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Authors: Phil Ramone
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jazz record, using the musicians and songs that I preferred.”
The standards have always been sacred to Tony; he once told me that his mom, a seamstress who was widowed at a young age, inspired his predilection for singing and recording top-quality songs.
“My mother would become frustrated when she was given an inferior dress to tailor,” he said. “You could see the exasperation on her face as she ripped out the poorly sewn stitches. She would become agitated and mumble, ‘Don’t give me junk; give me a good dress, one that I can work with.’ From the moment I heard my mother say that, it became the principle that guided me.”
Tony’s adherence to that philosophy has served him well. Along with scores of hits, Tony has won accolades for the landmark albums he’s made with Count Basie, Bill Evans, and the Ralph Sharon Trio; he has also won an impressive number of Grammy Awards (eleven in the last fifteen years alone), and has attracted a retinue ofrockers such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the graceful elegance of his music.
The consistently high standards set by the Tony Bennetts of the world are a testament to the importance of being faithful to one’s convictions. As I’ve told many students, the mantra that should guide every songwriter, singer, musician, and producer who cares about what they do is, “Music first.”
With Billy Joel, New York City, 1986
Courtesy of Sam Emerson/Redbox
TRACK 4
The Song
Songs are the nucleus of my world.
While I grew up with the classic American standards written by George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cole Porter, and Johnny Mercer, my career as an engineer and producer coincided with one of the most profound periods in pop music history: that of the contemporary singer-songwriter.
In the late 1950s, the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway was a magnet for young musicians and songwriters. Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Howard Greenfield, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Burt Bacharach, Lieber and Stoller, and two Neils—Sedaka and Diamond—all got their start writing teenage love songs inside tiny cubicles in the famed building.
It was a revolutionary time for contemporary pop music: an extension of the Tin Pan Alley era, and the last major epoch for the American song plugger. Since producers, arrangers, music publishers,agents, and managers also had offices in the Brill Building it was the ultimate place to write, sell, and plan the production of a song from start to finish.
While the standards of the forties were written to advance the plots of stage shows and films, the goal of the Brill Building writers was to write two-and-a-half-minute hit singles destined for radio. Their success was unparalleled.
The upheaval that America saw in the mid to late sixties—the Vietnam War, race riots, civil rights protests, psychedelic drug use, and overt rebellion—offered a springboard for young pied pipers to profess their political, social, and emotional views in song. Bob Dylan and a handful of other assertive singer-songwriter-activists entered the fray and revamped the way that songs were conceived, performed, and heard.
Soon the Brill Building gang realized that singing their own songs was more satisfying—and lucrative—than selling them off, and started performing careers of their own. By the early seventies the singer-songwriter era had hit America full-force, and artists such as Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jim Croce, and Billy Joel were on the threshold of stardom.
Songs are deceptively complex; their structural variations vast. Arranging thirty-two bars of melody and lyrics to coherently express a thought or emotion isn’t easy.
The late Sammy Cahn (Frank Sinatra’s personal lyricist) once said that, “Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy; it can take half an hour, or half a year.” Cahn weathered the storm well. The songs he wrote with composers Jule Styne and Jimmy Van Heusen are among the
The standards have always been sacred to Tony; he once told me that his mom, a seamstress who was widowed at a young age, inspired his predilection for singing and recording top-quality songs.
“My mother would become frustrated when she was given an inferior dress to tailor,” he said. “You could see the exasperation on her face as she ripped out the poorly sewn stitches. She would become agitated and mumble, ‘Don’t give me junk; give me a good dress, one that I can work with.’ From the moment I heard my mother say that, it became the principle that guided me.”
Tony’s adherence to that philosophy has served him well. Along with scores of hits, Tony has won accolades for the landmark albums he’s made with Count Basie, Bill Evans, and the Ralph Sharon Trio; he has also won an impressive number of Grammy Awards (eleven in the last fifteen years alone), and has attracted a retinue ofrockers such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the graceful elegance of his music.
The consistently high standards set by the Tony Bennetts of the world are a testament to the importance of being faithful to one’s convictions. As I’ve told many students, the mantra that should guide every songwriter, singer, musician, and producer who cares about what they do is, “Music first.”
With Billy Joel, New York City, 1986
Courtesy of Sam Emerson/Redbox
TRACK 4
The Song
Songs are the nucleus of my world.
While I grew up with the classic American standards written by George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cole Porter, and Johnny Mercer, my career as an engineer and producer coincided with one of the most profound periods in pop music history: that of the contemporary singer-songwriter.
In the late 1950s, the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway was a magnet for young musicians and songwriters. Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Howard Greenfield, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Burt Bacharach, Lieber and Stoller, and two Neils—Sedaka and Diamond—all got their start writing teenage love songs inside tiny cubicles in the famed building.
It was a revolutionary time for contemporary pop music: an extension of the Tin Pan Alley era, and the last major epoch for the American song plugger. Since producers, arrangers, music publishers,agents, and managers also had offices in the Brill Building it was the ultimate place to write, sell, and plan the production of a song from start to finish.
While the standards of the forties were written to advance the plots of stage shows and films, the goal of the Brill Building writers was to write two-and-a-half-minute hit singles destined for radio. Their success was unparalleled.
The upheaval that America saw in the mid to late sixties—the Vietnam War, race riots, civil rights protests, psychedelic drug use, and overt rebellion—offered a springboard for young pied pipers to profess their political, social, and emotional views in song. Bob Dylan and a handful of other assertive singer-songwriter-activists entered the fray and revamped the way that songs were conceived, performed, and heard.
Soon the Brill Building gang realized that singing their own songs was more satisfying—and lucrative—than selling them off, and started performing careers of their own. By the early seventies the singer-songwriter era had hit America full-force, and artists such as Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jim Croce, and Billy Joel were on the threshold of stardom.
Songs are deceptively complex; their structural variations vast. Arranging thirty-two bars of melody and lyrics to coherently express a thought or emotion isn’t easy.
The late Sammy Cahn (Frank Sinatra’s personal lyricist) once said that, “Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy; it can take half an hour, or half a year.” Cahn weathered the storm well. The songs he wrote with composers Jule Styne and Jimmy Van Heusen are among the
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