Never Underestimate the Public
Respect plays a big role for me in life. Respect for oneself and for others eliminates hate, and encourages love in those around us. I’m a firm believer in “do unto others.” As long as people are not hurting or imposing their beliefs on others, we should live and let live. Serving the community and giving back are what America is all about.
I’ve been able to apply this concept as a performer, and I see firsthand how it works. I never underestimate the power that we have to effect change. It’s popular these days to put down the public as uneducated, and insist they don’t know what’s best for themselves. In particular, politicians and corporations have an attitude that they are better than everyone else. This is a joke; they forget that without the people, they are nothing. They think they can just hand them something stupid, and they’ll all go for it. Sure, sometimes that works, but it’s momentary. There will always be fads, yet those are only temporary. Poor material always ends up in the junkyard.
In a way, I consider myself a public servant; I feel I have a responsibility to do my job with quality, and trust that listeners know what they like, and what they don’t. If I were to walk out onstage thinking I’m superior to the people in the seats, I would lose them right then and there. They can sense your attitude. You can’t fake it; they’ll pick up your body language, see right through you, and say, “This guy is trying to pull something over on us, and he isn’t going to be any good.” But if they see someone who’s in shape, walking out with energy, they’re gonna say, “Boy, this is going to be a fabulous performance.” They know right off the bat; they’re sharper than you could ever imagine. Once you respect them, they’ll immediately respect you. But if you disrespect them, they’ll do the same. There’s no such thing as a cold audience—there’s only an inferior performance.
I don’t look down at the audience; instead, I look up to them. Yet it’s funny how the corporations in America think the public is like cattle. João Gilberto is another musician friend who’s also very uncompromising as an artist. He sings very quietly, and he uses an unamplified guitar—no big speaker; just a little microphone so you can hear the natural strings. And he whispers when he sings, in the most beautiful way. João did a concert in Japan, and they gave him a seventeen-minute standing ovation, they responded so well to the excellence of his music.
I saw João perform once in Umbria; it was one of the most amazing nights of my life because I was sitting outside in this very warm, sweet Italian night, with perfumed trees all around us. João came out and just whispered into the microphone, singing very naturally. It was so quiet that you could hear the crickets in the trees. At the end of that show, they gave him a ten-minute standing ovation. Nowadays everybody thinks that the louder a concert is, the better. But in reality, the opposite is true. João gets the longest standing ovations of any artist in the world, because he respects his listeners’ intellect.
I found this idea to ring true early on, when I was in the Army. After Germany surrendered, I left the front line and joined the 314th Army Air Forces Special Services Band of the European Theater. Glenn Miller’s band had been the AAF orchestra until his plane disappeared over the Atlantic in late 1944. Eventually the chief of Special Services put together another band to take its place, and its new home base was to be in occupied Germany. Obviously the citizens of that country weren’t very friendly toward our army, so the new orchestra was supposed to break down some of those barriers. In late 1945, they started auditioning for musicians, and at first I was given the job of librarian. My job was making sure all the music was in order for each performance. But when the officer in charge, Lin Arison, heard me sing, he told me to join the band, too.
We did a weekly broadcast over the Armed Forces Network that went out to American GIs stationed there and to the Germans as well. The show was broadcast live from the Wiesbaden opera house, which had fantastic acoustics and could hold a couple of thousand soldiers. The band, consisting of fifty-five musicians, was extremely versatile; we could do swing, dance music, bebop, or current hits; even light classical numbers. Lin Arison really inspired us to do our best. He was very creative, particularly for someone in the Army.
Lin had always wanted to put together a top-notch pop jazz orchestra, and he was told by the higher-ups that he could do it. He auditioned for first-rate musicians, and some great players, such as my good friend George Masso, came on board. The band was very versatile; it could do swing, such as Benny Goodman or Count Basie, as well as the current popular hits of the day.
We also had a terrific pianist who played a brand-new type of music, called bebop; it was the first time I’d ever heard of Dizzy Gillespie. I was one of several vocalists, and I usually sang a couple of songs, blues or rhythm numbers. There were a few fantastic female singers who added a lot to the show, too. Some of the numbers that I sang in Germany I did later on in my career, such as “Body and Soul,” which Amy Winehouse and I recorded as a duet.
Oddly enough, during this period in the Army I enjoyed the most musical freedom I would ever have in my entire life. I could sing whatever I wanted—if I heard a song on the armed services broadcast and liked it, I could go ahead and do it. The whole band felt the same way. We couldn’t get enough of it; when we weren’t rehearsing, we’d be jamming in the hotel rooms. Lin let us come up with the most interesting ideas, and everything we attempted went over well with the soldiers.
The GIs were the greatest audience in the world; they were open to all kinds of sounds. Some of the music was rather experimental, but they enjoyed every bit of it.
Performing for the GIs showed me that the average person is much more hip than he’s given credit for. That was the first time it struck me that an artist should never underestimate the public’s taste. These were guys who had been drafted before they could go to college or barely finish high school, yet they were happy to be exposed to cutting-edge stuff. In fact, they ate it up; they liked the avant-garde material as much as they did the standard tunes. This experience taught me that you can stretch people’s tastes as long as you do high-quality songs.
The public is so much smarter than the marketers give them credit for. People are not ignorant; sometimes the record producers may insist they are, but actually most of those producers turn out to be the uncreative ones. The decisions they make are often so far below the listeners’ mentality that it’s not even funny.
Once I received as a gift a seventeen-volume book on the history of art. The first sentence in the first volume said, “When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops becoming art.” So if you’re a record company and sign up a singer, you should believe in him. Let him do what he’s doing. If you don’t like it, then get another artist—but don’t tell him what to do. And don’t look down on the people buying the records, because without them, you’re nothing.
I valued Ella Fitzgerald’s opinions, and she lived by these concepts. I once asked her how she was able to be so perfect every single time she performed. “I follow what the audience is doing,” she told me. “Whatever they do, I just react to it.” And that’s the right way to be. If you’re thinking, This is a tough audience, or They don’t know good music when they hear it, you won’t be able to give them your best.
I view the audience as very friendly. They save up for months in order to buy tickets and arrange for a babysitter, so they are looking forward to having a good time, and to support the person they came to see. I believe the performers who are truly great are the ones who actually like their fans.
Look at Louis Armstrong. He used to do “Hello, Dolly!” six times a night for different shows; it was probably his most commercially successful song. And yet if you asked him what his favorite song was, he’d always say, “It’s ‘Hello, Dolly!’ ” When Irving Berlin was asked what his favorite song was, he would always reply, “The one that sold the most records; the one the public liked the most.”
I refuse to follow the trends, because I think so highly of my fans. Any artist who thinks, They’re full of junk, so I’ll just give them junk, is making a big mistake. If you think that way, you won’t be around too long. They may love you on the way up, but watch out if you hit a period when things aren’t going that well; you’ll be a goner. This has been proven over and over again in the music industry.
In addition to doing a high-quality set, I always open with a strong first act. Some performers like the opening act to be definitively weaker than their own, so they appear more impressive in contrast; but I never do that. Instead, I’ve had Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lena Horne, and the great drummer Buddy Rich ahead of me on the bill. Of course they went over like wildfire, but I’ve worked hard at being able to follow the top artists. The best way to win over a crowd is to give them brilliant performers, right from the get-go. Every time I opened with a dynamic act, by the time I got onstage, the crowd was wide awake and on the edge of their seats. They were thinking, What’s going to happen now? How could anyone follow that? Then I came out and did it. If you have a strong program from beginning to curtain-fall, the crowd never feels cheated.
I love working live. If you have a full house saying, “Yeah, we like this guy,” you can’t improve on that. It goes beyond what any producer or corporate person tries to tell you is right or wrong. The public always has the final word, as far as I’m concerned. In a way, it’s the same for politicians; at the end of an election year, even with all the money they spend on campaigning, they still have to go out and shake all those hands. It just goes to show that if you get the people on your side, then you’ve got it made.
Having a high opinion of my fans has always served me well. You can’t go wrong when you recognize their capacity to understand what you’re trying express artistically.
The Zen of Bennett
If you think that you are superior to your fans, you will lose their respect immediately.
There’s no such thing as a cold audience—there’s only an inferior performance.
The consumer is so much smarter than marketing people give them credit for.
When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops becoming art.
Never underestimate the knowledge or understanding of the public.
