ENTERTAINMENT

Tony Bennett: Success with Clooney, then Lady Gaga

Chris Varias Enquirer contributor

Tony Bennett is one guy who can talk firsthand about working with Rosemary Clooney and Lady Gaga.

Tony Bennett

Bennett turned 89 last month. He still sings wonderfully, whether on record or in front of a live audience, as evidenced by a show at Belterra Casino last November. And he can provide thoughtful and detailed answers to questions about his early days in showbiz emerging alongside Clooney and his contemporary work with Gaga.

And if he wants to go third person when answering those questions, that’s fine, because he’s Tony Bennett. He has earned it.

“Columbia Records signed Rosemary Clooney and Tony Bennett at the same time. And we had our own radio show 15 minutes a night, which was the beginning of anything professional that I ever did,” he recalls. “We toured together – in Washington, D.C., there was an interviewer that came by and interviewed Rosemary and then myself in the theater that we were playing, and that lady became President Kennedy’s wife.”

Since those days 65 years ago when Bennett performed with the girl singer from Maysville, his fortunes in the business have peaked and dipped, depending on the musical fashion of the day. Then things changed over the last several years. Bennett transcended musical fashion and has taken on national-treasure status as the finest living interpreter of the American songbook.

And now those rock stars that almost put Bennett out of work in the ’60s and ’70s are singing the same songs from the American songbook as him.

“I think it’s about time,” Bennett says. “It’s much better music, because you have Jerome Kern and Gershwin and Cole Porter, who wrote better than anybody, and Irving Berlin, who was the greatest American composer. It was a great era, the best era for music that influenced the whole world. No other country in the world has done what we did. When I travel to Europe or the Far East, those audiences start singing those songs with me. They know America by the songs that we composed, that we’ve given to the rest of the world.”

Though he’s not a big fan of contemporary forms of music like rock and pop, Bennett heard something in Lady Gaga that convinced him to work with her. Their duet album, “Cheek to Cheek,” topped the Billboard chart.

“She couldn’t believe it, because she said, ‘I’ve always been singing this way, but I get turned down by the contemporary producers. They want me to sing something that’s just for the young people.’ And I realized that, wow, here’s a chance for me to sing with her and get to the young people with quality songs,” he says. “And sure enough it’s so beautiful now. We did the album, and it’s still selling like crazy all over the world, and to hear the young people in the audience singing to us, what we did on that album, it’s the first time they ever heard jazz, and it’s just wonderful that it connected with the young people. And then Lady Gaga is saying that I changed her whole career by showing everybody that she really is a great singer, and that’s the first time she really showed how good she sings.”

Tony Bennett

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 5

Where: Riverbend Music Center, 6295 Kellogg Ave., Anderson Township; 513-232-6220

Tickets: $104; $69.50; $57