Tony Bennett was really something: a tribute

On the very best day of my five years as Newsday’s television columnist, I had just finished interviewing an utterly charming and surprisingly candid Larry Hagman, J.R. Ewing himself, at a very nice hotel facing the south end of Central Park.

I headed out the front entrance, turned right toward Fifth Avenue, and who should I almost crash into but Tony Bennett, who was walking jauntily down the sidewalk in my direction, in an impeccably tailored light grey suit that he wore like a second skin.

“Mr. Bennett,” I exclaimed before I had time to be awed. “How are you this fine morning?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he replied, flashing me a big, warm smile. “And you, sir?”

I nodded. He nodded.

I would swear he was whistling a tune as he continued on his sprightly way. I know I was. Hearing his voice always made me want to make music myself.

The news of Bennett’s passing saddened me, but I won’t grieve too much. He lived to be 96 and ended his up and down career in music more beloved and respected than when he started.

Many Tony Bennett fans may have forgotten, but he was, for a while, as much a casualty of rock ’n roll’s crushing dominance as crooners like Jerry Vale and John Gary.

His LP Something, a late 1960s quest for “relevance” that featured a couple of Beatles ballads, songs, was one of his last for Columbia before his long-time label dropped him.

He recorded independently for a number of years thereafter, before a younger generation discovered his intimate way with a song and went, well, gaga over him.

My other memory is also related to my Newsday stint.

My wife and I were invited by the cable network Bravo, to a taping of Musicians, where singers as diverse as Elvis Costello and Deborah Harry were interviewed about their careers and inspiration and performed four or five signature tunes in an intimate, acoustic setting.

We got to listen to Bennett with an audience of maybe 100 people. During the interview segments, his brilliant accompanist, jazz pianist Bill Charlap, was sitting so close in front of us that his back brushed against our knees. When Bennett got up to sing, we were almost close enough to shake hands.

It was heaven.

My wife, Marty Winkler, a jazz-pop singer herself, was most impressed by his warmth, the benevolence he radiated, and by the way he so exactingly applied his aging voice to the songs so that he never pushed, never strained.

I loved how he made us all feel as though he were singing to us individually and how even a tune he’d performed thousands of times, like “Fly Me to the Moon,” seemed utterly fresh and felt. It was almost as though he were composing the song, phrase by phrase, as he sang it.

That was, I believe, his greatest gift — not what I’ve seen referred to as his “butterscotch” baritone, though it is one of the great pop voices of the past 100 years, but the way he inhabited melodies and lyrics.

Whether he was covering Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart” or George Harrison’s “Something”, or recalling for the umpteenth time why he’d left his heart in a foggy California city, he knew how to get inside a song.