The Good Life: The Autobiography Of Tony Bennett

Product Description

The renowned recording artist shares a half-century of personal memories, from his childhood in Depression-era Queens, to the New York jazz scene of the 1940s, to his successes with a new generation of fans in the 1990s

From Publishers Weekly

With Frank Sinatra at eternal rest and Mel Torme felled by a 1996 stroke, Bennett has assumed the mantle of America’s greatest crooner. This memoir tracks the singer’s life from his birth in 1926 in Astoria, Queens, as Antonio Dominick Benedetto, through adolescent dalliances with music and art, an overseas stint in the Army and a series of stateside breaks that established him as a jazzy, technically masterful interpreter of popular standards. There are delightful bits of trivia, such as that Bennett, during his late-1980s comeback, became the first animated real-life character on The Simpsons. There’s philosophy of a mild sort as Bennett lets off some steam about America’s failure to deliver on its birthright of equality; he also laments that race, religion and sexual orientation divide people of like minds. Most of all, there are names, swarms of them. Bennett’s list of influences, collaborators, acquaintances, employees and friends reads like a phone book of 20th-century celebrity. For all its star power, the book is ultimately undermined by a shortage of musical insight. Bennett only hints at his well-known animosity toward the rock music that derailed his career in the late ’60s and early ’70s. And while he is forthright about his demons, particularly two failed marriages and a nasty cocaine habit that almost ended in an overdose, this confessional strain is overpowered by a seeming preoccupation with portraying himself and his loved ones as fair-minded and affable. Bennett’s book would have been better if he had left a little bit less of his heart in San Francisco and put a little bit more into this effort.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Bennett follows up a remarkable singing career with this biography. Look for the A&E “Live by Request” performance and a 50th-anniversary prime-time TV special.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Based on a short perusal, it appears Mr. Bennett brought his heart to this little number.
Bonnie Smothers

Review

Frank Sinatra Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. —
Review

About the Author

Tony Bennett lives in New York City. A book of his paintings,
Tony Bennett: What My Heart Has Seen, was published in 1996.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One
My paternal grandfather, Giovanni Benedetto, who died before my father was born, grew up in the small, isolated village of Podargoni in Calabria, Italy.
Because the Benedetto family originally came from the north of Italy, they were fair-skinned and fair-haired, like northern Europeans, and quite unlike their fellow dark-haired, dark-skinned Calabrese. My father’s mother, Maria, was so fair that she was known as “La Germanesa,” the German woman. The Benedettos were essentially poor farmers, producing olive oil, figs, and wine grapes. My mother’s side of the family was named Suraci, and they also made their living farming in Calabria. Like everyone else in the region, they were unable to read and write.
My paternal grandmother and my maternal grandmother were sisters. Maria Suraci married Giovanni Benedetto, and they became my father’s parents, and Vincenza Suraci married Antonio Suraci (who by coincidence had the same last name), and they became my mother’s parents.
My father, Giovanni (John) Benedetto, was born in 1895. The youngest of five children, he was named after my grandfather. When my grandmother was pregnant with my father, she dreamt that her late husband came to her from the “other side” and told her to name the boy “Giovanni,” after him.
Italians at that time were very superstitious. My father was very sickly as a child, and although they