Musical Interlude

I hope you were fortunate enough to see the Tony Bennett farewell concert, which was broadcast on Sunday, although it actually happened in August. In case you missed it, Lady Gaga was the host, and she led off with her own set before introducing Tony. Before I get to him, let me acknowledge that the band was fantastic. I don't know if it was a Radio City house band, a group of session players that regularly work with Gaga, or it was put together by the producers just for the occasion. I haven't been able to find out anything about it, they labor in anonymity. LG seemed to know the soloists, but that may just have been from rehearsal. So that's bad, they should get more of an acknowledgment in the coverage and it should be possible to find the musicians listed somewhere.

Also, I really didn't know anything about Lady Gaga as a musician. The weird name and weird costumes made me not take her seriously. I wish she had never adopted that persona because she can evermore sing. I hereby acknowledge my erroneous assumptions.

That out of the way, what I really want to talk about is Tony Bennett. He was the last living link to a classic era in American popular music, the music my parents grew up with that I therefore heard at home as a child. Of interest, several male singers of that era were also Italian-American. Sinatra of course, Perry Como, Dean Martin. Like Martin, Bennett anglicized his name for professional purposes but he signs his paintings Benedetto. I saw his portrait of Ella Fitzgerald in the Smithsonian. She's wearing a shimmering gown of many colors, that fades into the shimmering atmosphere around her. He painted her voice.

Tony Bennett almost lost his career, and even his life, when his managers made the mistake of trying to get him to abandon the classic songbook and style he helped to create and get hip and contemporary in the 1980s. It didn't work, it didn't sell, and he became a broke and broken drug addict. He was saved when his son took over his management and persuaded him to go back to his roots. And so he became, as I said, the last living link, and yes, young people bought it and learned about that music. It very much shows in Lady Gaga's work that she is rooted in that classic era. That's why she was so honored to have partnered with Tony Bennett over the years, and why she gave him this parting gift.

It wasn't until after I saw the concert that I learned he has Alzheimer's disease, and often doesn't know where he is or who the people are around him. Apparently he often doesn't recognize Gaga. But it turns out that if you put a microphone in his hand, push him out on stage, and strike up the band, the songs are still there. I was astonished at how strong his voice was; maybe a little thin in the upper register but he could still put those songs across and his intonation was rock solid. One of the great things about him is that he's singing, but he's also just talking. The words don't just come out in musical phrases, they come out in sentences, and they aren't just notes, they're conversation that means what it says in a way that few singers achieve, or even try to. LG has the same gift, by the way.

So anyway, that's it. The end of an era, finally and forever. But we're lucky enough to live in the only age of humanity with the benefit of audio recording. So dig out those bakelite 45s and listen.