The Good Life (31 page)

As I got to know him better, I found out about how he rehearsed. He always got involved in the process and contributed his own ideas. His official choreographer was Hermes
Pan, but essentially Fred co-choreographed all of his dances. Hermes told me the secret of Fred’s genius was that he knew what to leave out. In other words, it wasn’t what he did in the dance, it was how he eliminated extraneous movements and made everything look so economical and effortless.

One time I was talking to one of the owners of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and I happened to mention I was friendly with Fred Astaire. He was flabbergasted. “Do you really know Fred Astaire?” he asked. When I assured him that I did, he took out a blank check and wrote Fred’s name in the “pay to the order of” line, leaving the amount blank. He handed me the check and said, “You tell Mr. Astaire that if he’ll play a week here in Vegas, he can fill in any amount he likes. He doesn’t even have to dance. I don’t care what he does.” I took that check to Fred, but I wasn’t surprised when he passed on it.

I grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald, and I never, ever dreamed that I’d become her friend. We first met in 1952 on the occasion of my mother’s birthday. I told my mother I’d take her to any show she wanted to go to, and she surprised the hell out of me when she said, “I want to see Ella Fitzgerald!” Ella was working at Birdland, and I never thought I’d see my mother in Birdland in a million years, but there we were, and we had the greatest time.

Ella came up to us after the show and introduced herself—as if she needed an introduction!—and I told her it was my mom’s birthday. Ella wished her a special day and told her she was honored that she’d chosen to spend it watching her perform. Then Ella turned to me and said, “I love your recording of ‘Blue Velvet.’” I couldn’t believe it—Ella Fitzgerald saying that to me! I carry that memory around with me as a badge of honor.

I got to know Ella very well in California. She was a great human being. I often told her she was the best singer I’d ever
heard in my life. She said, “No, no, everybody’s good! There are so many wonderful singers out there.” Ella was a truly humble person. When she toured with the Count Basie band, she could have flown first class like most stars do when they work with the big bands, but Ella preferred to stay with the boys on the bus; she would never play the star and leave them. The two of us spent decades crisscrossing the country, and we frequently ran into each other. It didn’t matter where she was going or how many times she’d already played a particular town. She loved her audiences and couldn’t wait to entertain them.

Ella wasn’t just a singer; she was a real musician, and her voice was her instrument. When she sang without words, it wasn’t just scat-singing; it was a remarkable kind of nonverbal communication. She sang all over the world—China, Germany, South America, Africa—and never worried about the language barrier. When Ella scatted, the whole world understood and cheered her on.

We always spent Christmas with her. I took Joanna and Antonia over to Ella’s house every Christmas Eve, and she’d cook up a storm, the best food you could ever dream up. We’d ring her doorbell and she’d open the door and say, “Oh, my daughters are finally here!”

Sammy Cahn lived next door. He used to tell me to come over anytime I wanted to borrow a cup of song.

Derek Boulton and I parted company in 1975, and for a year or so I worked with my friend Jack Rollins, Jack’s wife, Jane Martin, had been a backup singer on my very first recording date for Leslie Records back around 1949, and wed always kept in touch, Jack is one of the great managers in show business history—he helped make the careers of Woody Allen,
Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and Lenny Bruce—but until 1975 the timing had been off for both of us.

Jack was always after me to put more humor in my act. If something happens in the concert hall or club where I’m working, I can usually come up with a spontaneously funny line about it, but Jack was insistent that I put more humor into my show.

One day we were walking down the street to an appointment, and I was telling Jack that if I’m getting four standing ovations every night without one-liners, maybe I’m doing something right. But he wasn’t interested. We tried to hail a cab on Madison Avenue, but it was the lunch hour and there wasn’t a taxi in sight. After about fifteen minutes a police car stopped at a red light. The cop looked at me and said, “Hey, how you doin’, Tony?”

“Fine.” I said. “Are you going uptown?”

And the cop said, “Yeah, hop in!”

So there we were, riding uptown in the back of a police car, and Jack Rollins turned to me and said, “Now
this
is funny!”

Jack was with me when, at long last, I started my very own independent label, something I’d wanted for years. The idea first began to gel around 1972 when I met Bill Hassett, a successful realtor in Buffalo who owned the Statler Hilton Hotel there. We thought that between his business acumen and my musical know-how we ought to be able to get something going. It turned out that it took a lot more than that, but I wouldn’t find that out until a couple of years and a couple of hundred thousand dollars later.

We named our company Tobill Enterprises, and I called our label Improv. Bill and I owned the operation jointly. It was the crystallization of everything I’d been working for: I’d be the central artist on the label, but I’d sign top-quality jazz
artists like Bill Evans, Torrie Zito, Earl Hines, Jimmy and Marian McPartland, Charlie Byrd, and Ruby Braff.

Part of the attraction was that Bill had a jazz room in his hotel called the Downtown Club. I figured we could book talent for the club and that way find potential artists we might want to record. This happened with “Fatha” Hines, whose Improv album was titled
Live in Buffalo
.

I talked to my son Danny, who was now twenty-one, about this venture. Danny was performing in rock bands with his brother, Daegal, but he always took a keen interest in the business side of music. He knew where I was coming from, that I wanted to be in a situation where I could call my own shots. He said, “You can make great records, you can have great album covers, but distribution is the key to success.”

I knew there were independent labels with independent distribution, but it was a hard road to travel. Bill’s idea was to build up a network of independent distributors in this country and around the world.

Once again, Columbia Records caught wind of my plans and offered to take over our distribution. I told Bill about Columbia’s offer, but he said, “No, let’s not do it that way. We want to do this entirely on our own.” That was the way he’d always made money in the hotel and real estate business in Buffalo, but, as we were to learn, it wasn’t the best way to sell records.

I wasn’t convinced it was the right way to go, so I asked Danny if he’d go to Buffalo and talk it over with Bill. Danny discussed our concerns, but Bill insisted that we take the independent route. I discussed the matter with Jack, and he felt confident that we should move ahead and so we signed the agreement.

We launched the new label with a bang with
Life Is Beautiful
named after a song written by Fred Astaire. In addition
to Torrie Zito arranging and conducting, Frank Laico was engineer and Rudy DeHarak handled the art direction for the album cover, a beautiful photo of myself holding a red-haired baby Antonia, with six-year-old Joanna peering over my shoulder. The album itself was a wonderful mix of styles, with everything from Brazilian tunes to classics by major American songwriters.

My other major project on Improv was “The Cole Porter Medley” eventually released on an album called
The Special Magic of Tony Bennett
. The Porter medley was the most ambitious thing I did with Torrie Zito in the seventies. This was a special project, not something I would have been able to do if I was with a major label.

My favorites were the two albums I did with Bill Evans, the greatest and most influential jazz pianist of his generation. My dear friend, the great jazz singer Annie Ross, came up with the idea of my making an album with Bill, I’d known her since the early fifties when she was singing with the group Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross.

One night in London when Annie, her husband, and I were having dinner at some Italian restaurant in Soho, she brought up the Bill Evans idea. We all agreed it was an excellent suggestion and settled in to enjoy our meal. Next thing you know, a waiter passed me the word that Sinatra’s people had phoned and “The Old Man” himself was going to be there in about ten minutes. I told Annie, “Watch the waiters.” The whole staff snapped to attention, like the inspector general was about to descend on the joint. Everybody was all but saluting when Sinatra arrived with his daughter, Tina, and Robert Wagner. I went over to say hello, and Frank invited the three of us to join his party. We spent the whole evening listening to Frank talking about his big-band days, how he learned things like never to cross his legs while sitting on the
bandstand because it takes the crease out of your trousers. We were more than content just to listen to him talk. It was a rare and special night.

Bill Evans was there when I sang with Dave Brubeck at the all-star concert on the White House lawn in 1962. By the sixties, especially after his tenure with the Miles Davis Sextet and with his own groundbreaking trio, Bill had become the most-listened-to jazz pianist in the world. He recorded with very few singers, though, so I was surprised when Annie suggested that Bill and I work together. Bill happened to be playing in London at Ronnie Scott’s, so John Bunch—who was still with me then—and I went down to hear Bill’s latest trio, which impressed us mightily. My original idea was to make an album with my voice and two pianos. I wanted to have both Bill Evans and John Bunch, but John discouraged me—he said it would be better with Bill Evans alone.

In the spring of 1975 we worked out an arrangement with Bill’s manager, Helen Keane, to tape two albums together. It was the same kind of reciprocal deal I made with Count Basie: we’d do one album for Improv and another for Fantasy, the label Bill was under contract to. The Fantasy album, titled
The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album
, came out in June 1975, and the following September we recorded
Tony Bennett & Bill Evans Together Again
for Improv.

Bill and I got along famously. Before the dates he said to me, “Keep your cronies at home and I’ll do the same.” It was just Helen, Bill, one engineer, and me in the studio. We didn’t want anyone around to distract us. And as the records show, it was a tremendously intimate experience. I hadn’t recorded with just piano since
Tony Sings for Two
, fifteen years earlier, and Bill was accustomed to having a bass and drummer with him, so both of us were more exposed than usual.

During the sessions I’d name a tune, and Bill would say, “That’s good, let’s do that.” We’d find a key, work it out, then play it through and work out all the changes. After three days we had nine songs in the can.

I remember how the intensity of the whole experience kept mounting. I told the engineer, “Don’t wait for us to do a take, just keep the tape running all the time.” But all he said was, “I can’t. I’ll run out of tape.” My one regret is that we didn’t record all those rehearsals and run-throughs. It was fascinating to hear Bill work on songs, He was always improvising and revising, changing and improving his approach.

In June 1976, Bill and I opened the Newport Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall, Bill came on for the first half, then I did the second, and we finished up together. Bill and I worked a number of other appearances together; the Smithsonian in Washington; on a TV concert in Holland; a half-hour special for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Around the time of the Carnegie Hall show I was doing a radio interview with the celebrated disc jockey William B. Williams on the old WNEW, and Bill came along with me. William B. was smart enough to put Bill on mike as well, and I’ll never forget what Bill said about me when William B. asked, “Working with Tony Bennett, is that a jazz sound?” Bill replied:

As far as I’m concerned, it is. Occasionally fans will act surprised by the fact that Tony and I have joined together for this particular project, because they tend to see Tony in the superstar pop singer image. But you know, every great jazz musician I know idolizes Tony. From Philly Joe Jones to Miles Davis, you name it. The reason is that Tony is a great musical artist. He puts music first, and has dedicated himself to it. He has great respect for music
and musicians, and this comes through, and it’s just a joy to work with somebody like that. To me, it’s music.

Bill finished by saying, “This is one of the prime experiences of my life.” I still haven’t gotten over that. Thank you, Bill.

The only downside about working with Bill Evans was watching his addiction destroy him. I once asked him, “What happened? Why did you start doing drugs? Did someone hurt you?” “Hurt me?” he said. “I wish they did.” He bitterly regretted the course his life had taken. “I wish somebody had broken my arm instead of sticking a needle in it for the first time, I wish somebody would have knocked me right out so that I’d never touch it again.” In those last few months he was so sick that after a set he’d have to go right back to his room and lie down. It was a nightmare. He finally ran out of the energy to keep living.