Tony Bennett has seen us through seven decades of life: falling in and out of love, breaking hearts, and many long, restless nights. That’s what great singers do. They carry a tune for all of us. And no singer has carried more of our dreams for longer than Tony Bennett.
Tony Bennett has been my friend since the days of our youth and the streets of Queens. He was Anthony Dominick Benedetto when we were teenagers. Tony had to quit school and go to work as a singing waiter. That is your fate when your father dies young and your family needs money more urgently than you need a classroom. Soon, Tony was old enough to carry a rifle in a war that engulfed the world. He lived through desperate fighting at the battle’s end, and was in a unit that liberated prisoners of a concentration camp. That taught Tony a lifelong lesson about the crime of hate.
When Tony got back from the war, he began to appear where he could do more singing than serving platters of pasta Bolognese. Pearl Bailey heard him once and asked him to join her at the Village Inn, downtown in New York. Who should come backstage one night but a guy Tony had once seen entertain thousands of other soldiers in Germany: Bob Hope.
He comes backstage and announces that he is not offering but telling Tony that he will sing in his shows at the Paramount Theatre. Means only a job as star. By the way, Hope says, he has a better name for the kid, who has been working under the stage name of Joe Bari, a show business name: “Tony Bennett. How do you like it?”
It turned out to be a name for now and forever. Ever since, on every day of his life, Tony Bennett has sung. And this great voice has not faded, from his first million-seller, “Because of You,” a mere sixty-five years ago, until today, when he sings with a huge young talent with her own platinum records, Lady Gaga.
And there’s no sign that he’s running out. Tony Bennett today, an artist at age ninety, has a voice that soars as if he were twenty-five and still a kid, with young passion and love and a name that’s still fresh on the scene. As Tony has gotten older, his voice has gotten finer, filled with more feeling with the more he’s seen of life. That can’t be said of any other singer. Tony Bennett’s is a voice to reach from Astoria, Queens, to every corner of the city, the country, and the world. A voice in a book now, too, yes, to sing to us again, my friend.
— JIMMY BRESLIN