The Year of Tony Bennett

An Appreciation of the Art and Music of Tony Bennett

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Song of the Day: Just In The Time

The song of the day for Saturday, March 23, 2013 is Just In Time.

About This Song

Just in Time is one of the many great songs from the 1956 musical Bells Are Ringing, with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

The Year of Tony Bennett chooses this song in honor of Tony Bennett’s participation in the Third March from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965. The first two marches had ended poorly, with the marchers being attacked by police with billy clubs and tear gas on the first march and not being allowed to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge on the second march. Dr. Martin Luther King enlisted Harry Belafonte to encourage  other celebrities to join the fight. Tony Bennett was the first person Belafonte reached out to. Other participants included Joan Baez, Paul Newman, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frankie Laine and Nina Simone.

On the morning of March 24, the march entered Montgomery County, Alabama. That night, there was a “Stars For Freedom” rally, with performances by the artists. There was no stage; a local funeral home offered the use of empty coffins to make a stage. Tony Bennett, visibly exhausted from the long march, sang Just In Time. In August, 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

About This Version

This version of Just in Time is from the Tony Bennett / Count Basie album, In Person!

http://open.spotify.com/track/7zYba3iNwhjnlpDTbfXK5N
Just In Time, as well as the full Tony Bennett Count Basie In Person! album, is available from iTunes.

Here’s the interview with Tony Bennett and Harry Belafonte from CNN conducted on March 21, 2013.

 

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Song of the Day: Time After Time

The song of the day for Friday, March 8, 2013 is Time After Time.

About This Song

Time After Time was written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne   for the 1947 film It Happened in Brooklyn, where it was introduced by Frank Sinatra. It’s been a jazz standard since that time, starting with the Sarah Vaughan 1946 recording with Teddy Wilson, and other great recordings by Chet Baker (1954), Stan Getz (1957) and Sinatra as well in 1957.

In The Jazz Standards, Al Gioia quotes Jule Styne as saying that “It’s a man’s song … Time After Time. When a woman sings it, it’s drained of all its power, so to speak. The girls can’t do it.”  Gioia disagrees with Styne and feels that Vaughan recording was very good. That said, in the hands of Sinatra and, later, Tony Bennett, the song is superb.

About This Version

Every once in a while, I will sit down to listen to a Tony Bennett album and it’s as if I’m really hearing a song for the first time. This happened today as I sat down to listen to Perfectly Frank. The album starts with Time After Time and I was transported. Was it Tony Bennett’s voice? Robert Farnon’s wonderful arrangement? Ralph Sharon’s subtle and minimalistic and perfect accompaniment?  Or is the recording of Time After Time a perfect example of what Tony Bennett calls “art of intimate singing?” Or that aspect that Whitney Balliett noted in his New Yorker interview with Bennett in 1974 – “that quality that lets you in?“

It’s likely all of these things and these things add up to a sublime and perfect album that starts with Time After Time. I seen and heard Mr. Bennett sing a ballad to an audience of 12,000 people and just about all of them felt that he was singing it just to them: a private and intensely personal conversation between the singer and the listener. I think that’s why he’s such a renowned and honored performer – he connects with his audience. He lets us in and we let him in.  The result here is three minutes and thirty-three seconds of beauty and joy.

Besides, Time After Time is a really good song.

Time After Time

Listen to Time After Time on Spotify. Song · Tony Bennett · 1992

Time After Time, as well as the full Perfectly Frank album, is available from iTunes.

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Song of the Day: Make Someone Happy

The song of the day for Saturday, March 2, 2013 is Make Someone Happy.

About This Song

Make Someone Happy was written for the 1960 Broadway musical Do Re Mi by Jule Styne, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The song is from the second act and was introduced on Broadway by John Reardon and Nancy Dussault. Make Someone Happy is probably the best-known song from the show. In addition to today’s recording, it has been recorded by June Christy, Perry Como, Doris Day, Jimmy Durante, Judy Garland and Aretha Franklin, among others.

About This Version

Today’s song is from the second Tony Bennett – Bill Evans album, Together Again. I love every note on this album, but this recording is one of my favorites.

http://open.spotify.com/track/3YimtiKaG8qW9r4J9fSjAl
Make Someone Happy, as well as the entire Together Again album, is available from iTunes. Note that this remastered version contains several of the outtakes from the recording session.

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Song of the Day: The Party’s Over

The song of the day for Saturday, February 23, 2013 is The Party’s Over.

About The Party’s Over

It’s pretty hard to beat any song composed by the great Jule Styne with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. And that definitely includes The Party’s Over, from the 1956 musical Bells Are Ringing, with Judy Holliday. The song immediately became popular, with recordings by Nat King Cole, Shirley Bassey and even Leslie Gore in 1963.

About This Version

The Party’s Over is the last song on Tony Bennett’s glorious 1959 album Hometown, My Town. One of the earliest “concept” albums, this album is, for me, one of his best (if relatively unknown) jazz albums. And, in spite of fact that we are presenting a single song as the song of the day, the album should be listened to in full to hear the story that Bennett is singing for us. It is the story of young man living in Manhattan, yearning for love, finding it and losing it in the end. But it is never trite and is beautifully sung. The album was wonderfully arranged by Ralph Burns.

I have loved this album from the moment I discovered it. I find that it’s an interesting bookend to Bennett’s 1990 Astoria: The Portrait of the Artist, where he looks back at his life in Astoria after returning home from World War II. If you can find time this weekend, do yourself a favor and listen to both these albums, preferably in a single sitting. Both are intensely personal autobiographies of a young man from the viewpoint of that very young man and the adult looking back. And it’s really, really good music.

http://open.spotify.com/track/1fybSs6gewxKZyojiAHsNB
The Party’s Over, as well as the full Hometown, My Town album, is available from iTunes.

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Song of the Day: Just In Time

The Song of the Day for October 13, 2012 is Just In Time.

About Just In Time

Written by Jule Styne (music) and Betty Comden and Adolph Green (lyrics), Just In Time is just one the great hits from the 1956 Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing.  The stars of the show, Judy Holliday and Sydney Chaplin introduced the song. Tony Bennett recorded the song in the same year, and it was a big hit for Mr. Bennett. He introduced the song 1956 as a single.

About This Version

We choose this song today in our preparation for Viva Duets, which will include a duet of this song with Juan Luis Guerra. Today’s version is from Tony Bennett’s legendary 1962 Carnegie Hall Concert.