Tony Bennett, performing at Caesars, reaching new generation

7482800-1-4

Vegas throat for Tony Bennett? Ha.

“A lot of singers say they don’t like the dryness, (that) it’s bad for their throat. I feel just the opposite. To me, when it’s dry I can sing better,” says the keeper of that classic, cool voice.

“It cuts back all the phlegm or anything like that. You just come out and sing and it’s natural,” he attests. Anyone who thinks otherwise, and clouds their room with humidifiers?

“That’s because they stayed up too late,” he says with a laugh.

Perhaps that’s why Vegas and Bennett have been together since 1960, almost as long at gin and vermouth.

At 86, Bennett is booked Saturday to sing at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. The night falls on one of those covered during his debut stint at the hotel in 1966.

Bennett was just the second act (after Andy Williams) to play the bygone Circus Maximus showroom under what he calls “a lifetime contract” with the hotel.

The singer knew Caesars entertainment director Dave Victorson from his early days in New York, when Bennett and Victorson’s wife both took voice lessons from the same teacher in New York.

One day Victorson announced, “I’ve gotta get out of town. I can’t get a job here.”

Bennett was in the early days of his career, “but I was being backed by some management,” enough to loan Victorson $500 for airfare to Los Angeles and tell him, “Pay me whenever you can.”

In 1966, Victorson called and announced, “You’re gonna go to work for me. I just became the entertainment director for a new place called Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.”

For a few years, Bennett was paired with everyone from band leaders Buddy Rich and Woody Herman to comedian Henny Youngman, ’60s “it girl” Joey Heatherton and Dean Martin’s Golddiggers.

But when Frank Sinatra walked, Bennett followed. Sinatra took an extended break from Caesars in late 1970 after a casino-floor altercation with a hotel executive, Sanford Waterman.

Reports and opinions of the day divide on who was at fault, but all agree on the fact that Waterman pulled a gun on Sinatra to calm him down.

Bennett says that when he heard about the episode, “I got so shook up that the next day I went into Caesars Palace and I said, ‘I want out of my contract.’ ”

They were shocked and asked why. He told them, “If you do that to Sinatra, what are you gonna do to me someday?”

His loyalty to Sinatra was understandable. “He was wonderful to me,” Bennett says. “When he called me his favorite singer and all that in Life magazine … it changed my whole career, because all of his audience came to see me to see what he was talking about. I’ve been booked up ever since.”

Bennett eventually followed Victorson to the Las Vegas Hilton. Caesars had offered to have him back, but without supplemental strings.

“I kind of took a burn on that,” Bennett recalls, so to make a point, he asked Victorson to assemble a 100-piece orchestra for him in 1973.

“They went to Hawaii and everywhere to get enough violins,” he says with a chuckle.

The irony is, “Now I just work with a quartet and I love it. It’s really intimate for the whole audience.

“That’s what happens (with age). You get a lot of wisdom and you learn what to leave out, not what to put in,” he says with a chuckle, “so everything’s really in balance.

“When I was younger I made so many weird moves – like any performer that becomes successful – that in the last 30 years I just decided to be a good boy and take care of myself,” he says. “Good health, good rest, good exercise. I still exercise three times a week.”

Las Vegas also is home to Bennett’s friend and tennis pro, Marty Hennessey. “I just started playing again now,” the singer says. “Last year, I really was stupid enough not to warm up properly and I went for it” and hurt himself. “It took about a year for me to start playing again.”

That year kept him busy anyway. “Duets II” paired him with a gamut of stars, including Amy Winehouse in her final recording. With a combined 6 million sales for the two “Duets” albums, it’s no surprise Oct. 23 brings a third collection, “Viva Duets.”

This one had Bennett traveling the world to sing with Latin pop stars including Marc Antony, Vicente Fernandez, Chayanne and Gloria Estefan.

He says he leaves most of the Spanish to them. “A couple of lines here and there I throw in phonetically.”

As generations continue to celebrate him as a national treasure, Bennett sees no reason to quit now. “We’re sold out all over the world, with great enthusiasm. As long as people are like that, I have no desire to retire,” he says.

“I also paint, so I sing and paint for the rest of my life. I just want to keep studying and learning as much as I can.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at
mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.