Tales of Tony, Part 7

"In the Studio and Looking to the Rainbow"

In 1998 and ‘99 I was very privileged to attend a number of Tony’s recording sessions; these were for the albums that became The Playground and Tony Bennett Sings Ellington Hot and Cool.  (I also had the rather amazing good fortune to be present at a unique recording session with Tony and Lena Horne.  I actually wrote about that in 2010 for the New York Sun, and the link is here.)

If you ever were lucky enough to be invited to a Tony Bennett recording session, there was only one hard and fast rule.  I was instructed, in no uncertain terms, to keep my eyes open and my big mouth shut!  This was Tony’s rule, made clear to me by Danny Bennett - as everyone reading this knows, Tony son, manager, business partner, and, frequently, producer. (And also a supremely nice, smart, and very talented guy - the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.)

Tony’s record dates were highly creative affairs.  On small group projects especially, they would have the broad outlines set: the tune list, the keys, the general tempos, the broadest idea of the solo routines - who was going to play where and so forth.  But a lot of things would be adjusted on the actual date.  If a key was too low or two high, if a tempo was too fast or too slow, if a guitar or a bass solo sounded better.  The edict from above was to not say anything - keep your trap closed and above all, resist the urge to make any suggestions.  If Tony or Ralph asked me directly, that was one thing, but otherwise keep it zipped.

I don’t remember what the other tunes were, but the one that stands out in my mind was “Look to the Rainbow,” by E. Y. Harburg and Burton Lane from the classic Broadway show Finian’s Rainbow.  (Coincidentally, I got to meet and talk with Burton Lane around this time, but that’s another story.)  Ella Logan sang it in the classic original 1947 Broadway production, Petula Clark sang it in the otherwise less-than-classic 1968 movie version, Melissa Errico sang it at several recent off Broadway revivals, and the most famous jazz version was by the great Dinah Washington, with honorable mention to Rosemary Clooney.  (Fun fact: part of the lyrics to “Look to the Rainbow” were first used by Harburg and Harold Arlen as an extra chorus in “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” in the The Wizard of Oz.)

Now it was Tony’s turn to look to the rainbow. 

He and Ralph kicked off the tempo, and I couldn’t help but notice it was too slow.  At least, that’s the way it seemed to me.  I looked at Danny, and he looked back at me like he knew what I was thinking, but he gave me that look that said, “whatever you do, do not say anything.”

So I didn’t.  Then Tony and the quartet - Ralph, Gray, Paul, and Clayton - took it again.  This time it was even slower.  Everyone could have seen the puzzled expression on my face, which clearly read, “Why are they taking it slower when it should be faster?

Again I kept it zipped. They went for a third take which was even slower, then a fourth and a fifth.  By now I can barely contain myself. I am just bursting with an almost atavistic desire to yell out, “Not slower you guys, faster!”

Thirty minutes later I was positively apoplectic.  I don’t remember how many takes there were altogether. Nine, ten?  

But finally it happened. 

Tony and Ralph and the guys kept taking it slower and slower until they gradually reached the epiphany, the perfect tempo, somewhere between crawl-slow and completely standing still.  When they reached that point it was like the clouds cleared and the Heavens opened up and the sun came through. In that moment, we instantly went from SepiaTone to three strip Technicolor.  All of a sudden, what seemed incredibly wrong was now perfectly right. A tiny bit faster and it wouldn’t have worked at all.  

I was reminded that some of Tony’s most powerful ballads were at that incredibly slow tempo - like his amazing 1970 interpretation of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Wave”; it’s so slow that even the waves themselves seem to be moving in slow motion - or not at all.

This was perhaps the most moving rendition of the song I’ve ever heard, right up there with Dinah Washington and Rosemary Clooney, both of whom were close friends of Tony’s.

That performance of “Look to the Rainbow” is indelibly etched in my memory. It’s like a mental MP3 lodged in my brain that I can stream at will.  Which is, sadly, the way it has to be.  

After all that effort Tony and the quartet invested to make it just right, the punchline is that Tony and Danny ultimately decided that track wasn’t good enough and it didn’t make the final album.  That’s the standard of excellence that Tony Bennett was able to achieve - a performance that was so powerful it literally reduced me to tears right in the studio - and yet it wasn’t considered up to Tony’s own usual high standard.  

Hopefully one day I’ll be able to hear it - the Tony 90th Birthday Celebration package included at least one unused song from the 1999 Ellington album, so maybe at one point some of the extra songs from The Playground will see the light of day as well.

It seems hard to believe, but that was 25 years ago, and I have been looking to the rainbow ever since.

Disclaimer: These are my memories of that date, 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 that session.  

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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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