Tony Bennett

In his brief assessment of Tony Bennett's career for the New York Times today, critic Jon Pareles asks an interesting question: "Has there ever been a more purely likable pop figure than Tony Bennett?" My guess is that the answer is "Yes - but not many." And I can't think of one offhand.

Bennett's career lasted for seven or eight decades - he was singing in 1940, made his first record in 1949, had his first hit soon thereafter, and was famous to a greater or lesser degree ever since.

Bennett had a lovely voice, powerful but well under control. He could swing, and was an eloquent advocate of the so-called "great American songbook." Yet he also managed to work with everyone from Elvis Costello to Lady Gaga.

Tony recorded a vast number of records, most if not all of which have been reissued. That was not the case when this blog began, and in 2009 I devoted three posts to his early 1950s records - 10-inch LPs, EPs and a single.

Earlier this year, I posted Bennett's first record, made under the name of "Joe Bari" in 1949. It is a significant rarity, so I was excited to find a transfer of it on Internet Archive, which I cleaned up for the singles blog. I'll never find a physical copy - the 78 has auctioned for up to $3,900 - so the transfer will have to do. In researching this post, I was amused to read in the admirable Bennett discography on jazzdiscography.com that, "According to the 1968 profile of Tony Bennett in Billboard, the only known copy of this disc literally disintegrated at some point in the 1960s."

For this tribute, I've redone all my Bennett posts in ambient stereo, added recording information to each and cleaned up the graphics. There are 28 tracks in all. Here are links:

The Complete 'Because of You'. Columbia issued two LPs with the title "Because of You" in the 1950s, with overlapping contents. I combined them for my first Bennett post. This and all the posts below concentrate on the singer's first years as a recording artist.

Two EPs and a Single. Here, too, Columbia issued records with similar contents, and again I put them together in one package, adding a then-unre-released single for good measure. That isn't a particularly good photo of Tony on the cover, but it does capture his joie de vivre.

Alone at Last. One more 10-inch LP that reissued some of Bennett's early singles. I believe that all the posts above were inspired by my friend Scoredaddy, an early supporter of this blog and the greatest Tony Bennett enthusiast I know.

Joe Bari. Tony was not Tony when he first recorded; he was "Joe Bari" for a 1949 single on the tiny Leslie label. At that time, he wasn't the artist he was to become a year or two later, but still, he was recognizably Tony Bennett even under another name.

The links above take you to the original posts. The links will be at the end of the comment sections.