Page 50 - Arts Management Magazine Iss 1
P. 50
AMM INSPIRED
TPHEERSPEICVTERUARNECOEF
by Jerry Gladstone
Tony Bennett’s legendary career has forced pavement and look for work, doing ama- been just hired as the summer replace-
him to keep up with an ever changing teur shows and working as a singing wait- ment for Perry Como on his Kraft Mu-
industry. With the world’s taste in music er.” Like other iconic people, they used sic Hall television show. I was still new at
constantly changing, he has had to learn all of their experiences as building blocks show business, and I was nervous as hell.
to reinvent himself—but never sacrificed to prolific careers. But I thought I’d take a chance and seek
his style. There will be times in your life Tony Bennett has maintained an artis- Sinatra’s advice since he was the singer
when you will need to evolve, but that tic integrity through his career that he I idolized. Without incident, I just went
doesn’t mean you have to betray who you learned long ago from the singer he most backstage and showed up at his dressing
really are. Staying true to yourself is one idolized: Frank Sinatra. Bennett recalled, room. The Frank Sinatra I met was quite
of the biggest lessons of reinvention. “The first time I met Frank Sinatra, he different from the one I had expected—
Bennett was born in 1926, into a poor said something to me that has stayed with he could not have been nicer to me.”
family in Astoria, Queens, New York. me my entire life and has helped sustain “He gave me the best advice I had ever
The Great Depression and the death of my career. I was just getting established been given: to stay away from cheap songs.
his father (when Tony was only ten) made as a singer in the early 1950s, and Sina- ‘Only sing quality songs,’ he said. “I’ve
their circumstances more difficult. He re- tra was doing an engagement at the followed that advice for over fifty years.”
calls that at age sixteen he had to “hit the Paramount Theatre in New York. I had What celebrities and those in the public
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