The Good Life (14 page)

There’s another record I made a few months after the Leslie record that’s been completely lost. This was a “demonstration disc” of two old songs I loved—another rhythm song, “Crazy Rhythm,” and a great old standard I remembered from the early thirties, “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

Ray was trying everything he could to get some attention for me. He used every contact he had in the music business, one of whom happened to be a very smart show-business lawyer named Jack Spencer. Spencer had a number of famous clients, the biggest of whom was Cole Porter, Mr. Spencer was friendly with Hugh Martin, the composer who had written the great score to Meet Me in
St. Louis
for Judy Garland (which included one number I later recorded, “The Trolley Song”). So they sent me over to Hugh Martin’s apartment with my demo disc of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and told me “When he plays the record, have him call us and tell us what he thinks.”

Mr. Martin called and said, “This kid is another Martha Raye!” Now, lately people think of Martha Raye strictly as a comedienne, and of course she was one of the best. Charlie Chaplin, in his whole career, hardly ever hired another comic to work opposite him—Jack Oakie in
The Great Dictator
and Buster Keaton in
Limelight
were practically the only ones, and Martha Raye in
Monsieur Verdoux
. She was also a truly great vocalist. So I was very flattered by Mr. Martin’s comparison. That comment also confirmed for Ray that he had made the right decision in taking me on.

Through Ray, I eventually found a vocal coach who was just right for me, and he was about the most spontaneous guy I ever met. A tremendous musician and a great person, his full name was Tony Tamburello, but he sometimes worked under the name “Tony Burrell,” and usually everybody just called him Tony T. When I first met Ray, he had me and two other singers audition for Tony T., who immediately pointed to me and said, “This guy is the one you want.” I was always grateful for that.

Tony T. was one of the first to teach me one of the big lessons of my life: he told me never to compromise and to stay with good music; a sentiment that Frank Sinatra would reaffirm years later. Tony T. was a terrific coach. We just rolled up our sleeves and got to work, full of ambition to make something happen. We spent hours working on a song or an arrangement, never thinking about the time.

Tony T. could play every great song ever written, and his playing was as smooth as silk, just brilliant. He was like a character in a Fellini movie, way ahead of his time. As an example of his sense of humor, he started his own label, which he called “Horrible Records,” and the company’s slogan was “If it’s a horrible record, it’s bound to be a hit!” He also started a company called “MOB Records,” which featured a singer named “Al Dente.” The discs were pressed at “45 Caliber Speed.” He rented space in the famous Brill Building, but when the rents got too expensive for him, he got one of those huge old dry-cleaning trucks and put a little spinet piano in
the back. He rigged up a staircase so people could get in and out, and he gave vocal lessons in the truck! Students would call to make an appointment, and he’d say, “Meet me at the corner of Seventh and Forty-ninth at three o’clock.” That was the address of the Brill Building, and when his students got there, they were surprised to find they’d be having their lesson
outside
the building. He even had someone paint “Fresh Fish and Music” on the side of the truck.

For years Tony T. was practically my musical conscience. When songwriters came around with something they wanted me to hear, Tony T. acted as a buffer, helping me find the good songs, which I sang and recorded. I like to think that after fifty years of singing professionally I know what I’m doing, but I still wish I had Tony T. with me.

Ray had one other connection that was to prove important to me: a man named Charlie Cooley, who worked for Bob Hope. At the beginning of Hope’s career, Bob had a vaudeville act opening for Charlie, who had given him one of his first breaks. Bob had been a tough kid; he came right from the streets and had done time in reform school, so for Charlie to give him a break meant a lot to him, and he never forgot it. Bob’s a wonderful man. Anybody who ever did Bob Hope a favor of any kind has had it repaid tenfold. Anybody who helped him, any of the girls who went on the USO tours—he always made sure to use them in one of his movies or on one of his NBC-TV specials. Charlie stayed on Bob’s payroll for the rest of his life.

Ray waited until Bob Hope was in town playing the New York Paramount, then he called Charlie and got him to come down to the Village Inn and catch the show with Pearl and myself Charlie liked what he heard well enough to bring Bob back with him. So the same week Pearl Bailey saw me at the
Village Inn. Bob Hope came down to check out my act. He liked my singing so much that after the show he came back to see me in my dressing room and said, “Come on, kid, you’re going to come to the Paramount and sing with me.” The Paramount! Talk about the big time! Bob Hope and Pearl Bailey, all in the same week! But first he told me he didn’t care for my stage name and asked me what my real name was. I told him, “My name is Anthony Dominick Benedetto.”

“Oh, no, too long for the marquee,” he said. (Little did he know that someday there’d be a performer named Engelbert Humperdinck.) He thought for a moment, then he said, “We’ll call you Tony Bennett.”

And that’s how it happened. A new Americanized name, the start of a wonderful career and a glorious adventure that has continued for fifty years.

It was an honor to be part of Bob Hope’s troupe. I could hardly believe it: here I was performing with the man I felt had saved my sanity during the war and who had inspired me to go into show business. It was a dream come true.

He had a great bunch of people working with him: Jane Russell, the great tap dancer Steve Condos, and Les Brown and his wonderful Band of Renown. They were all very supportive. I was young and didn’t know what to do with myself while I was singing. Between Bob Hope and Pearl Bailey, what an amazing education I had! They showed me the value of being positive: when you walk out on a stage, the audience has to know that you want to be there, that you want to entertain them. I’m still using what they taught me fifty years later.

When I finished my number, Bob said to the audience, “Well, I was getting tired of Crosby anyhow!” It was a great line and helped me win over the audience at the Paramount.

It was also a thrill working with Les Brown. His was the first major band I ever sang with. I remember being so excited
about that gig that I ran out and bought myself a brand new zoot suit for the occasion. Working with great musicians like the kind Les had in his Band of Renown really rubbed off on me. I sang a couple of songs a night, mainly tunes from the early recordings I had done—“Crazy Rhythm,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” But I kept working hard to become a better singer.

When the gig at the Paramount ended. Bob took me and the rest of the troupe on a brief six-city tour. Everywhere Bob Hope went, people went crazy; in each town the local sheriff and the entire police force escorted us to the theater. Every night was an event.

That tour was the first time I ever flew. Bob did everything first class. He was one of the first entertainers to fly from city to city, which I guess he got a taste for in the war. The tour ended when we reached the West Coast. I didn’t do Bob’s radio show at that time, but I got to attend a broadcast, and meet Margaret Whiting, one of my favorite singers, who was a regular on Bob’s show at that time. At one point I sang for her, and her reaction was one of warm approval. Bob also introduced me to Bing Crosby when he dropped by the show one day, and that was one of the greatest thrills of my life.

It wasn’t long after I got back from the coast that I had another happy surprise coming to me. Ray had been sending out copies of my demo disc to anybody he thought would listen. As it turned out, the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” disc had attracted the attention of a gentleman named Mitch Miller, who had just taken over as head of the “pop singles” division of Columbia Records. I didn’t know exactly what was in store for me, but I did know that getting a recording contract was the next big step.

By the time I arrived in 1950, Columbia Records was the oldest record company in business. William S. Paley, who owned CBS radio, bought Columbia Records in the late thirties and quickly established it as a major label by releasing recordings by some of my favorite acts: Count Basie, Kay Kyser, Mildred Bailey, Gene Krupa, and Benny Goodman. He even signed Harry James’s “boy singer” Frank Sinatra.

The label grew throughout the big band era, then signed the pop singers who succeeded those bands in the late forties. Mannie Sachs headed “artists and repertoire” (A&R), the department responsible for discovering and developing new talent for the label. He launched the careers of Sinatra, Dinah Shore, and Buddy Clark, acts that ended up selling more records for Columbia than any other artists before. At the end of the forties, Mannie was offered a better deal at RCA Records, and he took it. Columbia went into a panic.

Paley decided to restructure the company and brought two men into the picture who would have a tremendous
impact on my recording career: British-born Goddard Lieberson, a composer who went into the business side of music, and producer Mitch Miller.

Goddard Lieberson had a reputation for fighting hard to ensure that the business side of music never overwhelmed his artists. He was appointed Columbia’s executive vice president, and started recording cast albums from original Broadway shows. He was the first to realize that the original cast package was perfect for the new medium known as the LP, or long-playing record, which Columbia had recently introduced,
South Pacific
became their biggest album, selling over a million and a quarter copies, unheard of sales at that time.

Mitch Miller had recently headed A&R at Mercury-Records, where he’d been responsible for making that company a major force in the industry. Lieberson persuaded the top management at Columbia that Mitch was the guy to replace Mannie Sachs. Mitch had started out as a classical oboe player and gradually reinvented himself as perhaps the single most influential producer in the history of recording.