CD review: Tony Bennett - Five Classic Albums

Avid Jazz has a reputation for releasing/reissuing top quality, often historic, recordings. Invariably, the Watford based label will release a two-disc CD comprising three, if not four, albums complete with original liner notes. A recent addition to the catalogue is a bumper package - Tony Bennett Five Classic Albums. Presented in chronological order, the recordings, made over a five year period (1954-1959), illustrate Bennett's career-long ability to position himself as a singer of popular song and to work with A-list jazz musicians as a supreme interpreter of the Great American Songbook. 

All five albums were recorded in Bennett's home town, New York City. From the Sammy Fain-Jule Styne classic I Fall in Love Too Easily on the Cloud 7 album recorded in August 1954, through to Hammerstein II and Kern's Ol' Man River on Tony Bennett In Person! recorded with the Count Basie Orchestra three days before Christmas in 1958, it is evident Bennett elected to sing nothing but timeless numbers. It could be said, with the benefit of hindsight, that the nonagenarian knew what he was doing! Three of the albums feature Bennett's long-time pianist/arranger, British born Ralph Sharon. All of the many musicians heard on the recordings are household names, ranging from tenor saxophonist Al Cohn, featured on two tracks on Cloud 7, to guitarists Al Caiola and Barry Galbraith on Tony Bennett - Hometown, My Town from 1958, and, of course, the star-studded Basie band. It should be noted Basie himself features on two tracks only (1959's Count Basie Swings-Tony Bennett Sings) with Ralph Sharon assuming the role of bandleader on the two Basie band albums. Five albums, no fewer than fifty one tracks, at a budget price, Tony Bennett Five Classic Albums (Avid Jazz AMSC1391) is an offer you can't refuse.

The five albums - Cloud 7; The Beat of My Heart; Hometown, My Hometown; Count Basie Swings, Tony Bennett Sings and In Person - present a who's who of the 50s' jazz scene. Too many names to list, here's just a few of them who were on the sessions...Al Cohn, Chuck Wayne, Ed Shaughnessy on Cloud 7; Ralph Sharon, Kai Winding, Eddie Costa, Bobby Jaspar, Chico Hamilton and Art Blakey on The Beat of My Heart; Urbie Green, Milt Hinton and Don Lamond on Hometown, My Hometown; the Basie boys Marshall Royal, Frank Wess, Thad Jones, Snooky Young, Joe Newman, Al Grey, Freddie Green, Eddie Jones and Sonny Payne on Count Basie Swings, Tony Bennett Sings; the Basie boys again, including Frank Foster, Wendell Culley, Henry Coker, Benny Powell and the ever-present rhythm section on Tony Bennett - In Person!.  

Russell