Music

He left his heart in Astoria
You know he's gone from rags to riches, but Tony Bennett can't forget his old neighborhood

BY GLENN GAMBOA
Newsday Staff Writer

September 24, 2006

There's quite the commotion on 23rd Avenue in Astoria for lunchtime on a Wednesday.

Cars are double parking, their occupants excitedly spilling out onto the street. Women of all ages are giggling a little as they say their hellos. Working men offer some "Nice to see yous" as they walk past. There is a lot of waving and a lot of surprised looks. And a lot of running.

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"Don't move," says one man, rushing off to get his camera.

Another comes running over, carrying a jug of homemade wine and a stack of plastic cups, offering a taste to everyone around.

Through it all, Tony Bennett smiles. He stands graciously, hands deep in the pockets of his gray slacks until they're needed to greet someone again.

"See what I mean?" he says, laughing. "Would you ever get this in New York?"

Tony Bennett loves Astoria, not just because it's where he's from, but because it's part of who he is. "I love this area because it's the firemen, policemen, the teachers, the secretaries - they make New York City wonderful," he says, as he walks across Ditmars Boulevard. "All these people who live here, they make the city work. They make it more interesting."

Bennett comes to Astoria and Long Island City a lot - to visit the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, the public high school he helped found in 2001; to play tennis three times a week with his friend, restaurateur Mario Sirabella; and, on rare occasion, to visit his childhood home on 32nd Street where his famous rags-to-riches story began.

When Bennett gets to the house he grew up in, a modest, square, two-floor building, he points to the roof, where he used to raise pigeons, hoping that every once in a while they would lure a homing pigeon back to his coop. ("I would take that one homing pigeon and go to the pet shop and they would give me money to go to a movie," he says, laughing. "That's how I made some money.")

"I know Thomas Wolfe - the one from the '30s, not the newer one - says, 'You can't go home again,'" Bennett says. "But I find myself going home again and again. I come back here all the time."

Just duet

His new album, "Duets: An American Classic" (RPM/Columbia), which comes out Tuesday, is a return home as well, as he re-creates many of his biggest hits as duets with some of today's biggest stars. (Only his trademark ballad, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," is reserved for Bennett alone.)

It's an idea that Bennett's son Danny, who is also his manager, put together. And, to be truthful, Bennett says he didn't warm to the concept, which he recognizes as one Frank Sinatra launched in 1993. "I was a little apprehensive about it," he says. "I've had a lot of success. I've introduced maybe 35 popular songs that have become part of the American Songbook. The idea my son had was to take those songs, to celebrate my 80th birthday, and put the most contemporary artists that were doing great internationally - like Streisand and Paul McCartney, Sting and Bono and Diana Krall and Elvis Costello, one great artist after another - on this one album. People like Billy Joel, people who fill stadiums."

At first, the idea seemed like something Bennett didn't do. "I don't want a hit record," he says. "I want a hit catalog so that it lives on."

Nevertheless, he decided to see what happened. Bennett, who actually turned 80 on Aug. 3, did set up some rules, though. All the duets were sung while he and the other artists were in the same studio, as opposed to the now-standard practice of recording singers separately. They were also recorded live, with accompaniment from his touring quartet, as opposed to the artists singing to a recorded performance.

"I recorded for so many years where I learned how to walk in very prepared and do the songs in three or four takes and that's what would be on the album," Bennett says. "A lot of them take 25 or 30 weeks to make an album and then they add in things after that. They couldn't get over that they did it in three or four takes. They said, 'We'd like to record like this.'"

The fact that all the artists - from relative newcomers such as R&B singer John Legend to veterans such as James Taylor and Stevie Wonder - flourished under this unusual process made Bennett happy he required it. "I was surprised by all of them," he says. "Elton John surprised the heck out of me because he walked in and did it in one take. He came in, sat down at the piano and said, 'Let's do one.'

"If you do something that takes 40 takes, it becomes a very painful experience," he continues. "Just doing it as a vocal jam session, you caught the spirit of it, of everybody having fun. It comes off on the record. We had a grand time. We would throw lines back and forth to each other. It was very spontaneous."

Spontaneity is highly prized in Bennett's world, which is, in part, why he loves stopping by the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts when he gets the chance. On a recent visit, he was spontaneously mobbed in the hallway by the students, who all wanted to shake his hand, give him a hug and thank him for helping the school.

Though the school is public, Bennett's foundation raises funds to supplement its budget, which allows the school to hire more teachers and keep down class sizes, as well as maintain funding for the arts curriculum, says Donna Finn, the school's principal. (His Theatre at Madison Square Garden appearance at WLTW/106.7 FM's "One Night With Lite" Tuesday is a benefit for the school.)

"It's one of his proudest accomplishments," says Susan Crow, the school's assistant principal for instruction, who has known Bennett for 20 years. "Giving back to the community has always been important to him."

When Bennett visits, he offers encouragement and some advice based on what he has learned. He tells students of a visualization he uses when he sings, thinking of a note as a target and trying to hit the very center of the bull's-eye when he sings it.

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He tells them how "the American Songbook is the best popular music that's ever been written in the history of the world." "It's the greatest ambassador for the United States," he tells the school's choir. "I go all over the world and when I start singing a Gershwin song, I find that the audience starts singing the English lyrics to me."

A creative atmosphere

Bennett says he enjoys his time at the school. "It's such a creative atmosphere here because of the students," says Bennett, who has called on friends such as Jerry Seinfeld, Mario Cuomo and Wynton Marsalis to deliver the graduation addresses for the school. "The kids love to come here and they want to make it the very best school in the country. It's amazing to see."

He also relates to the students' quest to get better at their craft, because after all his years as a master, he also continues to be a student. Though his painting "Central Park" was accepted into the Smithsonian Institution this year (under his real name Anthony Benedetto), he continues to study painting with watercolor master Charles Reid, among others.

"It's a strange thing," Bennett says. "I don't know how lucky I can get, but I'd like to improve my voice and get better and better as I get older, which is unlike anything that anybody would expect. They think that as you get older, it's going to lose its energy, but every reviewer in the world is saying that I'm sounding much better now than I did when I first started. I'd like to leave the legacy that if you're lucky enough to keep your health and stay well, you could actually get better as you get older."

Part of the improvement, Bennett says, is from knowing his voice better and changing his phrasing to make the most of it. "There's a wisdom that comes about as you grow older," he says. "In the last five years, I'm financially straight, so if I wanted to retire, I would. But I have a passion. I have two passions: I sing and I paint. I do it in a disciplined way. I do it every day. And I'm very interested in learning a lot more.

"I feel I haven't even started yet to where I'd like to go someday," he continues. "I'm never really going to finish what I would like to learn, but I'm going for it."

Bennett is two good

On his forthcoming album, "Duets: An American Classic" (RPM/Columbia), Tony Bennett teams up with many of today's biggest stars to reinterpret some of his biggest hits. The album will be released Tuesday, and an NBC special, "Tony Bennett: An American Classic," based on the album, will air Nov. 21.

Here's what Bennett had to say about some of his duet partners:

Billy Joel, who sings on "The Good Life": "Billy Joel is a very good musician and he and I are very close. We'll be doing a lot together in the next few weeks, and I'm going to have fun with him. We always do."

Stevie Wonder, who sings on "For Once in My Life": "He was unbelievable. We did 'For Once in My Life,' and he had a million-selling record by doing it with a beat. I introduced it originally and now we finally did it together. For the TV special, we did it in a setting that looked like Carnegie Hall. It was beautiful."

Dixie Chicks, who sing on "Lullaby of Broadway": "I did a swing song with them and they had never done a record like that. They're mostly country. They were knocked out. They said we should record like this, it would be fun."

WHEN & WHERE
Tony Bennett headlines WLTW/106.7 FM's "One Night With Lite," 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden, 4 Penn Plaza, Manhattan, 212-465-6741. Tickets are $54.50 to $404.50 through Ticketmaster, 631-888-9000 or 212-307-7171. "Duets/An American Classic" (RPM/Columbia) is in stores Tuesday.