Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra are considered the greatest male singers in popular music before the rock and roll era, with Tony Bennett, who just passed away at age 96, a close second.
When it comes to maintaining vocal quality at an advanced age, however, Bennett is all alone of the top.
Sinatra is my favorite singer of all time, but his last good performances came in his early 70’s. As much I liked the “Duets” album which were recorded 30 years ago, his voice was an echo of what it used to be.
Up until his late 80’s, Bennett could still belt out “Fly Me to the Moon” to the rafters without the aid of amplification. He could still hold notes and move them around several octaves in “How Do You Keep the Music Playing” at age 89 just as he did at 59.
Father time finally caught up to him in his final years of singing, yet it overlapped with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Sinatra often declared Bennett the best singer of his generation. That is saying something considering the Chairman of the Board had Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. as best buddies.
Besides both men being Italian, both Sinatra and Bennett had careers that spanned seven decades, had times when the record labels dumped them, had second acts that revitalized their careers, and both kept recording and performing later in life, dying not as has-beens but as still vital superstars.
And both are mostly associated with songs about cities; “New York, New York” with Sinatra, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” with Bennett.
Watch the two men sing “My Kind of Town” together in a 1977 TV special; it’s a magical moment.
Right around this time and continuing for the next decade, Bennett struggled with drugs and a music world where his kind of songs were no longer in vogue.
His son, Danny Bennett, became his manager and helped his father resurrect his career in the early 1990’s starting with the release of 1992’s “Perfectly Frank,” a tribute to Sinatra.
His son scheduled his dad to appear on MTV and encouraged him to record with younger artists. Suddenly, people under 40 “discovered” Bennett, resulting in his popularity skyrocketing for the final 30 years of his 70-year career as an artist. Most of his albums in the 21st century were collaborations with other artists.
Amazing that this 30-year final act of his career was his most successful. This last body of work superior to his first 40 years.
And even when it was formally announced the he was retiring, he still sang in a few videotaped sessions in his New York apartment with a pianist.
See how moving it is when he sings “Smile”:
It is a remarkable testament to Bennett’s perseverance that he could briefly break the shackles of Alzheimer’s and show flashes of brilliance.
Crosby Chronicles 