Finally, music news from my era of popular music: pre-1960. I actually know who Tony Bennett is, unlike my usual reaction when there is big famous American musician news, “who is that again?”
Tony Bennett! Isn’t it interesting how people can go from outsiders to mainstream to revered and all it takes is time? When Tony Bennett was born, Italian Americans were considered “immigrants” in American society, outsiders, miss-trusted. He came of age just as Italian Americans were beginning to be “cool”, the sort of mainstream-outsiders. A large part of this was The Arts. As always, it’s easier to break into the mainstream through entertainment and arts and then crawl from there into professions, business, government, etc. The Italian American community in the 1940s and 50s were at the leading edge of popular music, tons of young lower class Italian American males learned how to sing in kitchens and on street corners, formed a somewhat unique crooning/swinging sound, and that sound took America by storm. Tony Bennet started out having to Americanize his last name so he sounded less “Italian”. By the 1960s, it would have been an advantage to have an Italian name because they were considered the best singers.
And then the late 60s and 70s came and all of a sudden Italian American crooning was “old-fashioned” and Tony Bennett was boring and stupid, and Italian Americans were no longer outsiders in American society but part of the homogenized “normal” while suddenly Asians and Hispanics became more visibly “other”. Tony Bennett faded away to nostalgia shows in small venues.
But if you just wait long enough, it all comes around again! In the 2000s, suddenly croony music became “classic” instead of “out of date”. And Tony Bennett was the only one still working and alive to enjoy it!
This is the same pattern in EVERYTHING. I reassure myself whenever someone says something I like is dumb and old and so on, in a few decades it will be Classic. For example, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. I had a good few years of everyone generally loving it, and then everyone hated it and said it was dumb and old and not as good, but I think we might FINALLY be coming back around to it being classic. Ditto, SRK. He has just barely made it into “oh familiar Classic Revered SRK” territory from the dark forest of “ew, he’s, like, what old people like. We are too smart for that now.”
Two final Tony Bennett thoughts. First, “Stranger in Paradise” is a super over the top fun song:
Second, his third wife’s mother took a fan photo with him when he was 40 and she was pregnant with his future wife. That’s weird, right? That a photo exists of your husband, a full grown man, looking at your fetus?
