The Year of Tony Bennett

My son and manager Danny, who has managed me for over thirty years now, came to me one day wanting me to try something new. “Why don’t you write a song?” he asked. “Well, I can’t compete with Cole Porter or Jerome Kern, you know; give me a break,” was my reply. But he wouldn’t let me off the hook so easily. “Why don’t you just try it?” he encouraged me. “We have something in mind.” At first I felt skeptical about it, but then I received my inspiration. After I played a concert in Hawaii, I went to hear a wonderful jazz group perform. One of their songs in particular spoke to me. When I asked the piano player for its name, he told me it was called “Dark Eyes,” and was written by Django Reinhardt.

I asked Danny to get hold of the family that owned the song, and they gave us an okay for me to write the lyrics, inspired by and dedicated to my wife, Susan Benedetto, which became “All for You.” And oddly enough, I wrote the lyrics in only an hour. I guess from interpreting songs for so many years, I know to stay away from trite material, and I thought it came out pretty well. Then when we were in Fresno, California, I performed it in front of an audience for the firs time, and I was bowled over by their reaction; they went crazy for it. So at eighty-six, I now have my first songwriting credit.

Tony Bennett