On April 19th, Grammy Award winner Tony Bennett will release ‘The Ultimate American Songbook’ on Sony Music to celebrate his 60th anniversary as a recording artist and as one of the most enduring and prolific performers in the world today.
The 21 track album is a personal collection of many of his all-time favourites from some of America’s greatest songwriters, composers, Broadway musicals and film soundtracks and has taken him over a decade to select and compile.
‘The Ultimate American Songbook’ album will also include a unique feature, Ultimate Access Pass, which will allow fans via their computer to access a world of extras which will be continually updated. Features include 7 additional free downloads personally selected by the artist, including ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco’ and ‘The Good Life’, photos, behind-the-scenes footage, making-of videos, special offers and unique prizes.
As part of the 60th anniversary, the album is released in conjunction with a major BBC Radio 2 Tony Bennett series entitled ‘Tony Bennett Presents The Great American Songbook’, presented by long-time friend Sir Michael Parkinson, with the first programme airing at 10pm on April 6th and a series of high profile UK live performances, which will begin at The Royal Albert Hall on June 30th.
‘The Ultimate American Songbook’ has been a long-term passion for Tony and it has taken him many years to choose each individual track from the thousands of his recorded masters since the 1950s. It was a daunting task for a performer who has made over 105 albums in an illustrious career that began on April 17th 1950 with his recording of ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’. The album is a showcase for some the greatest writers/composers of all time, including Cole Porter, Ray Nobel, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Jerome Kern, Vernon Duke, Richard Rogers, Irving Berlin and the great teams of George/Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer and Gush Kahn/ Ishram Jones and provides a musical atlas of songs and releases spanning from the 1930s – 1990s.
The album opens with Cole Porter‘s ‘Begin The Begine’ (from Tony’s Greatest Broadway Hits Album) with further Porter signature songs ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’ (from Long Ago.. and Far Away) and ‘Anything Goes’ (Live at Carnegie Hall) also featuring. The teams of Duke Ellington and lyricist Bob Russell make it on to Tony’s all-time favourites with ‘Don’t Get Around Anymore’ (Tony Bennett Makes It Happen), along with Brazil’s Antonio Carlos Jobim and Canadian lyricist Gene Lees with ‘Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars’ (‘I Wanna Be Around’), and the Gershwin’ classics, ‘Our Love Is Here To Stay’ (Live at Carnegie Hall) and ‘A Foggy Day’ (from the Grammy Award winning album ‘Perfectly Frank’).
The Broadway musicals of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are recalled with ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ from Pal Joey (Tony Sings For Two) with other golden era Broadway musicals providing Tony with songs including ‘Anything Goes’, ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ from Hot Chocolate (When Lights are Low) and ‘Taking A Chance On Love’ from Cabin In The Sky (In Person).
Seven of the songs trace their roots to a broad variety of American Films including: ‘Smile’ from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times of 1936; Irving Berlin’s ‘Steppin’ Out With My Baby’ from Judy Garland’s Easter Parade; ‘The Lady’s In Love With You’ from Some Like It Hot; ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ from Swing Time (later used in My Best Friend’s Wedding), ‘That Old Black Magic from Star Spangled Rhythm, ‘Foggy Day’ from A Damsel in Distress, ‘It Had To Be You’ from Show Business and ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ from Shall We Dance.
The renaissance of interest in great popular jazz and Broadway composers of the last century and the influx of contemporary artists who now champion that material has played a large part in the enduring success and appeal of Tony Bennett over the years, which was underlined further by the success of the multi-platinum selling ‘Duets’, which gave him his biggest-selling album of his career at the tender age of 80. This continuing collaboration with artists across all generations and genres is showcased on the album with the duet ‘Moonglow’ with k.d. Lang, with whom he forged a strong friendship, taken from the 1994 album ‘MTV Unplugged’.
Now entering into his 84th year, Tony Bennett is the world’s only major living recording artist to have released charting albums in every decade for the past 60 years, with ‘The Ultimate American Songbook’ being the first album release of the 7th decade. With a career performing with so many of the world’s greatest and most influential artists and composers that continues to this day, Tony Bennett is truly a living legend in the world of music.
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