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" Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America. "

Tony Bennett

King

Started

America

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" More than anybody else I'd like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform. "

Tony Bennett

Than

" I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing. "

Tony Bennett

Job

Life

" Singing intimately is almost like thinking into a microphone, so it helps to have the song buried inside you. "

" The young people look great on television. They're youthful and have a lot of zip and energy, but when you see them live, they can only do about 20 minutes because they haven't got the training to hold an audience for an hour and a half or so. "

" I was possessed with a wonderful example of my Italian American family. They would come over and join us every Sunday, all my aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, and I would sing for them. "

Tony Bennett

Sunday

American

" The high point for me in my career was when Sinatra called me his favourite performer in the Fifties. And I've been sold out ever since. "

Tony Bennett

Out

Point

" Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19. "

" As a young boy, I did a lot of foolish things. I made a lot of mistakes. And you live and learn. "

" I'll never retire. "

Tony Bennett

Retire

Never

" I'll call it a day when I die. It's a wonderful occupation for me. I've never worked a day in my life. "

" Sinatra invited me once to his birthday party in L.A. I was young, and I felt great about it. But when I got there, the Rat Pack were all in the kitchen laughing their heads off. "

Tony Bennett

Great

Birthday

" When you hear a great two-track of a performance in Carnegie Hall, let's say, it sounds like you're right there at that moment. It's true to reality. And the closer it gets, once it gets too technical, it becomes very tinny to hear notes. It doesn't sound right. It has to be natural. "

" I don't sing operatically, and I sing very intimately, but I still do the scales, and I think in terms of intonation and making sure that I'm hitting the notes right on the head... and having it appear quite effortless. "

" Singing is a gift. "

Tony Bennett

Gift

Singing

" Lady Gaga is the Picasso of the entertainment world. She's very intelligent. "

" If music sounds dated, it means it wasn't very good in the first place. "

" Nobody has communicated with the public more than Lady Gaga. Ever. I trust the audience, and I'm very impressed. As far as they're concerned, she's part of their family. The only guy who ever did that was Bing Crosby, years ago. "

" The United States created the best popular songs that were ever written, and from the 1920s to the 1940s, it was a renaissance period. It stopped in 1950. "

" It's a great thing that the United States has given the rest of the world - no other country has given such great popular music to the Far East and Europe. When I play those great countries, a lot of times, the audience starts singing the songs with me. They know them. They love them. "

" Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me. "

Tony Bennett

Life

My Life

" I have grown to appreciate the power of believing in myself and of always having faith in myself. I rarely look back; instead, I always look forward. There is so much of life that we miss when we wallow in regret. "

" I've never worked a day in my life. "

" In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him. "

" I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world. "

" I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that's rather silly. "

Tony Bennett

Today

Young

" I'd like to prove that if you take care of yourself, you can actually not regret the fact that you've become an old-timer, but you can just still improve and actually get better. "

" I was taught never to compromise: to never sing a cheap song. I never look down at the audience and think that they are ignorant or think that I'm more intelligent than they are. To think otherwise is totally incorrect and runs contrary to everything I was raised to believe. "

" I study nature, and I realize that no matter how much you learn, you can't top nature. "

" For many years, I've always been attached to what they call the Great American Songbook, and Kern was a great leader of that because he had the classical training of Europe. He impressed all the greatest composers, like Cole Porter and Gershwin. They couldn't believe he was writing the songs he was writing. "

" I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today. "