The Good Life (27 page)

After all those years of sparring with Columbia, I finally started to feel secure. I thought I was out of the woods—until I realized just how much rock and roll was dominating the scene. In 1966 an attorney named Clive Davis—originally head of business affairs for Columbia Records—took over as president of the label. It was the first time that someone without any musical background was put in charge of a record company. He took a trip to the Monterey Pop Music Festival in 1967, and when he returned he traded in his Brooks Brothers suits for Nehru jackets and love beads and signed Janis
Joplin. He began to insist that all his artists record rock and roll tunes and was convinced that nothing else would sell. At one point he was even trying to convince Barbra Streisand to record an album of Bob Dylan tunes. The whole thing was ridiculous and resulted in chaos for most of Columbia’s top-selling artists.

It was a tough time for all traditional pop singers, and it took the recording industry years to adjust. But I continued to have a string of hits, and to perform to packed houses wherever I went. It was all about perception, and about the inability of the record companies to come up with some creative ideas to market my music properly. But I knew that never compromising my music would ultimately be the key to my success. Count Basie calmed me down when I asked his advice about whether I should change my act. He quickly replied, “Why change an apple?” His comment reassured me that I was on the right course.

What was happening at Columbia, and to me in particular, wasn’t due simply to Clive Davis. I had nothing personal against the man; if it hadn’t been Clive giving me a hard time, it would have been somebody else. The record companies thought that rock and roll was all anybody would ever want to hear from that point on: that’s the way the industry was headed; he was just the guy in the driver’s seat. When it occurred to the major labels that they could make a real killing with rock music, they gradually lost interest in anything else, including classical artists. Despite my proven success, there was never a time while I was at Columbia that they said to me, “You know what you’re doing. Go ahead, keep making the records you’ve been making.” Instead, they always insisted they knew what was best.

What was ironic about the whole thing is that there were a lot of first-rate traditional pop songs being written in the late
sixties—enough so that I could still fill album after album. For instance, Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster, after winning the Oscar for “The Shadow of Your Smile,” wrote two more songs together, “A Lonely Place” and “A Time for Love,” and I recorded them in 1966 for my album,
A Time for Love
. I also included “Georgia Rose” and “Touch the Earth” by the wonderful singer and piano player Jeri Southern. These were wonderful songs, so I just couldn’t understand why Columbia insisted that I do what I considered second-rate material.

A Time for Love
also included two tracks from the best recording session I ever had with the great trumpeter Bobby Hackett. I was in London to do another command performance for the Queen Mother. We had British arranger Johnny Keating for the show, and the orchestra consisted of one hundred violin players, a rhythm section, and Bobby Hackett.

The performance was televised by the BBC, and since it was such an incredible experience—singing with Bobby and one hundred strings—I wanted to put it on record. The next day we all went into the studio and laid down “Sleepy Time Gal” and “The Very Thought of You.” I still get a thrill when I listen to those records. Bobby also played behind me on “The Shining Sea,” another song written by Johnny Mandel and Peggy Lee. He was determined to achieve a particular sound for his solo, and to do this he needed a special mouthpiece. He said, “If I can get that, I’ll get a sound you won’t believe,” and he looked everywhere for one. He eventually found it and he did get the tight, beautiful sound he was looking for. Last Christmas my current guitarist, Gray Sargent, gave me that very mouthpiece. Bobby once made an album of love ballads conducted by Jackie Gleason. Every record company turned it down, saying it was too slow, then Capitol
Records reluctantly agreed to release it, and it sold millions of copies.

Bobby introduced me to Louis Armstrong. They were great friends, and he and Bobby spent hours listening to classical music together. They both lived in Sunnyside, Queens. When Bobby and Louis came over to my house to meet me, Louis turned to me and said in that raspy voice of his, “I’m the coffee, but Bobby’s the cream.”

Louis was a genius; he practically invented jazz single-handedly. When classical trumpet players first heard him play, they ran to their teachers and asked, “How’d he do that?” And the teachers replied, “We don’t know.” Louis was an original! People adored him. Bobby and I remained Louis’s loyal friends and fans for the rest of his life. In 1970 we had the honor, along with Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman, of being part of a big tribute choir of jazzmen and celebrities who sang and played behind Louis on his last album,
Louis Armstrong and His Friends
.

I once did a painting of Louis and presented it to him in London. He took one look at it and said, “You out-Rembrandted Rembrandt!”—a typically humorous thing for Louis to say. He hung the painting in front of the desk in his study so he could look at it every time he sat down. He showed the painting to anyone who visited him and he’d say, “Here’s a painting a boy who lives in my neighborhood did of me.” I loved that man.

Ralph Sharon’s wife, Susan, had asked him to get off the road and relocate to San Francisco. Living in California made it a lot more difficult for Ralph to hook up with me for gigs, since I was based in New York and air travel wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now, but we managed.

While I was filming
The Oscar
we weren’t doing many live shows anyway, so it didn’t affect us too much. I wanted the trio and myself to keep in shape while I was doing the picture, though, so I called my friend Hugh Hefner and he got the trio a gig at the Playboy Club in Los Angeles, and I came by and sat in whenever I could get off the set. Ralph and the trio did two albums for Columbia during this time, a collection of jazz instrumental versions of my hits, and an interpretation of the latest Richard Rodgers musical,
Do I Hear a Waltz?
With everything he was doing Ralph soon became well-known enough to get his own local music show on San Francisco TV. He was really settling in.

After the movie was finished it was time to get back on the road, but Susan was still pressuring Ralph to stay home. When Hugh Hefner opened a new club in San Francisco in the spring of 1966, he asked Ralph to become permanent musical director, and it seemed too good an offer to turn down. We were both terribly broken up over his leaving.

I had a number of pianists while Ralph was away. The most famous was Tommy Flanagan, one of the most marvelous accompanists of all time. He’d spent many years on the road with Ella Fitzgerald and didn’t really want to commit himself permanently to another singer after that. Who could blame him? But he did agree to play with me for a little while, and I was thrilled to have him.

He was with me for my most ambitious television project yet,
Singer Presents Tony Bennett
, a special that we taped for ABC at their studio in Brooklyn on May 3, 1966. It was produced and directed by Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion. I’d first met Dwight in the early fifties when he was camera director for Steve Allen and I was doing a guest spot on Steve’s show.

I’d had other offers over the years to do television specials, and while some of the things the producers proposed were
interesting, they weren’t for me. But then I met Al di Scipio. He ran the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and was sponsoring the upcoming show. I said yes to ABC because Al, as producer, gave me as much creative freedom as any artist could ask. I told them I didn’t want anybody writing phony dialogue for me; I just wanted to sing and be spontaneous with how I presented each artist. Al heard my request, and the next day he handed me a script. I opened it and found only blank pages. Someone like Al comes around only once in a lifetime.

I added a couple of personal touches too. The show was going to be a combination of my big hits and my current repertoire, and I wanted to change some of the arrangements to make room for instrumental guest stars. I assembled six of the greatest jazz soloists ever: Bobby Hackett on “Because of You,” Buddy Rich on “Fascinating Rhythm,” master vibraharpist Milt Jackson on “Lost in the Stars,” guitarist Gene Bertocini on “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars,” Candido on “The Moment of Truth,” and flautist Paul Horn and his quintet on “The Shadow of Your Smile.” I thought that using jazz guys would give the show a feeling of freshness and spontaneity, and I was right. To top it all off, Ralph Burns served as conductor and musical director, and the band featured such luminaries as Richie Kamuca, Frank Wess, Joe Wilder, Urbie Green, and Quentin Jackson.

At one point we broke away from the concert format to go into a little “travelogue” that featured rear-projection shots of me walking around San Francisco. As the audience saw these images on screen they heard me singing “San Francisco,” “Just In Time,” “A Taste of Honey,” and “Once Upon a Time.” During the photo shoot for this segment, they tried to get a picture of me sitting on a rock overlooking the sea, but one wave hit real big, knocking me over; it was worth it because it gave the audience a good laugh.

After Tommy Flanagan moved on I found a wonderful pianist named John Bunch. John was playing in Buddy Rich’s new big band, and he totally knocked me out. When he finished his engagement with Buddy I asked him if he wanted the job as my musical director, and he said, “Are you sure you want me? I haven’t worked with many singers, and I’ve never conducted at all.” But John had played with all the great big bands, including Benny Goodman, Maynard Ferguson, and Woody Herman. He could swing, and he had an elegant touch, and that was more important to me than anything else. Gentleman John Bunch was the man for me.

Sometimes when we were off for a few nights in New York, John took a gig with some local act. One night he told me he was playing for Zoot Sims and Al Cohn down at the old Half Note, and invited me to come down and check it out. Naturally, I went, and when Zoot saw me in the house, he introduced me to the crowd and said, “Tony, why don’t you come up and sing a song with us?” That was all I needed to hear! I jumped up on stage and started singing without even waiting for John to give me a piano introduction. John later told me that I’d started singing the song in the same key that Zoot and Al usually played it in, without having been given a pickup note or a downbeat. I guess I felt the vibe. I loved the way they played; to me they’re the most intelligent, romantic people in the whole world.

Around the same time Ralph left the group, my drummer Billy Exiner had to leave too. He hadn’t been well for years and was never really healthy the whole time I knew him. He’d been badly injured during the war, and the doctors were never able to get all the shrapnel out of his back. It was an incredibly painful injury, and he became addicted to morphine
and other painkillers for the rest of his life. Still he was one of the most brilliant philosophers and kindest people I ever knew.

By the mid-sixties Billy’s ailments had developed into Berger’s disease, a circulation disorder that slowly cripples the limbs. He finally had to cut out in order to take care of himself. He got the best medical care, but it wasn’t enough to save his life. He died in 1985, and I still miss him. I’ve had a number of drummers since Billy’s been gone, including Sol Gubin, Joe LaBarbera, Joe Cocuzzo, and my percussionist of the last five years, the amazing Clayton Cameron. They are all ace players, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that Billy has never been replaced. He was closer to me than anyone.

After Billy, the drummer I had most often in the sixties was Sol Gubin, and I was glad to have John Bunch and Sol with me on my next album of jazz standards,
Tony Makes It Happen
, which we taped in late 1966 and early 1967. There was a song on the album, “Country Girl,” a tone poem by Henry Wadsworth, that was special to me because it was the first time I recorded a piece of music by Robert Farnon. Bob had written the song for a British music competition, and though it didn’t win, it got more attention than the tune that actually did. It’s a gem.