Now, will somebody please explain to the young bands and the old crooners who aren't appearing on MTV how he did it?
Tony Bennett has been an international star since the 1960s, when he recorded "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." His recent elevation to popular status with the MTV generation started just recently, when he turned to his son, who also happens to be his promoter, and said, "I hate the notion of demographics. Why can't I be on MTV?"He hasn't given in to recording executives who want to update his style. He's still pure Tony Bennett, just a riper version of what he was in 1955. The grandfather of pop singing still dresses impeccably in suits and ties, and will not sing rock music. He didn't do it when the Beatles came to compete. He won't do it now.
"Now I'm accepted as the fashion of the day, and I'm still singing Cole Porter songs," he says. He calls his songs "the great American songbook."
Mark Conley, 23, a Baltimore Bennett fan, says, "Most of the young performers just want to get out there and get it overwith, but with Tony it's the energy that he puts into this shows. He's cool."
He came into the eye of modern music fans with appearances on SCTV, "The Simpsons" and David Letterman. Then came a music video, numerous MTV appearances and now a giant WordPerfect-sponsored U.S. tour. He'll be in Salt Lake City at Abravanel Hall on Friday, Nov. 11.
Bennett still gets nervous before a show. "I always do . . . it's so funny, I call 'em happy butterflies. But it's not nervousness, it's really caring."
The hyperstars are falling over themselves to sing with him, and his music is climbing the charts, assisted by a video called "Steppin' Out," which plays right along with Metallica and Snoop Doggy Dogg on MTV, around the clock.
Last December, Bennett shared the stage with MTV-generation stars including Billy Idol, They Might Be Giants, the Lemonheads and Cowboy Junkies in six Christmas concerts nationwide.
His "Duets" album, new versions of his old hits sung with people like Natalie Cole and U2's Bono, has sold millions.
In an MTV special with k.d. lang and Elvis Costello, called "MTV Unplugged," Bennett turned off the microphones and sang "Fly Me to the Moon." He brought the crowd to its feet.
"When you see a good singer without a microphone, there's something wonderful that happens. I think it's very, very peaceful. Somehow the audience retains it. They walk away never forgetting it," he says.
"Tony Bennett has not just bridged the generation gap," says the New York Times, "he has demolished it. And there have been no compromises."
"I don't like the cool school where an artist will say: `I don't care what they think, I'm going to do what I do, and if you don't like it, you can shove it.' I like performers like Louis Armstrong or Sinatra," he says. (Frank Sinatra, incidentally, has said that Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.) "He (Sinatra) gave me some very, very good pointers. He told me to just stay with good music. He said, `Don't do any tricks or novelty songs just to get a hit. Don't compromise.' "
Peter Stearns, author of "American Cool," says that "cool," as a synonym for great, is a mongrelization of the term's original meaning. In its original meaning, cool referred to "styles or behaviors that are controlled, relatively emotionless, often muted in color."
After Los Angeles' big earthquake, Bennett actually got dressed - in his usual impeccable suit - and arrived in the lobby amid a crowd of guests in bathrobes. A Hollywood reporter said, "You got dressed up?" Bennett answered, "But of course."
He likes rap. He says he'd "rather have a verbal revolution than a physical one."
And he loves the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
When the MTV-watching pop crowd first embraced Bennett at his appearance with the Chili Peppers on last year's "MTV Music Video Awards" ceremony, he wore a velvet top hat and shorts. They wore tuxedos.
"When I was a kid, I saw the great Jimmy Durante, and he was so off the wall that you wouldn't believe it," Bennett said afterward. "They remind me of him. When I won the Grammy, that's how I met them. Here I am standing around in a suit and tie, and Anthony (Kiedis) is completely naked, and Flea had tattoos all over him. The only thing I could think of to say was, `My mother likes you.' Ever since then, we hit it off!"
Undeniably, what makes Bennett popular now is what made him popular with the parents of the MTV generation: He can really sing.
"On most rock recordings," says David Kahne, producer of Bennett's album "Steppin' Out," "you punch in vocal overdubs to get a particular spin on a performance. With Tony, his tone is so strong that you get all the dynamics out of his voice."
At 67, the baritone Bennett says, "I have more control than ever over my voice, because I know how to feel more, and because I have wisdom."
Listening to and reading about Luciano Pavarotti, Bennett says, he finally learned how to sing. "It's just a technical thing, but I tried it and it was something I was searching for in my voice. It reminds me of da Vinci, who supposedly said on his deathbed, `It's too bad I'm going to die - I'm just learning how to paint.'
"When you take a song on the road, you do it over and over again, and you finally get so comfortable with it, and that's when it starts getting good, when it just becomes almost subconscious. Your concentration becomes so strong that you don't even think about it, you just do it. It's like Zen."
Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, the son of Italian immigrants in Astoria, Queens, New York, he worked as an art student, a singing waiter and an elevator operator before making it as a performer in Greenwich Village, New York.
Bob Hope saw him perform there and took him under his wing, inventing the stage name "Tony Bennett" and bringing him on nationwide tour. He also received personal tips from Dean Martin, Count Basie and Judy Garland.
Amid the often gloomy music of MTV Bennett is a standout, startling listeners with joy and love for life. He says, "This is really the best age I've ever encountered . . . to have all this enthusiasm thrown at me - I'm having so much fun, because I know just what to do, which is to have a good sense of humor."
Bennett says his heroes are Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington and Pablo Picasso, "artists who lived long and worked up to the day they died."
He's got a friend who's a psychiatrist. "Whenever I tell him I'm a little mixed up, he says, `Just sing.' It's like the song says: look for the silver lining. You'll feel good every day if you look at life like that. . . . I really like my life right now, I happen to love what I do. It's a blessed situation."
And he still loves to sing his signature song.
"I Left My Heart in San Francisco" was almost an accidental find. Bennett's musical director had accepted a pile of music from some struggling songwriters named Cross and Cory. The songs were filed away and forgotten. Two years later, as the music director was looking for a shirt, he saw the song in a drawer. The next stop on their tour was San Francisco, so they decided to try out the song downstairs at the hotel bar. A quiet bartender heard Bennett practicing and remarked, "If you record that, I'll definitely buy it."
It was never No. 1, but settled in and stayed on the charts for 100 weeks, and the song made Bennett a worldwide star.
"It's really made me a world citizen. It's my favorite song."
When he isn't singing, he paints. His paintings and lithographs have one-man showings across the country. He says, "The simple fact is that I like to sing and I like to paint. There's a great similarity in art and music - line, color, form, movement, tension. When I get into the art zone I forget about any pains that I have." He takes out a brush every day and he practices 20 minutes of vocal scales every day.
He told a San Jose news reporter, "I wanna simplify it for you. There's one word, and it should be your bible . . . care."
Hot acts burn out, no matter how they sizzle the stage. Cool acts endure. And Tony Bennett is cool.
"Comeback?" he says, "what comeback? I never went anywhere."