Tony Bennett And The Melody That Lingers
Not long after Tony Bennett assumed the mantle of keeper of the Flame, he did a concert in Indianapolis.
This was in August of 1998. Bennett took the stage at the now demolished Hilton U. Brown Theatre, the outdoor home of Starlight Musicals for decades, which even then was on its way to destruction.
Bennett’s friend and sometime rival Frank Sinatra had died three months earlier, leaving Bennett alone as the last of the big-name saloon singers still warbling their way through the great American songbook.
I caught his act.
I hadn’t been a huge fan of the early Bennett, the one who made his mark with “Rags to Riches†and other tunes that encouraged him to over-sing. His voice at the beginning of his career was such a marvelous instrument that he felt compelled to show off its great capacities at every opportunity.
Like many young artists—like many young men, for that matter—Bennett let his gift use him rather than using his gift. Playing most often with a big band, he seemed at times almost to be in competition with the musicians accompanying him as he appeared to try to sing more powerfully than they played.
The effect could be impressive without being stirred. One could admire his technique while remaining unmoved by his performance.
That changed with time and experience.
When he was in his 60s, beginning with an album-length tribute to the songs of Fred Astaire, Bennett experienced a renaissance. Age had matured his voice, burnishing it with some rasp and grit it lacked when he first began recording. It still had power, but he had learned how to harness it, how to make it serve the song, rather than allowing it to gallop unbridled.
Instead of turning his recordings and concerts into displays of a dexterous athlete determined to demonstrate his prowess, he became something else, an artist, a storyteller who spun tales through song. He played most often with a smaller combo. His singing became more conversational, less forced and more intimate.
The art of being a saloon singer, as Sinatra showed, was in transforming the works of Tin Pan Alley into pieces of shared autobiography. The singer had to convince the audience that he or she had lived the lyrics so listeners could feel they had lived the lines, too.
That’s what the later Bennett discovered.
Once he stopped pushing his voice so hard, he gave the songs he sang room to breathe—and they sprang to life.
The last 30 years of his life produced a series of remarkable albums, tributes not just to Astaire but also to Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington, as well as collaborations with artists as varied as Diana Krall, K.D. Lang, Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga.
I saw him when he was still early in his late-in-life rebirth. Even then, he was an old man, a craggy-faced figure north of 70.
It was a warm summer night, pleasant enough to be sitting and listening but likely to be hot and uncomfortable for a man singing under lights while garbed in jacket and tie.
Bennett, though, seemed completely at ease and at peace, a man who had found his place and an artist who had found his voice.
That night, he sang songs that were 50 or 60 years old, but he made them feel fresh—made them feel lived. He sang in a way that carried us all into the song and made us experience that rush of first love, the regret of lost love, the hope and the heartbreak.
Later, I would marvel at Bennett’s longevity, the ways he managed not just to stay active but to remain vital. He seemed to prove that age does not have to diminish one’s ambitions, that the dimming of the days can be something to celebrate, too.
In that old, burnished voice of his, he could sing “The Best is Yet to Come,†mean it and make us believe it.
Tony Bennett died the other day.
He was 96.
In these days following his death, I find myself listening to a song in which he began to explore his more relaxed voice.
“The song is ended,†he sings with just a touch of rasp and grit in those marvelous pipes of his, “but the melody lingers on.â€
Amen, brother.
Amen.
FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
 – Evansville, IN
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