The Good Life (20 page)

Englewood, New Jersey, was only a few minutes away from my mom’s house, and Tony T. had recently moved there, so it seemed like the perfect place to look. In the spring of 1956 we decided to rent a house in the nearby town of Tenafly while we looked for a lot to build a new home.

By summer we’d found a beautiful two-acre piece of property that had once been part of the Morrow estate. (Anne Morrow eventually married Charles Lindbergh.) There was little else on the property except the original carriage house and a big old red barn. It was perfect: all this space, and close to midtown Manhattan. That was a very important consideration
for me—since I’d grown up in the city, I’d never learned to drive, and I had to be able to get back and forth easily. From here, I could jump into a cab and be there in twenty minutes. About a year later we rented another house right around the corner from Tony T. in Englewood, hired an architect, and started construction on our new home.

My annual appearance at the Copacabana was a magical engagement. I’d played the Copa at least three times before, but this one was the charm. Although I was still doing some of my hit songs in the set, the main emphasis was on a collection of standard tunes that I performed with a traditional fifteen-piece swing band. I put together the greatest group of songs you could possibly imagine, choosing songs like “Taking a Chance on Love,” arranged by Neal Hefti; Duke Ellington’s “I’m Just a Lucky So and So” and Sammy Fain’s “I’ll Be Seeing You,” arranged by the legendary Gil Evans; and “Always,” arranged by Don Costa (whom Sinatra called “Mr. Music”); most of the other tunes were arranged by Marion Evans. These guys were the cream of the crop, the best of the up-and-coming jazz and vocal arrangers on the New York scene, and all of them went on to become leading lights in the field of orchestration. It was a kick to sing those orchestrations! I loved them all, and I featured them in my act for many years.

I got tremendous reviews, and every celebrity in town came by to check out the show. I went on to tour that show around the country, and the material got really tight. I was anxious to get home to spend some time with Patricia and the kids. My road manager, Dee Anthony, and his wife, Harriet, had just had their first daughter, Michele, so it seemed to be a good time for all of us to take a break from the road and begin work on a new album. I was still desperately trying to persuade Columbia to continue to let me do complete albums, but since the live show was so successful, Columbia agreed to
let me make an album based on that material. This became
Tony
, my second original album.

We were going to tape the album live at the Copa, but we couldn’t get good enough sound recording in the club, so we moved to the studio. Frank Laico and I set it up in an unusual way. Instead of having the musicians sit around in a circle, the way most big band records were made, we set up the band in a regular bandstand arrangement. I stood in front of the band and sang, just as I did during live performances.

All the guys—Marion, Gil, Neal, Don—did a tremendous job on the orchestrations for
Tony
, but you’d never know it from reading the front or back cover of that album. At that time Columbia was heavily pushing Ray Conniff. He was going to be the new Percy Faith, their next big name in instrumental pop music. Ray conducted the sessions, and he did a good job, but it burned me up that none of the others received any credit on the cover. Over the next few months I was embarrassed when I ran into them. They’d always ask me why they didn’t get credit. I felt terrible about it.

Tony
was released in January of 1957 and was more warmly received than
Cloud 7
, but the main order of the day was still making pop singles. My favorite one of the era was “Ca, C’est L’Amour,” one of Cole Porter’s songs, the kind of hip song I was happy to sing. I just loved that record; it was a great song and a mellow Neal Hefti arrangement. Goddard Lieberson sent me a very nice letter—the first he ever wrote to me—saying, “If you keep making records like this, you’ll be with us forever.” If only Goddard’s successors at Columbia had shared those sentiments.

I did a tour in Cuba in January of 1957, and Patricia came with me. Our decision to have Patricia and the boys stay home
while I was on the road was beginning to put a tremendous strain on our marriage. This trip was an attempt at a compromise between my work and our life together at home. But it was the last time Patricia went on the road with me.

I was booked into the Sans Souci nightclub outside of Havana for an extended run. I was excited about playing there because I’d heard how enthusiastic the Cuban audiences were and how much they loved American jazz. The first night I was singing, I was interrupted by the audience. At first I thought I was being heckled, but then I realized my audience had found out that Zoot Sims was jamming in the lounge next door, and they were whispering, “Zoot, Zoot, Zoot!” during my show! They loved him so much that after his show they carried him away on their shoulders. We didn’t see him for two days, and he even missed his plane back to the States!

Cuba was in the beginning stages of the revolution, and because this wasn’t officially acknowledged by Cuba, or by the rest of the world for that matter, American entertainers were still performing in the casinos and nightclubs around the island—which, by the way, were primarily controlled by the underworld.

I discovered that in show business sometimes you can’t help running into a political situation head-on. I’d picked a particularly bad time to go to Cuba because the discontent of the Cuban people was explosive. What had started out as a small guerrilla rebellion was becoming a full-fledged revolution. The rebel army, led by Fidel Castro, was in a state of war against the dictator Fulgencio Batista. It wasn’t even safe to go to restaurants because rebels randomly shot up any place where they thought government officials or members of the bourgeoisie might be. They’d spray the dining room with machine gun fire, and if a visiting American happened to be eating there, it was too bad for him. The rich placed armed guards in front of their houses, and government buildings were heavily protected, and every day we heard about a new rebel attack or about a body found washed up on the beach.

My closest call with danger came when a bomb went off on stage in the middle of a show. Fortunately I wasn’t on stage at the time, but the chorus line of thirty-five girls was in the middle of their number. The explosion reduced the cinder block wall of the club to rubble, injuring every one of the chorus girls. None of them were killed, thank God, but some were permanently maimed or disfigured. Many were never able to dance again.

Patricia and I visited them in the hospital. One young woman was desperate to get her baby out of Cuba and safely back home, and Patricia offered to bring the child back with us. The woman was grateful but ended up making other arrangements. She never forgot us, though, because just a few years ago, a middle-aged woman recognized Patricia on the street and walked up and embraced her. She turned out to be the same chorus girl we had tried to help forty years ago!

A few days later, Patricia had driven herself into Havana at night to see the ballet. As she was driving back to the hotel, she lost her way on a long road between two towns. Two soldiers emerged from the trees. It was hard to tell if they were rebels or part of Batista’s army, but they forced her to pull over and pointed their machine guns through the car windows on either side of her. She had no idea what was going on—she didn’t speak Spanish and they didn’t speak English. They kept asking her questions that she didn’t understand, and she just sat in frightened silence. Fortunately, they let her drive on.

When she got back to the hotel, she was in a complete panic. We knew that we were pushing our luck by staying so we decided to pack up and leave immediately. The next morning the sheriff’s house right across from our hotel was blown
up. To make matters even worse, when we got to the airport, we learned that a hurricane was about to hit the island and that all the planes and boats were grounded. We found a pilot who was willing to risk the flight to the States, and Patricia said, “Let’s go. We’re better off taking our chances with the hurricane than staying here.” The takeoff was frightening but we arrived home safely.

My first gig after Cuba was at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach. It was a very special engagement because I got to play with one of my favorite people, the blind accordionist and singer Joe Mooney. Joe was already a major star in his own right, but he was kind enough to come on over to the Americana and play the accordion for me during a few of my sets. A couple of weeks later he served as my official accompanist when I played at the Miami Copa.

At rare moments in life a pure musician like Joe comes along. When he played, it was the most sublimely musical thing you could imagine; he put you right in heaven. He sang just right, his intonation was perfect, and he had tons of feeling. He wasn’t loud, so he never attracted a big crowd, and as a result, he never got the recognition he deserved. Shirley Horn is like that, and so are Milt Jackson, Ruby Braff, and Joao Gilberto. They each have a sound that’s as precious as a string of pearls or a rare diamond. And fortunately they’ve made records that audiences will enjoy forever.

While I was down in Miami I met the crew from the performance group the Vagabonds. I’ve had some crazy friends in my life, but I have to say the Vagabonds were the greatest. What wild times! They were like four maniacs on stage, doing music and comedy and shtick all at the same time. At one time they were bigger than Martin & Lewis. Tillio played the accordion in a unique way, using only the black keys and avoiding the white keys entirely. He never spoke on stage,
doing everything in pantomime, and he was a total deadpan, just like Buster Keaton. The “Vags,” as
Variety
used to call them, had their own showroom in Miami, which was sold out all the time.

Tillio, my closest friend of the bunch, was one of a kind. He had a comic mind that was as funny and sharp and as farout as Lenny Brace’s, although today he is totally unknown, except to other performers. I used to watch them on Arthur Godfrey’s television show—Godfrey loved those guys so much that he had them on as often as he could. At that point they were making more money than any act in show business and they were just tremendous. I brought them with me on the Como show whenever I was host.

I first met them in the Miami airport when I was getting off the plane and they were getting on to go back to New York. They recognized me, we started chatting, and Tillio told me they were going to New York to do the
Ed Sullivan Show
. When I left New York there had been three feet of snow on the ground, and Tillio was wearing a mohair suit with no overcoat. He told me he was coming back to Florida the day after the Sullivan show, so I said, “Take my coat, and give it back to me when you get back to Florida.”

Well, that did it for Tillio. The fact that I loaned my coat to a stranger really meant the world to him. From that day on I became his main man. If I got a telegram that read “Bing Crosby called,” I knew that Tillio was in town. Every time he took a plane ride, I got a statement in the mail from some insurance company informing me that he’d had taken out a policy and had named me the beneficiary. Tillio was the kind of guy who if he borrowed your car put all new tires on it before he returned it.

I was having a lot of fun, but I also had business to take care of In 1957, my guitarist Chuck Wayne decided to move on. I needed a new accompanist, and was lucky enough to get pianist Claude Thornhill, but only for one month. When he left I held auditions at Nola Studios in New York. The first guy who showed up was okay, but the second guy, Ralph Sharon, just had to hit a few notes for me to know he was the piano player for me. Ralph said he’d played for Carmen McRae and Chris Conners and Johnny Hartman, and that’s all I needed to know. He got the job instantly. Claude passed my songbook on to Ralph, and he stayed with me for the next ten years.

Hooking up with Ralph was one of the best career moves I’ve ever made. No one understands me more than he does, and we’ve become as close as brothers. Ralph is my idea of the perfect accompanist. He’s a beautiful musician, and even more than most great players, he really knows how to perform with a singer or a soloist. He doesn’t show off like a lot of other guys, playing lots of extra notes or fancy runs. After all, it’s the emotion behind the music that’s important. It takes a special person to support a performer and make him look good. I like to communicate the song simply by telling the story. Count Basie played that way, and that’s why what he did worked so well. Ralph has that same gift.