The Year of Tony Bennett is happy to announce the musical collaborator of the month as k.d. lang. Today is also her birthday, so please join me in wishing her a very happy birthday.
I became a Tony Bennett fan through being a k.d. lang fan. I had all of her great early albums: Angel With a Lariat, Absolute Torch and Twang, Ingenue and Drag to just name a few.
This is a fun song from her early days. I was lot younger then and could actually dance to this.
Then in 2002 came A Wonderful World with Tony Bennett and, well, you know what happened next.
But I knew in 1990 that she was a great jazz singer with the release of Red Hot + Blue, an album of Cole Porter songs with covers by artists from the The Neville Brothers to Tom Waits to Lisa Stansfield (whose “Down In The Depths” haunts me to this day) to U2 to k.d. lang who sang “So In Love,” all to raise money to fight AIDs. She made this memorable video of a woman caring for her lover who has AIDs.
And then in 1992 came “Constant Craving.”
So, yes, I’m a huge fan of hers. Her work with Tony Bennett has been breathtaking. I’ll be featuring the songs from their 2002 album A Wonderful World. But before that was her duet with Tony on Playin’ With My Friends in 2001. She has sung on both of Tony’s duets albums. We have a lot of great music to choose from this month.
Happy birthday, k.d. lang. And thanks for all the great music.
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