Quips and Quotations (The Comeback Crooner Edition)

 

1926-2023

My goal as a creative person is to express truth and beauty in whatever I do.

--Tony Bennett  

 

For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He's the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.

--Frank Sinatra

I realized that young people had never heard those songs. Cole Porter, Gershwin—they were like, 'Who wrote that?' To them, it was different. If you're different, you stand out.

--Tony Bennett

Tony Bennett has not just bridged the generation gap, he has demolished it. He has solidly connected with a younger crowd weaned on rock. And there have been no compromises.

--The New York Times

 

I walked in and said, ''Well, Tony, here we are,'' and I dropped my robe, and I got into position. I felt shy and thought, ''It’s Tony Bennett. Why am I naked?''

--Lady Gaga. Done in conjunction with an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for Vanity Fair (in which Gaga also appeared nude,) the charcoal drawing by "Benedetto" (Tony's birth name), eventually netted $30K at an auction, the proceeds going to two different charities, Gaga's Born This Way Foundation and Bennett's Exploring the Arts Foundation.

Of course, the drawing was hardly Bennett's and Gaga's only, or, for that matter, most well-known, collaboration....

She's America's answer to Picasso.

--Tony Bennett

I don’t know if I’m the new Picasso but I’m certainly twisted like his paintings.

--Lady Gaga

Tony called me Lady, but he talked to Stefani. The little girl in me that loved jazz sang with Tony Bennett. I know he called me Lady, but I know who his singing partner was: It was that little girl who loved jazz.

--Stefani Germanotta, aka, Lady Gaga

  

Awesome Audio (Freedom of the Press Edition)

  

The overturn of Roe vs Wade, and the prospect it raises that all the rest of our constitutionally protected rights and liberties are temporary and can be rescinded at a 6-3 Supreme Court moment's notice, has not left me in a very patriotic mood this Fourth of July weekend. However, seeing as I get tomorrow off, I should at least try to get into the spirit of things. To that end I've turned to the man pictured above for some guidance. First generation American (father born in Spain, mother in Bavaria) John Philip Sousa wrote a number of musical compositions that we've come to regard as patriotic standards--as well as mainstays at high school pep rallies and high school football halftime shows across the land. I've chosen one of those immediately recognizable standards for you all to listen to, but before I do, here's what I found out. This melody originally was meant not to glorify America, secondary education, nor a domestic reboot of rugby, but rather...

   

...a newspaper! In a spirit of journalistic bipartisanship, former Republican Postmaster General Frank Hatton and former Democratic Congressman from Ohio Beriah Wilkins bought the 12-year-old Washington Post in 1889 and needed some way to promote it. So they beseeched Sousa, at the time the conductor of the United States Marine Band (nicknamed "The President's Own") to come up with a march, and he did just that. The composition was immediately popular both here and in Europe, making Sousa a transatlantic celebrity, and earning him the nickname the American March King. Whether all this led to more newspaper subscriptions I can't tell you, except to say there still is a Washington Post, though at this late date you may associate the paper's namesake march more with fireworks and varsity sports than with Woodward and Bernstein. Have a listen: 

Brings you back, huh? All we need now is a cheerleaders' pyramid.

 

Meh. Try again.

 There, girls, that's more like it!

 

It just so happens that today is the late clarinetist Pete Fountain's birthday. And if that wasn't just so happening enough, it also just so happens that he once put out his own New Orleans Dixieland version of Sousa's venerable tune. Put on your Mardi Gras masks and listen: 

 

 

 

 So which version of "The Washington Post March" is better?

You'll have to ask him.

 

Quips and Quotations (Rave Reviews Edition)

 I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt. It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular [Hollywood] nightclub in the ’50s. She personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him--and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status--that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard…After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman--a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.

--Ella Fitzgerald, 1972

(Ella's memory of this event has come into question--but so what? That was the impression she was left with, and it's not like anybody's being libeled--Kirk)  

Vital Viewing (Late Night Swing Edition)

Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Doc Severinsen was born on this day in 1927. If the opinion of the fellow on the right is any indication, he seems to have been very good at his job. In the following clip from a little more than a year ago, Severinsen, still in his 80s, talks about his upcoming birthday:

   

He looks in great shape for his age, but I don't think I've ever seen Severinsen that casually dressed before. He usually looks something like this: 

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.

--Genesis 37:3

(Actually, Doc's real first name is Carl, not Joseph.)

In the following clip, Doc gets high:

 Anything to please the boss. 

Now for some Cole Porter, but first, in case you're not familiar with the term:

be·guine

 (bĭ-gēn′)

n.

1. A ballroom dance similar to the foxtrot, based on a dance of Martinique and St. Lucia.

2. The music for this dance.

---

[French (West Indies) béguine, from French béguin, hood, flirtation, from beguine, Beguine; see Beguine.]

 
And just think, Doc managed that not in Martinique and St. Lucia, but a TV studio in Burbank.

For those of us who were around back then, here's the beginning we most associate with Severinsen:

Just think, Doc had to play that theme five nights a week and still make it sound fresh. He succeeded.