Because of you, Tony Bennett (1926-2023)

IT was the 1950s. The age of the baby boomers; the world was looking to a future of prosperity. Music was defining the shift. The rock and roll and the rebels without causes were just a few years away and a sweet tenor was filling the air. It was the voice of Tony Bennett, singing “Because of You,” his first: Because of you, there’s a song in my heart... The optimism was there—brilliant, rosy, unbridled. Like the 4 million babies being born each year. Elvis Presley was less than a decade away with his “Jailhouse Rock,” certainly not the youth listening to “forever and never to part.” For 10 weeks, “Because of You” stayed at No. 1 on the Billboard charts. At the flipside of the 45 rpm, a term, which meant revolution per minute, the time that the record or vinyl was made to spin around the turntable, was another hit, “I Won’t Cry Anymore.” But Tony Bennett was at the cusp of a musical revolution partly created by him.

Songs shifted, rhythm rolled and Tony Bennett co-existed with other artists, the primum movens own artistic existence.

“Because of You” as sung by Tony Bennett, sounded so original no one ever thought it was an old song. But Tony Bennett sang the song and it forever became his.

By 1957, he sang a piece that would always be identified with him—“Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Here, notes rose and trembled up in the stratosphere. The song became an extension of Tony Bennett’s approach to music—arresting in its use of a voice that gathers its strength and develops into a hurricane of notes, breathlessly enunciated as if the singer had discovered the passion in the middle of his journey and rushed to announce whatever it was the song was hiding—pain, passion, love unrequited, heartbreak unforgotten. In any of the ballads Tony Bennetts had selected, there was always this element of discovery. By the time “Boulevard” was released, observers, fans and critics alike discovered not so much the style (that would come much later) but the voice. The rasp was noticeable and so magical, one thought it was either an affectation or the effect of whisky and tobacco. Or musicality.

It should interest the Tony Bennett aficionados (this writer unashamedly included) to know that the 1957 recording was not the first for that song. He sang “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” way back in 1951 in a voice that was tender and scaling the notes in such a bravura fashion, one would think he was a classical tenor making his incursion into the world of popular music.

Tony Bennett would lose the glide in that throat; in its place was a rough upper register that instead of diminishing the power of his performance, increased the drama of his interpretations. Our singer had become like many of us—a product of turbulent histories that did not exempt the musical world.

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The 1960s arrived accompanied by Tony Bennett’s signature style—the growl present in the enviable vibrato and a delivery of the first lines tentative, as if he was in search of a word.

The gestures and mannerisms were awkward, if we did it, but in Tony Bennett, a wondrous theatricality to behold. Piaf’s extended arms and Judy Garland’s tremulous fingers found a masculine home in our singer’s performance.

Then came the partnerships that allowed Tony Bennett to exist while the world was enamored with rock music. First, he partnered with two incredible musical giants: Bill Evans and Michel Legrand. With Bill Evans, new audiences discovered Tony Bennett as a jazz singer, stepping aside as the pianist did his unusual harmonies. With Legrand, it was the rolled chords of the composer that saw Tony Bennett as a witness to another genius. Evans and Legrand for Tony Bennett were not accompanists but comusicians. Then came the duets. Big deals all: Paul McCartney. Sting. Stevie Wonder. Extraordinary but greatly possible. Tony Bennett, however, sang with Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse. YouTube has captured the charm of all this: Tony Bennett unfazed as Gaga danced around him; Tony Bennett amazed at how Winehouse improvised the melody of a difficult song “Body and Soul.”

These were all beautiful tandems until k.d. lang and Josh Groban came along.

Already in his 80s, Tony Bennett’s first hit, “Because of You,” is sung first by k.d. lang, elegantly suave. The duet was a marriage in heaven, with k.d. lang challenging us to contend with her appearance, the voice velvet against the wild forest in the chest tones of Tony Bennett, the team-up transcending the romantic.

Romance gets a sublime treatment in Tony Bennett’s duet with Josh Groban. It is not romance between persons but between ages of man.

The older singer opens the song “That is all I ask: As I approach the prime of my life I find I have the time of my life.” This gets you asking if that line belongs to the younger singer. But “Josh”, as called by Bennett, comes in singing in a voice that recalls the latter’s youthful tenor: “Beautiful girls, walk a little slower when you walk by me/Lingering sunsets, stay a little longer with the lonely sea.∏ Shouldn’t an older man make that plea? Memories come surging back. They might as well be our own as the two join in for the final, final vow: “And I will stay younger than Spring.” With the flag-waving showmanship of Tony Bennett.

This is Tony Bennett, unafraid of youth and its passing. He sings with all of them because for him music belongs to all generations. He makes us sing in all of them. It does not matter if we did not know that city by the bay; what matters is a heart that, according to Tony Bennett, we can leave in a place that assures a return. n