TONY BENNETT

a little history is a beautiful thing...

If you go back with Tony Bennett to the very beginning of his career in the early 1950s, you'll remember that after signing with Columbia in 1951, he had a string of Top-10 hits, including the million sellers, Because Of You, Cold, Cold Heart, Rags To Riches, and Stranger In Paradise. Mitch Miller signed Tony and used his demo record of Boulevard Of Broken Dreams as his first side for the label.

Bennett also made the pop charts with I Wanna Be Around, The Good Life, If I Ruled The World, For Once In My Life and his signature song, I Left My Heart In San Francisco...but Tony's heart has always been in jazz. He may very well be the only singer who's been backed by the orchestras of Ellington, Basie, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton and Buddy Rich; with charts written by Ralph Burns, Johnny Mandel, Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones and Gil Evans. Of course, his amazing collaboration with Ralph Sharon has produced a body of work which truly lights up the universe of popular music.

It has been said that Tony Bennett is clearly the continuer of the Frank Sinatra legacy. Not that Tony imitated Sinatra, but that he too is concerned with keeping alive-across generations of listeners-America's most abiding jazz and popular songs...this nation's original classical music. In his book, The Good Life, Bennett wrote of Frank Sinatra, "He communicated precisely what he was feeling at any moment. He knocked down the wall between performer and audience, inviting listeners into his mind."

Truly, Tony Bennett continues that premise...