Tales of Tony, Part 6
In the Studio and at "The Playground"
In 1998, around the time that he turned 72, Tony was working on two projects that both necessitated a look back at his childhood. The first was, obviously, the writing of his autobiography, The Good Life. (Yes, I had the great privilege and sheer pleasure of collaborating with him on that.) The second was his latest album, The Playground.
That Spring and Summer, Tony told me a lot of stories about what it was like to be a kid in an immigrant family in the outer boroughs of New York during the Great Depression. His memory of that period was sharp and clear, and he was able to bring back a lot more incidents from his early days than, say, I would be able to - not that I’m a relevant point of comparison.
Tony was already working on the album of children’s songs - at that point, it seemed like the only thing he hadn’t done - but he didn’t quite have a title song yet.
He had decided that he wanted a song called “The Playground” to start the album, but that song hadn’t been written yet. His first idea was to commission his old friend Fred Katz to compose the melody, and the lyrics would be written by two other old friends, the legendary Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Incidentally, Fred Katz was actually figure from Tony’s youth - the two had first met each other in Germany when Tony was 19 or so and both were serving in the United States Army during World War II. After the war, Fred Katz went to become a major figure in the world of jazz, as one of the first superstar cellists in the music, film scores, and American classical music. He and Tony were very close in the immediate postwar era, and it was “Freddy” who introduced Tony to his first manager, Ray Muscarella. Tony later gave credit for the idea of “The Playground” to Fred Katz.
So that was the plan; Fred would compose the title song. But as it happened, Verve records had recently released a massive boxed set of Bill Evans recordings for that label. The package include a number of obscure. somewhat more pop-oriented Evans projects that many of us had never heard. One of these was a 1970 Bill Evans album titled From Left to Right; the idea here was that Evans would play two keyboards simultaneously, a traditional Steinway acoustic grand with this left hand and a Fender Rhodes electric in his right. These two-keyboard performances were accompanied by an orchestra arranged and conducted by Mickey Leonard. Mickey was mostly known for his film and TV work, but who had written the well-received score to a flop Broadway show, The Yearling, which including two songs beloved by the jazz community, “I’m All Smiles” and “Why Did I Choose You?” (Mickey was also already a very dear friend of Nancy Sinatra, and, later on I also got to know him quite well myself, I am happy to say.)
From Left to Right included an instrumental composed by Bill Evans, which was titled “Children’s Play Song.” On the album, it sounds like an improvisation, in which Evans uses both keyboards to paint a vivid musical picture depict a playground full of children, running around, playing, and humming songs. The track includes several different different melodies, one of which suggests a little child practicing scales on the piano. It’s almost more like a tone poem than what we might call a song. The finished track also contains overdubbed noises of children playing as well as Mickey Leonard’s orchestral accompaniment.
By a coincidence, I heard From Left and Right and “Children’s Play Song,” just at the moment Tony was recording The Playground. I brought him the CD, and, a few days later, when we were doing a sound check at Caesar’s Palace in Atlantic City, he had his sound man, the resourceful Tom Young, play it over the house sound system. That was quite a moment: all of a sudden the whole amphitheater was filled with the sounds of vintage Bill Evans. I remember looking into the faces of Tony’s quartet - Ralph Sharon, Gray Sargent, Clayton Cameron, and Paul Langosch. We all agreed it was a beautiful tune.
That seems to have been the moment that Tony decided that “Children’s Play Song” by Bill Evans was the melody that he wanted to serve as the foundation for “The Playground.” (I’m glad that I wasn’t the one who call Fred Katz and tell him that the deal was off.).
He sent the CD off to Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and they came through with a truly beautiful lyric. The highest compliment that I can pay it is that it was up to their usual standards.
Alan and Marilyn didn’t just write words to a finished melody, they took Evans’s multiple tunes and constructed a single, coherent song out of them. They ingeniously wrote words to two of the tunes heard in the Evans original, and then, at a certain point, the two melodies come together in counterpoint - the overall effect is clearly inspired by the use of overlapping contrapuntal melodies in Frank Loesser’s “The Inch Worm.”
This is one of the many memories that’s indelibly burned in my brain: I was there when Tony recorded “The Playground,” music by the late Bill Evans, lyrics by the Bergmans. He was backed not only by his quartet, but a children’s chorus. Tony sings one melody, the chorus sings another, and they come together beautifully. It’s quite an amazing moment, and quite unique in Tony’s canon.
Needless to say, I love this album - I’ll tell another story about something extraordinary that happened at one of the sessions - and every time I hear it played, especially the title song, I get goosebumps. I didn’t write it, I certainly didn’t sing it, but I think to myself, “I had something to do with that, hey!”
Virtual and Radio Events This Week;
Wednesday, August 9
7:00PM (EST) - The New York Adventure Club presents
'Tin Pan Alley: The Birthplace of America's Music Industry' Webinar
Register_Here
Wednesday, August 9
9:30PM (EST) - Will Friedwald's CLIP JOINT presents:
TIN PAN ALLEY ENCORES: "All Our Own Work"
"AND THEN I WROTE...." : THE GREAT SONGWRITERS SING!
no cover charge!
click here
Saturday, August 12
10:00AM Pacific Time / 1:00PM Eastern Time
KSDS San Diego Presents
Remembering TONY :
TALES OF TONY : RARITIES AND OTHER BURIED TREASURES
for more info and streaming link, click here
Episodes of Sing! Sing! Sing! spotlighting Tony Bennett (listenable on Podbean.com):
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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Lovely story....beautiful memory!
Wonderful story, Will.