This Week on Jazz Spectrum - 7/29

By Fritz Byers 

This week on Jazz Spectrum, an homage to Tony Bennett.  I posted earlier this week a brief reflection on Tony’s music, which was elevated by his taste and his commitment to the meanings of the lyrics, married to the melodies and harmonies of the best songs in the canon.

On the show this week, we’ll hear Tony in various settings.  But we begin with three tracks from the highwater mark of his work, his collaborations with the pianist Bill Evans.  

Tony mostly eschewed the improvisations that some think of as the hallmark of a jazz singer.  But from the outset of his 70-year career, Tony’s vocal style reflected jazz influences.  He attributed his phrasing penchants to the pianist Art Tatum, and with his characteristic lack of evident guile he credited Billie Holiday and Mildred Bailey for teaching him an ease of delivery.

Tony recorded with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1959, lest anyone doubt his jazz chops.  And he bestrode the 1960s with a dizzying array of recordings, but fell out of favor in the 1970s.  

Meanwhile, beginning with his still-buzzed-about mid 1950s solos on the George Russell creations “Concerto for Billy the Kid” and “All About Rosie” and continuing through his non-pareil trio work with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian and his role on Miles Davis’s seminal Kind of Blue, Bill Evans had become widely recognized as a generational genius, combining harmonic ingenuity, ceaseless lyricism, and a subtle but distinctive rhythmic drive.  In contrast to Tony’s recession in the 1970s, in that decade Bill remained a singular presence at the height of the music.

Their pairing was far from foreordained, however fortuitous it may seem in retrospect.  Bill had made only one obscure recording with a vocalist, and his days as an accompanist were seemingly far behind him.  The two of them had met years before at the White House during the era of cultural awakening JFK brought.  

But thirteen years later, with only a little forethought, they met at the recording studio, this time with artistic intent.  Only two other people were present – the recording engineer and Bill’s devoted manager, Helen Keane.

They picked the tunes as they went along, cutting alternate takes as the mood struck.  And they ended up with one of the great vocal albums in the music.  

This week’s show opens with three tracks that are offered as examplars of a thoroughly thrilling recording date: “My Foolish Heart,” “Some Other Time,” and “Days of Wine and Roses.”  

Other of Tony’s recordings are sprinkled through the evening, including his version of the night’s featured song, “I’m Glad There is You.”  Each of the tunes is worth attention.  But to my ears, Tony, like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, is best appreciated in the company of only a skilled, sensitive pianist.  That’s what you’ll hear in the marvelous tracks Tony and Bill made for us.