Zitat des Tages von Tony Bennett:
I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.
Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America.
I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs.
To work is to feel alive.
The United States created the best popular songs that were ever written, and from the 1920s to the 1940s, it was a renaissance period. It stopped in 1950.
I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.
When you get older, you don't have to eat a lot. I get my rest and sleep very well at night. It keeps me very balanced.
As a young boy, I did a lot of foolish things. I made a lot of mistakes. And you live and learn.
My whole life has been singing and painting. I just do those two things.
I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.
In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.
I'll never retire.
More than anybody else I'd like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform.
I want to try to prove that at 100, I could sing as well as I was singing when I was 45 or 43.
I take care of myself. I work out three times a week. I have a trainer, and we just work out for an hour.
I don't sing operatically, and I sing very intimately, but I still do the scales, and I think in terms of intonation and making sure that I'm hitting the notes right on the head... and having it appear quite effortless.
The high point for me in my career was when Sinatra called me his favourite performer in the Fifties. And I've been sold out ever since.
The young people look great on television. They're youthful and have a lot of zip and energy, but when you see them live, they can only do about 20 minutes because they haven't got the training to hold an audience for an hour and a half or so.
I get up, and boy, I can't wait to paint and study music and keep learning. I just love it.
Lady Gaga is the Picasso of the entertainment world. She's very intelligent.
The singers who are the most honest are the ones who become immortalized.
Every show is different. The public has always been nice to me. I'm fortunate that way.
Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me.
I've been so fortunate because I never really had ups and downs as far as my career. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I've been sold out all over the world.
If music sounds dated, it means it wasn't very good in the first place.
Gaga is a gorgeous singer, and when she sings a great ballad, I get goose bumps.
It's a great thing that the United States has given the rest of the world - no other country has given such great popular music to the Far East and Europe. When I play those great countries, a lot of times, the audience starts singing the songs with me. They know them. They love them.
I loved Art Tatum! And, through him, and other different jazz musicians, I actually found my technique.
Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19.
I still get a little nervous before performing. You don't want to forget a lyric; you don't want to make a mistake. I still get butterflies. You can try to judge an audience, but you can only really judge things by the applause.
Fame comes and goes. Longevity is the thing to aim for.
I loved my mom so much because she had to work on a penny just to put food on the table... During the Depression in the United States, everybody had a tough time. And I was so hurt because she was crying that she didn't have any food for us for Thanksgiving.
