At 92, Tony Bennett still has what it takes to be a great entertainer.
Tony Bennett’s struggles as a rising artist happened so long ago it can be difficult to remember that period clearly. He possessed a golden voice, but failed to hit upon a sound that resonated with listeners. He fell prey to the indulgences of youth, snorted, popped and smoked his way through a fog spanning several years, a dalliance and dance with self-destruction. Bennett was rudderless and ruined without knowing where to go, which was remarkable because he also was 63 years old.
Two years before retirement age for most, Bennett began anew, and became an artist struggling to be heard … again. And he was young, too, in a way. Because Tony Bennett’s rebirth and second act has now run nearly 30 years.
He’s now a performer without much precedent and with maybe only a peer or two: A singer whose golden era spanned about 15 years, whose path along the bottom ran longer than that, and whose inspiring renaissance finds him 92 years old and performing Thursday at the Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land.
Willie Nelson turned 85 a few months ago, and while he’s had a few shows get nixed, he remains on the road where he’s like a fish that must keep swimming.
Ravi Shankar kept plucking the sitar into his 90s, and Les Paul did likewise with his guitar. Pete Seeger clenched and thrummed his banjo until age 94.
But singing is a different thing.
While hands slow down and can be ravaged by arthritis, voices can weather more quickly. Without naming names, I’ve seen singers from the ’60s and ’70s who were musical princes turned into guttural bullfrogs.
Bennett doesn’t sound like he did as a rising singer in the 1950s. He still covered the contours of a lyric with precision, even when his voice aged into something with a beautiful grainier quality. The problem is by the 1970s nobody wanted to hear that voice.
If Frank Sinatra coexisted tenuously with rock ‘n roll for a few years, Bennett struggled more to find a place where he was comfortable with a coo coo ca choo.
Now Sinatra was 11 years older than Bennett. But they took different paths around the same time. Sinatra wheezed to the finish line, recording some popular if uninspired duets albums with various other singers. Bennett doubled down on the vitality of the songs he started singing in the ’50s. Perhaps they seemed quaint in the ’60s and ’70s. By the synthleaning ’80s they were practically roots music.
He made an MTV Unplugged record, though he didn’t require unplugging. Bennett’s backing was a traditional trio: piano, bass, drums.
Bennett was nearly 70 when he made the “MTV Unplugged” record. And while his voice possessed the grain of years lived hard, it always found the note. And he knew the songs — “Old Devil Moon,” “Rags to Riches,” “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” — like back roads he’d driven for years.
In an industry that placed a premium on youth, and an always regenerating pool of music, lyric and voice, Bennett became a rising artist again in the ’90s.
And here we are more than two decades later. He’s 92 and still possesses a powerful instrument and remains in rare company.
Not just as a great singer, or even a great singer in his 90s. But a guy who recorded 13 Top 40 hits between 1956 and 1965 before fading from sight. And then coming back and becoming better-known than he was before. All by standing by his instrument and his deep knowledge of what makes a great song better.