Monday, October 23, 2006

Tony Bennett, Duets: An American Classic

A sign of impending extinction for aging vocalists is the inevitable “duets” album. Frank Sinatra released two of them. Ray Charles had one. Loretta Lynn released the widely praised Van Lear Rose, not really a duets album, but one produced and recorded by The White Stripes, who played on the album. Willie Nelson has been releasing duets albums for years, and though he’s past 70 he hardly seems on the verge of extinction. Nat King Cole, through the wonders of digital media, released a duets album with his daughter decades after his death. He should have let well enough alone. And now there is Tony Bennett, just turned 80, who has released Duets: An American Classic, in which he teams with a variety of performers. The results are mixed, song by song, but the album as a whole, with Bennett’s characteristic verve and enthusiasm and excellent big-band orchestration, is generally satisfying.

Actually, Bennett has done this before. In 2002 he released A Wonderful World with K. D. Laing, and in 2001 he released Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues. There have been other communal efforts as well. And he has continued to record solo albums, such as The Art of Romance in 2004, a strong and often melancholy album. Bennett is a stylist. His style includes not merely his voice but his overall persona as well as the kinds of songs and arrangements he chooses to perform. I don’t know enough of the lingo of the music industry, or of popular music in general, to state with the appropriate vocabulary why I like Bennett’s music. His songs convey emotional content and resonance, as if he is living and feeling them rather than simply performing them. He has a great sense of timing (as in “The Good Life” and the opening line of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”). He makes the enunciation of lyrics part of the performance. His voice has a strong, rugged, romantic timber, but it always seems unstrained, thoughtful, personally and thoughtfully expressed.

As he has aged, Bennett’s voice has aged with him and it is no longer the voice that he used in the 50s and 60s, when he made his mark. But is still a good voice, and it is in good form on Duets. Most of the songs are standards, with the exception of “For Once in My Life” by Stevie Wonder and “Cold, Cold Heart,” by Hank Williams, which is, I suppose, a country standard. In fact, Bennett helped make it a standard by recording it early in his career. Here is it again, performed with Tim McGraw. >I once read an interview with Bennett in which he described how having to perform rock hits during the 70s made him physically ill. They weren‘t songs he felt suited to sing, and no one, at the time, wanted to hear standards. Yet one of the highlights of this album is the duet with Stevie Wonder, “For Once in my Life,” a strong and sure performance in which Wonder reminds us why he was such a powerful and enduring presence in the 1970s as a performer and a songwriter. There are weak songs on the album (the performances with Celine Dion and Bono are examples), but the duets with the Dixie Chicks (“Lullaby of Broadway”), Barbara Streisand (“Smile,” though he mars the song at the end by ingratiatingly complimenting his partner on her “style”), Billy Joel (“The Good Life,” but nowhere near the equal of the Bennett original), Paul McCartney (“The Very Thought of You”—McCartney has a wonderful voice for these kinds of songs), and Elvis Costello (“Are You Havin’ Any Fun”) are excellent, among others, and they make this album what it is.

It is sad to note that for twenty years of his career, when he was in close to top voice, Bennett was ignored by popular music. Now, after recent films and television shows featured his songs, and his MTV Unplugged album in 1994 brought him to the attention of younger generations of listeners, he is in the middle of a long career renaissance. I hope he is enjoying himself. Duets suggests that he is.

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