But, no matter where Tony Bennett is featured, what he sings and how he sings have pretty much remained the same for most of his more than sixty years as an entertainer. He had on a hand-tailored Brioni tux with a red pocket square, a white shirt, and a black tie that had been a gift from his drummer, and he was singing the introductory verse to “The Lady Is a Tramp,” the Rodgers and Hart show tune from their 1937 musical, “Babes in Arms”:Īt Avatar, he popped a dime-size yellow lozenge into his mouth and headed over to the control room to spend some time with his guests and family members, including Susan, who is often with him when he sings.Ī week earlier, she had flown with him and his quartet to concerts in Reno, Las Vegas, and Denver, three of nearly a hundred appearances he makes every year around the nation and overseas and she intends to be in the audience on Sunday evening, September 18th, when he and his quartet are scheduled to present a few dozen of his favorite songs from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. He said, ‘He sinned against his talent.’ I wanted to tell her that.”Īs a few dozen people gathered within the glass-enclosed control room anticipating Lady Gaga’s appearance, Bennett was standing alone on a white platform, in the center of the studio. ![]() I wanted to tell her that many years ago I was naughty also with some drugs.” He went on, “Woody Allen’s manager at the time”-Jack Rollins-“said he knew Lenny Bruce, and he said one sentence that changed my life. He said, “I wanted to tell her that she needed to shape up or she could end up destroying herself.” In August, he appeared on the MTV Video Music Awards in a special tribute to Winehouse, saying, “She was a true jazz artist in the tradition of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday.” After the broadcast, he told a reporter, “What I wanted to do, I wanted to stop her. Over dinner a couple of weeks before the session with Lady Gaga, Bennett told me that he had been concerned about Winehouse’s well-being when he spent time with her in London. ![]() Bennett and Winehouse had sung together in London in March, four months before her death, in July, at twenty-seven, following years of familiarity with drugs and alcohol. They included John Mayer (“One for My Baby”), Carrie Underwood (“It Had to Be You”), Queen Latifah (“Who Can I Turn To?”), Mariah Carey (“When Do the Bells Ring for Me?”), Aretha Franklin (“How Do You Keep the Music Playing?”), Willie Nelson (“On the Sunny Side of the Street”), Andrea Bocelli (“Stranger in Paradise”), and Amy Winehouse (“Body and Soul”). It is a sequel to his 2006 Grammy Award-winning album, and sixteen other singers had already collaborated with him. Lady Gaga was expected to arrive at two o’clock, with her hairdresser, her makeup artist, her creative director, her vocal coach, her producer, her security guards, and others who know her by her pre-fame name, Stefani Germanotta and then, after she had warmed up, she would join Bennett in singing “The Lady Is a Tramp,” the final recording for his latest album of duets, “Duets II,” which will be released by R.P.M. ![]() On a bright Sunday afternoon shortly after one o’clock in Manhattan, a few days before his eighty-fifth birthday, which he would modestly acknowledge on August 3rd by dining at a neighborhood restaurant on the East Side with his wife, Susan-who, within a few weeks, would be celebrating her own, forty-fifth birthday-Tony Bennett was standing behind a microphone at the Avatar Studios, on West Fifty-third Street, rehearsing a few lines from “The Lady Is a Tramp” while awaiting the presence of Lady Gaga. Bennett says that Gaga is an enormous talent, but, underneath it all, she’s just “a sweet little Italian-American girl who studied at N.Y.U.” Photograph by Mary Ellen Mark
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