Tony Bennett – Tony Bennett Celebrates 90 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:10:06 minutes | 837 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RPM Records – Columbia

Released in conjunction with an NBC-TV special, 2016’s effusively delivered concert album Tony Bennett Celebrates 90 finds vocalist Tony Bennett marking his 90th birthday with an all-star concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. A lavish event, the concert showcased Bennett performing a handful of his most famous songs, with the legendary singer joined by a bevy of musical guests including Andrea Bocelli, Michael Bublé, Lady Gaga, k.d. lang, Kevin Spacey, Stevie Wonder, and many others. Generally speaking, the album is front-loaded with the guest performances and largely consists of each artist doing a rendition of a popular standard Bennett performed and/or recorded at one point or another. Oddly, despite all the guest artists on hand and in light of Bennett’s own tradition of doing duet albums, the concert is noticeably bereft of such pairings save for a particularly poignant duet between Bennett and Billy Joel on Joel’s “New York State of Mind.” Instead, we get Bocelli doing “Ave Maria,” lang doing “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” Bublé doing “The Good Life,” and more. We also get Elton John delivering a thematically fitting version of his own classic “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.” Particularly engaging are Lady Gaga’s exuberant renditions of “The Lady Is a Tramp” and “La Vie en Rose.” Given her history as a duet partner with Bennett (much like lang), Gaga displays her growing talent as a traditional pop vocalist and proves to be one of the highlights of the evening. Despite the high caliber of the guest performances, the real focus of the concert is saved for the latter half when Bennett himself takes the stage. Although well past the age that most of his contemporaries retired, Bennett remains a magnetic stage performer with a voice that’s as robust and nuanced as in his prime — and perhaps even more full of character. Every time Bennett sings, he delivers a veritable master class on how to sing a jazz standard, and this performance is no exception. Here, we get a handful of some of his best-known numbers, including “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” “The Best Is Yet to Come,” and more. Ultimately, Tony Bennett Celebrates 90 is a joyful birthday fete to Bennett and a heartfelt tribute to his illustrious career.

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Tony Bennett – The Movie Song Album (1966/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 37:30 minutes | 777 MB | Genre: Jazz, Easy Listening
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

The Movie Song Album is a 1966 studio album by Tony Bennett. The album consists of songs from films, opening with the theme from The Oscar, in which Bennett had recently appeared. With this project of such high quality of song material and collaborators, he was to describe the album in his autobiography as his “all time favorite record”.

Johnny Mandel was the musical director, and he and Neal Hefti and Quincy Jones arranged and conducted their own compositions on the album. Luiz Bonfá played the guitar on his two songs, “Samba de Orfeu” and “The Gentle Rain”. The pianists Tommy Flanagan, Jimmy Rowles and Lou Levy all collaborated, each on one song.

Bennett’s recording of “The Shadow of Your Smile” won Mandel and Paul Francis Webster the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards of 1966, and Bennett performed the song at the 38th Academy Awards, where it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

By the mid-1960s, retreating from the rock & roll onslaught, that old-time staple of the pre-rock days, the big romantic ballad, had been relegated to Hollywood, where it turned up in the opening and closing credits of movies. Like other classic pop singers, Tony Bennett had sought it out there, and with this album, coincident with his first (and last) acting role in The Oscar, he devoted himself exclusively to movie themes, everything from “The Trolley Song” (Meet Me In St. Louis) to “Days Of Wine And Roses.” Some of the tunes were not first-rate, but in “The Shadow Of Your Smile” and “The Second Time Around” (previously recorded by Frank Sinatra), Bennett found material worthy of him, and even when he was faced with minor material, be sang movingly. –William Ruhlmann

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Tony Bennett – Snowfall: The Tony Bennett Christmas Album (1968/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 29:02 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Snowfall: The Tony Bennett Christmas Album is a 1968 studio album by Tony Bennett, his first Christmas album. It was arranged and conducted by Robert Farnon.

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Tony Bennett – I Wanna Be Around (1963/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 30:53 minutes | 698 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy – Columbia

Recorded during his peak era, Tony Bennett’s “I Wanna Be Around” continues the crooner’s upward trajectory as he nestles into a superb batch of heartfelt ballads, softly swinging pop and frisky bossa nova with the kind of charm, control and coolness reserved for a legend. The follow-up to the singer’s breakthrough “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”, this 1963 set is every bit its predecessor’s equal. Read: A bonafide vocal classic.

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Tony Bennett – His Greatest Hits Of The ’50s (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:07 minutes | 822 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

Anthony Dominick Benedetto (born August 3, 1926), known professionally as Tony Bennett, is an American singer of traditional pop standards, big band, show tunes, and jazz. He is also a painter, having created works under his birth name that are on permanent public display in several institutions. He is the founder of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York.

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Tony Bennett with Ralph Sharon And His Orchestra – Tony Bennett At Carnegie Hall: The Complete Concert (1962)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:50:31 minutes | 2,36 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Available in its entirety for the first time! This legendary ’62 performance was an instant classic when it first came out, but now it’s back with 18 tracks (12 on cassette) that have never been released. Includes Rags to Riches; (I Left My Heart in) San Francisco; That Old Black Magic; Fascinating Rhythm; I’m Just a Lucky So and So, and more.

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