Award-winning artist Tony Bennett has been producing hit singles since 1951. (Courtesy San Francisco Chronicle)
BY JOHN BERGER / jberger@staradvertiser.com
The song has been an island favorite for more than 20 years.
“I left my shoes in my Manila. I left my bras and my pahn-tees,” Frank De Lima croons in his best Filipino accent, decked out in a wig, sunglasses and green terno dress as a clone of Imelda Marcos.
The audience sits back, enjoying every nuance in anticipation of the closing verse. De Lima belts out lyrics that now seem eerily prophetic:
“When I come to you
Filipinos
I’ll wear my shoes
And walk
All over you!”
Imelda Marcos was living in Honolulu when De Lima added the song to his show, and De Lima says that when the “Iron Butterfly” herself came to see the show, she and her entourage laughed along with everybody else.
Tony Bennett» Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall, 777 Ward Ave. |
What does this have to do with Tony Bennett, who’ll be doing a one-nighter Monday at the Blaisdell Concert Hall? Work with me on this: Hawaii often sees things from a homegrown perspective, and we have one on Bennett and his standards.
When Eric Clapton’s “unplugged” version of “Wonderful Tonight” started getting radio play here in the early 1990′s, for example, some Hawaii residents wondered why Clapton was “ripping off” Simplisity — a local group whose remake of Clapton’s original version of the song was the only one they were familiar with.
And so it’s possible that some of De Lima’s loyal local fans don’t know that the song he popularized as “I Left My Shoes in My Manila” has had a much longer and even more successful run under its original name, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” as recorded by Bennett.
Bennett’s recording of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was a Billboard Top 20 hit in 1962, and though the record only reached No. 19, it won Bennett a pair of Grammy Awards — best male vocal performance and record of the year.
Pop music songs often become “standards” over the years — songs that are no longer associated with any one particular artist or group — but “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” has belonged to Bennett ever since he recorded it 51 years ago.
Hawaii gets to hear him sing it, live and in concert, on Monday.
AS WITH a memorable show a few decades ago when Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minnelli shared a stage in Blaisdell Arena, catching Bennett in a concert here is a rare opportunity.
Bennett, 87, is one of the few artists who has made the major Billboard charts in the 1950′s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and in the first two decades of the 21st century. The list of Bennett’s hits starts in 1951 when he debuted on the Billboard Pop Singles chart with a two-sided hit single, “Because of You”/”I Won’t Cry Any More.”
Bennett’s second release, “Cold Cold Heart”/”Blue Velvet,” also topped the Pop chart and became his second gold record.
Sixty years later Bennett was recording pop standards with Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse. His 2011 recording of “Body and Soul” with Winehouse won a Grammy for best pop duo performance.
As a footnote that fits here as well as anywhere, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was originally a “B”-side song. Curious disc jockeys started playing it, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” became a hit, Bennett won two Grammys and the rest is pop music history.
IF BENNETT kept all his Grammys and other awards in a single display cabinet, he’d need one with lots of long shelves. He has 16 Grammys plus the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award that The Recording Academy presents to “performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.”
Bennett also has two Emmy Awards. He became a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2005, was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2006, received a Citizen of the World award from the United Nations and Billboard Magazine’s Century Award in honor of his outstanding contributions to music.
And he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Bennett locked in a new audience in 1994 when he and his standard acoustic trio appeared on “MTV Unplugged”– an ironic format, considering that Bennett had always been “unplugged.” Nonetheless the show, featuring guest appearances by Elvis Costello and k.d. lang, attracted a large audience and got a lot of media attention.
The album documenting the event, “MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett,” was certified platinum for domestic sales of more than 1 million copies and won two Grammy Awards: best traditional pop vocal performance and album of the year.
There probably aren’t a lot of people around these days who can say that they bought Bennett’s first hit single back in 1951, but 62 years later Bennett is still going — sharing the songs he enjoys singing with new generations of fans.
The Star-Advertiser reached out to Tony Bennett recently via email. He responded on Wednesday, Sept. 18.
HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER: What is your favorite Hawaiian song, and why?
TONY BENNETT: This is a little off of the point of your question but I was in Hawaii several years ago and I was listening to a piano player perform this lovely jazz tune and when he was finished I asked him the name of the song and he said it was called “Nuages” written by Django Reinhardt and Jacques LaRue. I loved the melody so much that for the first time in my life I wrote lyrics to go along with the tune and called it “All For You” and dedicated the song to my wife Susan.
HSA: Is there any place in the world that you have not performed yet that you would like to do a show in?
TB: Actually I just fulfilled that dream as I always wanted to perform in China and just got the chance to play two nights in Shanghai — it was absolutely wonderful.
HSA: What single event, award or accomplishment is the highlight of your career thus far?
TB: With my wife Susan, we started a brand new public arts high school in New York City that we called Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens where I grew up. We are on a mission to ensure that every public high school in the country has an extensive program of arts instruction and its so satisfying to see the students throughout the year. They actually love being in school so much that they don’t want to leave it upon graduation. We now support 14 public high schools in New York City and three public high schools in Los Angeles.
HSA: What was your initial feeling when you heard the final mix of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco?” Did you have a feeling that it was going to be a huge hit for you, and win several Grammy Awards, or did it sound like just another beautiful recording?
TB: Actually, my pianist and musical director Ralph Sharon found the sheet music of the song while packing to go on the road and put it in his suitcase as we were going to be performing in San Francisco and he thought it would be a good song to add to the show when we got there. So we thought it was just going to be a local hit. Back then you put out a record with an A-side and a B-side so we put “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” on the B-side and on the A-side we had a beautiful song, “Once Upon A Time,” that I thought would be a big hit so I was spending a lot of time promoting that song until the record label called and said, “turn your record over, ‘San Francisco’ is going to be big!”
HSA: “I Wanna Be Around” is a song that has expressed the feelings of countless people over the years including myself. Were you thinking of anyone in particular when you recorded it?
TB: It’s actually a great story as the composer Johnny Mercer got a letter from a woman named Sadie Vimmerstedt who said she had a great opening line for a song: “I wanna be around to pick up the pieces, when somebody breaks your heart.” Johnny loved the line and wrote the rest of the song but he gave Sadie composer credits and royalties. Sadie was able to travel around the world on the royalty checks and she always sent Johnny a postcard from wherever she was visiting at the time.
HSA: Your “unplugged” concert for MTV introduced your music to a new generation of people who became fans. Did you expect that people raised on MVT-style rock could embrace your music as well?
TB: I started out when Bob Hope put me on the bill at his show at the Paramount Theatre where you performed 7 shows a day. By the time you were done you had performed for every demographic — the teens, young lovers, married couples and grandparents. So my philosophy has always been if you choose the best material you can appeal to all demographics and ultimately good music is timeless and isn’t geared to just one group.
HSA: Do you see YouTube, and the widespread acceptance of music downloads in place of “physical” product, as things that help your career or things that deprive you of income you should be receiving?
TB: I have to admit I don’t know too much about YouTube but I feel the internet as a whole has been an exceptional way for people to discover and listen to all kinds of music and not just what is currently played on the radio.
HSA: What advice do you share with would-be entertainers in their late-teens or early twenties who want to become successful professional singers and recording artists?
TB: Stick to your passion and make sure you are making the music that you feel best about as that is the way to sustain your career over time. Try to achieve a “hit catalog, not just put out a novelty song that will be a quick hit but then instantly forgotten in a few weeks.