students of the Gallery 37 program. This is the inspiring art program of the nonprofit organization After School Matters, which was set up to expose teens to after-school activities in all areas of education. I learned that the students were commissioned to create all kinds of artwork, including murals and sculpture, and even got paid for it. I returned to New York and told my wife, Susan, who was a teacher at a public arts high school in New York City, about the Chicago program that encourages young artists to make a living even while they are studying their art.

  Like Churchill, I believe in the power of art education to transform the lives and attitudes of others. It certainly has had an impact on the kids in Chicago. What if I could bring art to the younger generation through a school of my own? It has always been a central priority in my life to teach the younger generation the artistic values that have made me a successful artist. A school for the arts in Astoria, my old neighborhood, would help to accomplish just that.

  Susan agreed that this was a great idea, so I called up Danny at his office and told him I wanted to start a school. I insisted that it be a public high school, so kids all over New York would have access to a top-of-the-line facility devoted to all of the arts. My first thought was to call my old friend Peter Vallone Sr., who was City Council Speaker, and who gave me my very first singing job in Queens. It was one of the great thrills of my life, on my seventy-fifth birthday, to get the news from Speaker Vallone on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum that the city had approved $70 million for our arts school.

  Founding the school also gave me the opportunity to “give back” to one of my dearest friends and mentors: I named it Frank Sinatra School of the Arts. Hopefully this act emphasized to others the importance of being a mentor for the younger generation. I first learned this from Louis Armstrong, who always mentioned in interviews that his mentor was Bix Beiderbecke, a great white trumpet player with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. Just as Louis always gave credit to his mentor, I too wanted to give credit to mine—Frank Sinatra.

  While Susan and I dreamed of opening a brand-new school, we didn’t want to wait years for the construction of a new building to be completed, so the city provided us with a temporary site. We opened the Sinatra School in 2001 with both former governor Mario Cuomo and Harry Belafonte on hand for opening day (two gentlemen who are also experts in “giving back”).

  The school flourished, and we began an intensive process to raise funds for our future permanent site while providing ongoing programmatic support. I was a product of public schools with quality arts programs, and Susan was a teacher at a public high school, so we understood that the arts could drive good academic performance
. We also wanted to show the private sector how important it is to support the public school system, particularly since funding for the arts has been cut nationwide. We hoped our facility would become a blueprint for schools across the nation, so Susan and I also founded the nonprofit organization Exploring the Arts (ETA) in 1999 to help support arts programs in other public high schools.

  We were very encouraged early on when I was asked to address the United States Conference of Mayors, who were meeting in Washington, D.C. I said that the Sinatra School was a model for what all other schools in the country should aim to become. Our initial focus was on the school’s permanent site, and I wanted to make sure it would be a state-of-the-art facility with an incomparable concert hall, light-filled art studios, and beautiful dance rooms. Through our dear friend the philanthropist Iris Cantor, I had met the renowned architect James Polshek, who had designed many beautiful buildings and structures, including the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, and the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. Everyone said we would never get a world-class architectural firm such as Polshek to design our building, but I went to the firm directly and told them what Susan and I were trying to accomplish, and they immediately came on board.

  In 2009, just a few blocks away from where I grew up in Astoria, at the Kaufman Astoria Studios complex and across the street from the Museum of the Moving Image, we christened the permanent site of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts. We held an opening ceremony on the first day of school, and it was poignant for us all to have Frank’s daughter Nancy and his granddaughter A.J. join us for the occasion.

  I’m proud that we have raised millions in support of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts. Ten years later, we now support arts programs in thirteen additional New York City public high schools. It was my dream as well to teach young artists how to perform and to have a good foundation that includes the rudiments of entertainment. To have this come true is unbelievable—right in my own hometown.

  Studies have shown that students with high arts involvement perform better in school, do more community service activities, and have higher graduation rates, so it’s very important for kids to be involved in the arts—from drama, dance, vocals, and instrumental music to film and fine arts.

  Through ETA, we help public high schools create and sustain quality arts programs by providing critical equipment and supplies, funding artistic residencies, supporting scholarships, and funding professional development for teachers. I am very proud that our internship program places our students with the city’s top arts institutions, which help prepare them for college and their careers. A majority of the students qualify for school lunches, and in the eleven years since the Sinatra School has been open, the percentage of its students living below the poverty level has doubled. Nearly 70 percent of all the kids in our partner schools live in poverty, so giving back to public education is essential. Most important is that the kids are getting an extensive and rich experience that makes them better artists, and which I feel also makes them better citizens of the world.

  The students love attending the Sinatra School, and their parents often tell us, “You don’t know what you did for my child; it’s a new life.” The program has rigorous academics as well as arts instruction; you teach the kids what the masters did, so they can learn. And we have seen firsthand that if you emphasize the arts in school, the kids like to come to class, so our attendance rates are terrific.

  Over the years, we have had some of the highest graduation rates and percentages of kids going off to college—not only by New York City standards, but nationwide, with an average graduation rate of 95 percent and 85 percent going on to a four-year college. By the time our students leave the Sinatra School, they have had unique experiences: they’ve sung in places such as the United Nations headquarters, Carnegie Hall, and Radio City Music Hall. We get them out in public so they understand what it will be like to perform after they’ve graduated. At many of ETA’s partner schools, we support kids who are the first in their families to go on to college; the arts are a powerful and important part of their education. Our dream is to have quality arts programs in public high schools throughout the United States.

  I know that many of my friends and colleagues thought it was ambitious—maybe too ambitious—to try to start a public school in New York City when I was at a point in my seventies when I could just sit back and relax. But I have learned that when you start giving back, you aren’t alone. My son Danny, and a great many of my dear friends—Mario Cuomo, Harry Belafonte, Herb and Jeanne Siegel, Alec Baldwin, Elton John, and countless heads of corporations, as well as many generous private individuals—have joined Susan and me to promote the mission of Exploring the Arts.

  I was backstage with President Obama at a concert in Washington when I told him about ETA. He was very supportive, and the very next day, he personally arranged for us to meet with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. I was encouraged recently to hear that the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities has established a program called Turnaround: Arts, which also involves a shared public/private effort to keep the arts strong in public education.

  It has been a great experiment in bringing together public institutions, such as city government and the U.S. Department of Education, to partner with private contributors. In the end this enabled us to accomplish far more than we would have if we chose to just rely on either public or private funding exclusively.

  Throughout my career, I have been truly honored to help support a host of charities, among them St. Jude Children’s Hospitals; the American Cancer Society, for which for the last sixteen years I’ve created a holiday card to raise money for the cause; and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I am proud of the entertainment community, which has done so much to help out others in need, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and Sting and his wife Trudie Styler’s Rainforest Foundation. I was thrilled to learn from Lady Gaga about her creation of the Born This Way Foundation. It was particularly meaningful for me to be able to help out from the outset with the establishment of the Amy Winehouse Foundation, started by Mitch and Jane Winehouse in memory of their beautiful daughter. When you give back, you get back—and along the way, you find that the return from giving of yourself to others is the greatest gift of all.

  Here are websites for the charities that I feel most passionately about, in case you want to learn more or make a donation:

  Exploring the Arts: www.exploringthearts.org

  American Cancer Society: www.cancer.org

  St. Jude Children’s Hospital: www.stjude.org

  Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation: www.jdrf.org

  Amy Winehouse Foundation: www.amywinehousefoundation.org

  Born This Way Foundation: www.bornthiswayfoundation.org

  Elton John AIDS Foundation: http://ejaf.org

  Rainforest Foundation: www.rainforestfoundation.org

  Help USA: www.helpusa.org

  Clinton Global Initiative: www.clintonglobalinitiative.org

  The Zen of Bennett

  The arts are important for education, and for the morale of the entire country.

  Students with high arts involvement watch less television, do better in school, participate in more community service activities, and have higher graduation rates—so it’s so important for kids to be involved in the arts.

  Giving back is one of the best things that anyone can do.

  Jon Burr

  22

  This Too Shall Pass

  As wonderful as being in the entertainment world can be, the trials and tribulations of becoming successful and working endless hours can take their toll on a person. It all seems so glamorous, but there is a lot of waiting around. I recall a time when I appeared with Sinatra, and the two of us were escorted down the service elevator and through the back corridors of the hotel ballroom where we were performing. Just as we approa
ched the doors to the stage, Frank turned to me and said, “Hey, Tone, do you realize how many kitchens we’ve walked through?” We both just looked at each other and chuckled. So it’s not all wine and roses.

  I’m not complaining, mind you; it comes with the territory. But sometimes the general public doesn’t understand this. Trying to do the important things, like maintaining a semblance of family life can become quite a challenge; the travel alone can keep you from doing that.

  But even in the lowest moments of my life, I’ve always felt, This too shall pass, and then things will get better. The first devastating event in my life was the death of my father. My dad was a warm, sensitive man, full of love for his family. I can still vividly recall looking into his dark, expressive eyes as I fell asleep while cradled in his strong arms.

  Soon after my older brother, John, was born, my father became ill. By the time I was one, my dad’s health prevented him from being able to work at all. Doctors said he had a weak heart as a result of having rheumatic fever as a child, but they couldn’t help him back then. His body started to ache so badly at night that he couldn’t stand having the covers touching his skin. My father would become so congested that he couldn’t breathe, and he went in and out of the hospital on Governors Island, often being taken there in the middle of the night. To a young child, this was incredibly confusing. One night when he had an attack, my mother began to panic. Everyone was running around, and he was taken to the hospital again. There he contracted pneumonia on top of congestive heart failure, and he fell semiconscious.