![]() ![]() Every time he did it, Bennett seemed as surprised as his audiences were that he could pull it off. After all, there was the great canon of American popular song as purveyed by the likes of Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and so many others who enriched his life and, he was convinced, could improve the lives of all who encountered their words and music.Īs agile a vocalist as he was, Bennett never needed to show off for the sake of proving how good he was not even when, at some points in his live performances, he would ask that the microphones be turned off so he could exercise that rich, rounded voice without amplification. ![]() But Bennett sounded surer than we did that we could make the world better. Such perspective seemed tailor-made for such chestnuts of the 19s, such as “Put On a Happy Face,” “Let There Be Love,” “If I Ruled the World” or “The Good Life.” With just about any other singer, these songs would come off as cloying or chirpy odes to complacency or evasion. Will Friedwald, in his book, “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers,” aptly characterized Bennett as “the Pangloss of Pop,” referring to the character in Voltaire’s mostly acerbic satire “Candide,” who persisted in his belief that we are living in “the best of all possible worlds.” In a post-World War II America, as rife with potential as it was with terror, Bennett embodied, articulated and, often, acted upon the belief that we are capable of being our best selves. ![]() If you think this is an exaggeration, then I’m betting you’re one of the few people in the known world who have never heard or heard of Bennett, who died Friday, at 96, after a long and gallant battle with Alzheimer’s disease, in this half-century plus he has been part of our lives. ![]()
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