Tony Bennett

I'm not staying contemporary for the big record companies, I don't follow the latest fashions. I never sing a song that's badly written.

Tony Bennett (born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, August 3, 1926 – July 21, 2023) was an American popular music, standards and jazz singer.

Quotes

• I've taken stuff from people, too. You know though, if you steal from one person, you're just a thief. But if you steal from everyone, that's research.
  • As quoted in "The new cool cat on the block" by Dino Scatena, in Sydney Morning Herald (16 April 2004)
  • Take-off on an aphorism attributed to Wilson Mizner, in response to Michael Bublé's acknowledgment of having "stolen stuff" from Bennett.

• I'm not staying contemporary for the big record companies, I don't follow the latest fashions. I never sing a song that's badly written. In the 1920s and '30s, there was a renaissance in music that was the equivalent of the artistic Renaissance. Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and others just created the best songs that had ever been written. These are classics, and finally they're not being treated as light entertainment. This is classical music.
  • As quoted in "Tony Bennett says a key to his continued success is being true to the audience" by Tim Clodfelter, in Winston-Salem Journal (5 September 2010)

About Tony Bennett

• A lifelong liberal Democrat, Mr. Bennett participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965, and, along with Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr. and others, performed at the Stars for Freedom rally on the City of St. Jude campus on the outskirts of Montgomery on March 24, the night before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the address that came to be known as the "How Long? Not Long" speech. At the conclusion of the march, Viola Liuzzo, a volunteer from Michigan, drove Mr. Bennett to the airport; she was murdered later that day by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
  • Bruce Weber "Tony Bennett, Jazzy Crooner of the American Songbook, Is Dead at 96" The New York Times (July 21, 2023)