Tony Bennett

I grew up & remain such a fan of the great Post War Singers generation that included my idol Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Cuomo, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, Dean, Sammy & the inimitable Antonio Benedetto, otherwise known as TONY BENNETT.

All of them reliant upon what is now referred to as the ‘Great American Songbook’, whose Writers were those Masters such as Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Duke Ellington & George Gershwin, among others of their Golden Ilk. And I had the God Blessed Common Sense to have taken as much as I could gather upon & within myself from them, just as I would those who nurtured me from the Rock Era.

But make no mistake, Master Bennett was a ‘Singer’s Singer’, A ‘Musician’s Musician’ (& YES Virginia, Singers ARE Musicians, even if the only instrument they play is the most important of them ALL, the Human Voice), equally at home in ANY conceivable ‘genre’ or category of Art that drew his interpretive interest. And his mastery of subtlety & nuance knew no peer, at least among the masculine representatives of the form in which he plied his trade.

As there are far too many examples throughout his stellar career & life to illustrate his contribution to the Western Canon, I will link the 1 Song that if I could ONLY listen to a Singular Selection of his Craft that encapsulates so many of the things he brought to the Reading of a piece of Music, which demonstrates how he could inhabit a song as he was honoring IT, more than he was using it to honor himself, it would be his extraordinary rendition of the sublime chestnut that is ‘I’VE GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO HER FACE’.

I’m certain that the proverbial ‘Choir Of Angels’ are now ecstatic to have received back into their ranks one of their very own, one of their very best, that they were gracious enough to have loaned us, for his all too brief stay on this Silver Star encircling the Blue Space called EARTH !

THANK YOU SIR, WE ARE FOREVER GRATEFUL, WE ARE FOREVER BLESSED !

Sananda Maitreya !

Saturday 22 July ‘23

Italia.