The Year of Tony Bennett is ten years old today. That’s right: our first post was written on June 10, 2002. A lot has happened in those ten years. I’ve had to take some breaks now and then (with another break coming soon — more on that later), but I’ve always come back because I don’t quite feel like myself if I have written a song of the day.

So, a few blog facts:

• The first post was a discussion of The Good Life, Bennett’s autobiography, written with Jazz journalist Will Friedwald.
• The first song I wrote about was “The Best Is Yet To Come.”
• The first official song of the day was “Love Is Here To Stay” which was posted on August 23, 2012.
• The most search-for song on the blog is “The Right To Love.”
• The most-searched-for information is a topic I wrote about Duke Ellington and the Harlem Renaissance. As most of the searches for that topic come from school system computer networks, I’m guessing it’s a popular term paper topic.
• The most often-featured song of the day is “The Rules of the Road.”
• My favorite feature is The 12 Days of a Tony Bennett Christmas.

A few blog statistics:

• I have written 3,606 posts for this blog.
• We have visitors from over the world. Except for Antartica. If you know someone living on the South Pole, please ask them to visit the site, just once.
• It took me 4 years to create The Interactive Tony Bennett Discography. I did it after work and on weekends; it defines the term ‘a labor of love.’
• The two sites average around 6000 visits a month. It’s not a lot, but it’s substantial to me, as we do no advertising at all.
• The discography especially gets what I call ‘bingers.’ When I view my usage stats, I will see visits to the discography over a one or two-day period by an individual viewing hundreds of posts. The last binger was from Belgium and viewed 882 posts. I am humbled and grateful that someone would spend so much time on the site and I only hope that they found what they were looking for.

I am very grateful for the friends and acquaintances I’ve met because of this blog. I especially want to thank Sylvia in Mr. Bennett’s office for providing me with backstage passes and complimentary seats at concerts.

I also want to thank my good friend Lesley, who has been the closest friend this blog could have. She’s been a huge inspiration and a wonderful listener. Thank you, Lesley.

So, I’m going to have a little cocktail to celebrate the last ten years as I look forward to the next ten.

Thank you all,

Suzanne