The song of the day for Saturday, September 17, 2022, is “I’ve Got Just About Everything.”
About Today
Today we are remembering Ralph Sharon, Tony Bennett’s pianist and musical director starting in 1957 and worked with Tony (with one hiatus) until 2001. Ralph was born in London on September 17, 1923, and died in Boulder, Colorado on March 31, 2015, at the age of 91. Sharon was instrumental in Bennett’s career. In addition to his work with Bennett, he worked with artists including Rosemary Clooney, Nancy Wilson, Robert Goulet, and Johnny Hartman, in addition to a solo career as a pianist and arranger.
Bennett remembers Sharon in his book Just Getting Started:
Ralph was a great piano player, who would record dozens of albums on his own. But I especially treasured that he was a superb—even the perfect—accompanist. He didn’t play a melody and just expect a singer to follow. We always performed a subtle, unspoken duet, in which Ralph knew when to pull back, when to go ahead, and how to strike a note just right alongside my voice. We got better and more practiced at that over fifty years of working together, sometimes three hundred shows a year. But to be sure, we felt a lot of closeness from the first. And of course, Ralph had the wisdom and talent to find the sheet music to “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” one night in a shirt drawer in the dresser of his hotel room in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a story told earlier in this book. That song took us around the world, in so many ways. But he always said, “If I hadn’t looked for that shirt in that drawer, it would never have happened.”
About This Song
“I’ve Got Just About Everything” was written by composer and jazz pianist Bob Dorough. In his liner notes for Forty/Fifty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett, Bennett says that “this one explains how a singer feels when he sings a song everyone likes.”
About This Version
Tony Bennett recorded “I’ve Got Just About Everything” on March 27, 1964, with the Ralph Sharon Trio, for the album When Lights Are Low. It was arranged by Ralph Sharon.
This has always been a favorite song and recording of mine. Not only is an effective arrangement, but Sharon’s piano is a joy to listen to.
“I’ve Got Just About Everything,” as well as When Lights Are Low is available on Apple Music.