Tales of Tony, Part 16
“Makin' That Scene”
As we mentioned earlier, Tony Bennett and Duke Ellington first worked together for a one-nighter in Miami in 1958, but then toured more extensively in 1965. Early that year, Tony was surprised to receive a delivery from Duke via messenger; it was a dozen roses plus a few pieces of sheet music with a ribbon wrapped around them. Tony soon learned this was Duke’s way of doing business; whenever he sent a song to an artist, be they singer, musician, or bandleader, and be they female or male, he always sent along a dozen roses - as sort of a gracious courtesy to express his thanks for going to the trouble to listen to the song. (The roses are a part of Tony’s most famous portrait of Duke, which he titled “God is Love.”)
The song that Duke sent in February 1965 was titled “Love Scene,” and as we know, it was one of the few which Duke wrote his own lyric to his melody. At that point, Duke had not yet made any recording of it. Tony would be the first; he fell in love with “Love Scene.” He included it on his next album, If I Ruled The World - Songs for the Jet Set, taped on February 19 and then released two months later on April 19. It’s an excellent, swinging chart, in which both pianist Ralph Sharon and arranger Don Costa offer modish, Ellington-influenced accompaniment; there’s an especially winning break after the first chorus, in which Ralph plays a few bars of “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” before laying down one of his best solos with Tony.
It could be argued that Tony did better by “Love Scene” than Duke himself. Tony included it in the album, and also sang it on The Ed Sullivan Show in a special co-appearance with Woody Herman and The Swingin’ Herd on Sunday March 31 - two weeks before the album was released. Tony continued to sing it throughout the 1960s, including another shot on Sullivan, this time with the Duke himself, on April 6, 1969.
For his part, Ellington recorded “Love Scene” at one of his “private” sessions on April 14, shortly before Tony’s version on Songs for the Jet Set was released. This is a highly copasetic rendition, in which the main melody is played by trumpeter Richard Williams (at least I think it’s Williams). There’s also a trombone solo by Lawrence Brown and Johnny Hodges gets a piece of it too. Alas, this version wasn’t issued until it turned up on a special collectors CD roughly 30 years later.
In the meantime, Ellington also included it on what became infamous as possibly his least regarded album. The Duke at Tanglewood, from a 1965 concert with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. (Least regarded because it’s essentially a Pops album with Ellington playing piano solos, the charts are infinitely more sugary and soupy than anything Ellington would have written for his own orchestra.)
In the 1980s and ‘90s, Tony brought “Love Scene” back into his working book. I must have heard him sing it a hundred times; he usually included it as part of a 15-minute segment of Ellingtonia, which always climaxed with his drummer Clayton Cameron playing a big, crowd-pleasing solo on ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing.”). Throughout the MTV years, “Love Scene” was a major Tony Bennett signature.
# # #
In December 1965, Tony and Duke were both in midtown Manhattan - literally across the street from each other - but they were light years apart, psychologically. Duke was hitting one of the high points of his career with his Concert of Sacred Music, which had premiered in San Francisco on September 16 but was officially being recorded and introduced to the world on the day after Christmas at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. This is the performance that the world would acclaim as a masterpiece after RCA recorded and released it. (It would eventually be the first of three sacred concerts by Ellington.)
At the same time, Tony was at a low point; his career was flying, he was still selling out clubs and concert halls, recording at least three albums a year, and making many TV guest shots. (In my collection alone, I have him on The Ed Sullivan, Andy Williams, and Dean Martin shows - and even Shindig! - all in 1965, and that’s just a fraction of his actual appearances.) But, personally, he was down in the dumps; he’d separated from his first wife, Patricia (nicknamed Sandy) and had to spend Christmas away from his two boys, Danny and Daegal.
We told the story in our book, The Good Life, but I’ll briefly recap it here. It’s Christmas Day 1965, Tony must have had some business that kept him in midtown. (He was probably singing somewhere that night, or maybe he was going to the Duke’s eagerly-anticipated concert.) He was stopping, as they say, at the Gotham Hotel, directly facing the Presbyterian Church on the other side of Fifth Avenue and 55th St. (He would have been welcome to stay with his sister Mary in Tom’s River, New Jersey.)
But whatever the case, he’s feeling very lonely and isolated. Then, all of a sudden, he hears music and there’s no one there. Someone is singing. It’s not the TV, that’s not turned on. Neither is his tape deck or a radio.
He recognizes the song, it’s “On a Clear Day,” by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane, from the musical more fully titled On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, which had opened two months earlier. (Tony would make a beautiful recording of that song in 1970.) And he realizes its coming from the hallway. He opens the door, and there is a choir: in fact, it’s the singers from Duke Ellington’s Concert of Sacred Music, singing to Tony.
As we wrote in the book, “he’d heard from Louis Bellson I was in a bad way, so he sent the choir over to cheer me up. It was his Christmas gift to me, the most beautiful I have ever received. It was a moment that made me believe in people, no matter how difficult things might become for me.”
Cut to over 45 years later. Tony would usually call me every couple of months or so. This was mostly just to keep in touch, but I also suspect that by 2010 or so, I was one of his last remainging friends with whom he could still talk to about Bobby Hackett or Zoot Sims.
So now It’s Christmas Day, 2011. This time, I was the one who was recently divorced, and spending the holidays alone. The phone rings, and it’s Tony. We talk for about ten minutes, and then he gets back to his wife and family. Needless to say, I was touched and impressed. Tony had a very big family, including lots of grandkids and in-laws and what have you, and there were incredible demands on his time for what was really a day for family. But I was very touched.
A week later, it’s New Year’s Day, 2012. The phone rings again. And this time I’m even more surprised that it’s Tony again. Two weeks in a row.
Later, I remembered that story we told in the book, about Duke sending a choir to Tony when he was all alone on Christmas. Someone must have told him that I was now in that same situation. He remembered the good deed that a great man had done for him all those years earlier, and he paid it forward.
I’ll always love Tony and Bless him for everything he did for me, so many times.
Disclaimer: These are my memories of these incidents, nothing more, nothing less. I apologize in advance in case they may not line up precisely with anyone else’s account of what transpired on those occasions.
Four Episodes of Sing! Sing! Sing on KSDS (88.3 San Diego) spotlighting the life and legacy of Tony Bennett:
SSS 59 2023-08-12 Tales of Tony
SSS 58 2023-08-05 Tony Bennett sings the George & Ira Gershwin Songbook
SSS 57 2023-07-29 Tony Bennett - Van Heusen, Burke, Cahn, Styne, Sondheim, Comden & Green
SSS 5 2022-07-30 Tony Bennett @ 96: The Johnny Mercer Songbook
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Wow, beautiful story! Thanks. Every one who has spent alone a New Year's eve or a Christmas will love it.