Icon: Tony Bennett
By Will Friedwald
More than any other cultural icon, living or otherwise, Tony Bennett is the embodiment of two major musical traditions. On one hand, he's an exuberant pop singer and an old-fashioned entertainer out of the tradition of Judy Garland and Jimmy Durante; at the same time, Bennett is also a jazz musician, deeply influenced by Louis Armstrong, a colleague of Bill Evans. A native of Astoria, New York, Bennett may have started… more »