An exercise in intense cross-promotion with Target, this latest in a series of Tony Bennett "duets" albums pairs him with eighteen of the music world's leading lights, including vocalists from the worlds of pop, rock, jazz, and country. One stage in the massive celebration of Bennett's 80th birthday that began on August 6, 2006, this CD seeks to further cement Bennett's rep as the last of the great living postwar pop and jazz crooners.
About this CD
- Recording: pring 2006, Capitol Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Bennett Studios, Englewood, NJ; Abbey Road Studios, London, England
- Release date: September 26, 2006
- Label: Columbia
- Catalog number: 80979
- Produced by Phil Ramone
- Arranged by Jorge Calandrelli
- Engineered and mixed by Dae Bennett
- Musicians: Lee Musiker (piano), Gary Sargent (guitar), Paul Langosch (bass), Harold Jones (drums)
- Executive Producer: Danny Bennett
Pros
- Tony's still in great voice, even eighty years on.
- This latest duets album lets Tony work with some new talent for the first (and maybe last) time.
Cons
- The song selection is so obvious so as to be nearly superfluous.
- There's an overabundance of slow "saloon" numbers, even for a Bennett album.
- Many of the duet partners are either mismatched for this kind of music or overly associated with it, leading to few surprises.
- There are already a handful of better, recent Bennett duet albums out there.
My review
In another time -- say, the early Sixties, when Tony Bennett stopped being merely a popular singer and started becoming a national treasure -- Duets: An American Classic would have begun life as a star-studded television special on a major network and then become vinyl. As it is, many of these eighteen guest vocalists may appear on his upcoming TV special (November 21, 2006, NBC), but even if they do, such constructs often make for better celeb-watching than actual music. And so it is with this album.Even for a jazz-pop crooner like Bennett, he's revisited these warhorses too often: "Smile," "Cold Cold Heart," "I Left My Heart In San Francisco." His partners don't create a new context, either: the singers who work have already proven themselves in this context before (McCartney, Sting, Billy Joel) and those who don't flounder badly (Elton, James Taylor). Ironically, the largely-ancient setlist means that this CD reveals more about, say, Stevie Wonder (who retools "For Once In My Life" impressively) or the Dixie Chicks (who prove themselves swingers on "Lullaby of Broadway") than it does about the master himself. And, frankly, no one should be upstaged at his own birthday party.
