Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. Coming up on the show today, we'll talk about the new play The Monsters, with its stars. We'll learn about Brooklyn's indie music scene in the early aughts, and the Heyday of Magic in New York City is on display at a new exhibit at the New York Public Library. Its curator will join us to discuss it as well. That's our plan.

Let's get this started with some live music. This year, the late Tony Bennett would be celebrating his 100th birthday. Bennett's achievement in music, that recognizable swooning singing voice, was something he first discovered as a boy in Queens when he was Anthony Benedetto. Grammy award-winning guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli is a Tony Bennett fan with a personal connection; his dad played with Bennett many times. To honor Tony Bennett's centennial, Pizzarelli has released a new album this week called Dear Mr. Bennett. You can see John perform in town at Birdland Jazz Club tonight through Saturday, March 7th. In the meantime, he's right here across from me in the studio. It's nice to see you.

John Pizzarelli: It's good to see you. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I am doing well, thank you very much. Let's start with a song. What are we going to hear first?

John Pizzarelli: The first song. This is Watch What Happens. It's a song that I heard Tony Bennett open a show with many times, and it's on the record.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen.

[MUSIC - John Pizzarelli: Watch What Happens]

Alison Stewart: That was Grammy-winning guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli. He's here to perform live and discuss his new Tony Bennett tribute album in honor of Bennett's centennial birthday this year. It's called Dear Mr. Bennett. You can see John perform at Birdland tonight through Saturday, March 7th. That's the first song on the record, right?

John Pizzarelli: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Why did you want that to be the first song people would experience?

John Pizzarelli: When I heard him open with it, I was at a function in Toronto that he was performing at, and that was how we opened the program. I thought, "That's a good song," because in all of the songs—there's a lot more ballads—you're always looking for the uptempo numbers. I thought he started the show that way and thought it was a good way to kick off the record. Michel Legrand and Norman Gimbel wrote that song.

Alison Stewart: When was the first time you saw him?

John Pizzarelli: Oh, I saw him at Radio City in 1985 on the Art of Excellence Tour. That was the first time I saw him there. That's right. That was an amazing concert because the orchestra came out of the pit. They rose up after he played with the quartet. It was quite magical. Even in the middle of the show, he turned off the microphone and he sang to 6,000 people without the microphone on.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's amazing.

John Pizzarelli: Yes, that was pretty cool. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: When did you first become aware of who Tony Bennett was, though?

John Pizzarelli: As part of the fabric of what I was doing when I was about 20 years old, when I started playing in restaurants, I worked with a singer named Joe Francis for a while, and we knew all these records: Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Rosie Clooney, Nat Cole, those things. Tony was always on our radar. Also, he just had those amazing records and from the radio, really, here in New York, New York radio constantly played all those and made a festival of-- It was a big deal when Tony Bennett made a record with Bill Evans or something like that. He was always on my radar for that reason.

Alison Stewart: I made a reference to it in the intro. Tell us how he was involved with your family.

John Pizzarelli: My father was a constant fixture in the New York studio scene. There was a studio on 30th Street between 2nd and 3rd, called Columbia 30th Street, where they made Miles Davis records, Dave Brubeck records, and a lot of Tony Bennett records. My father knew him from that. Then Tony was a ubiquitous New York figure. When I first played The Oak Room in 1991, in January of '91, Tony Bennett showed up and sat in front of me and sketched my picture, just like you see on the cover of the record. He was just that kind of guy. You find him around. It was sort of amazing. He was just around.

Alison Stewart: He was well known as an artist as well, especially later in his career. I think on the cover of your album, it kind of shows.

John Pizzarelli: Yes. He would sit and write on a napkin if he had one. Then he brought a book with him, and actually, last year they auctioned off a lot of his sketches. He even sketched some friends of mine. One was a gentleman named Tony Monti, and I was able to get that sketch.

Alison Stewart: [gasps]

John Pizzarelli: He was quite good at what he did. Yes.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's extraordinary.

John Pizzarelli: Yes.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. When he was sketching you, were you aware that he was sketching you on a napkin?

John Pizzarelli: Actually, I wasn't. He had his head in his hand, and I thought, "Oh, he's hating this." It wasn't until afterwards that he would hand you the sketch. It was funny then, at that point. "Oh, you were so sketching." So that was great.

Alison Stewart: Yes. People know him as a great singer. People know him as a great artist. What is something that someone might not know about Tony Bennett?

John Pizzarelli: I think we've covered it, honestly. He was just a genuine New York figure. He was a great singer and just an amazing interpreter, from orchestra work to his jazz work with Bill Evans, George Barnes, and Ruby Braff, just great, and a really superior interpreter of song.

Alison Stewart: Are you ready to play another one for us?

John Pizzarelli: Certainly, as we say.

Alison Stewart: Haha. This is John Pizzarelli. What are you going to play?

John Pizzarelli: I'm going to play one of his first hits, which was called Because of You.

[MUSIC - John Pizzarelli: Because of You]

Alison Stewart: That was John Pizzarelli. He's here to perform live and discuss his new Tony Bennett tribute album, Dear Mr. Bennett. You can see John perform tonight at Birdland through Saturday, March 7. What do you think about how Tony Bennett approached a ballad?

John Pizzarelli: It's sort of amazing. A specific example would be if you get the record that he made with Bill Evans of a song called You Must Believe in Spring, which has a very beautiful winding lyric by Alan & Marilyn Bergman. There's a conversational quality to the way he connects that wild lyric to the melody. I use it as sort of a masterclass of how just here's the melody, here's the lyric, and look how simply he presents it. He doesn't have to do anything with it but sing the melody and understand the lyric. There's something about even the work with Bill Evans that he so understands what he's singing and how to be intimate with it, too.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because I seem to remember in the '90s there was a resurgence of Tony Bennett.

John Pizzarelli: Yes.

Alison Stewart: I can remember when I was at MTV, I got to do a story with him. I got a dress from a vintage store. We went out dancing is what we did.

John Pizzarelli: [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: It was amazing. And he appeared with all these different artists. He did an MTV Unplugged, I believe.

John Pizzarelli: Yes, he was.

Alison Stewart: I wanted your thoughts on why you think he appeared to the youngsters at that time.

John Pizzarelli: I think because he was so genuine. He was a genuine person. I don't think he really cared about where his surroundings were. He knew that the material he was going to present was top-notch, and he could do that to anybody.

Alison Stewart: Yes. You chose 12 songs for this album. How did you go about it?

John Pizzarelli: That's a good question. As I said last night at Birdland, I said, "Well, there's only 60 years' worth of material, so it's easy."

Alison Stewart: That's it, that's all.

John Pizzarelli: When I got the box, it was 40 years, so there was still another 20 years that you're talking about the MTV through all those Grammy Award-winning records. I tried to find things that were slightly unusual and then still do Because of You and San Francisco and things like that.

Alison Stewart: As you were thinking about the songs and adapting the songs, what was your process for adapting Tony Bennett's work?

John Pizzarelli: Well, I actually looked at it also from the sense of the '50s with Because of You, Rags to Riches, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams. They were hits in the '50s, they were hits in the '60s. Then there was the work with Bill Evans and throughout there. It was about trying to find an arc of all those songs and then put them in the jazz voice of our trio with Isaiah Thompson on piano and Mike Karn on Bass.

Alison Stewart: Tony Bennett was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto-

John Pizzarelli: Yes, he was.

Alison Stewart: -in Queens. You've mentioned him being a New York figure. What did he capture about New York?

John Pizzarelli: The idea that, I feel like New Yorkers, they just respected Tony Bennett walking down the street. People always say, "I was walking down the street and--" I think the idea about New Yorkers to get to a grander vision of it is New Yorkers are so much nicer than people realize. Tony was, "Hey, how you doing?" "Hey, Boom." In a bodega, walking down or doing whatever. People will give you directions in New York. It's not a tough city. It's a beautiful place, and Tony embodied that.

Alison Stewart: I think we're going to try to slip in four songs. What's our next one we're going to hear?

John Pizzarelli: This is a song called Firefly, which I believe is on the unplugged record, too. It's a Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh song.

[MUSIC - John Pizzarelli: Firefly]

Alison Stewart: My guest is Grammy-winning guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli. He's here to perform live and discuss his new Tony Bennett tribute album in honor of Bennett's centennial birthday. It's called Dear Mr. Bennett. You can see John perform at Birdland tonight through Saturday, March 7th. As someone who's listening to this album or thinks they know Tony Bennett's work, what else would you tell them to listen to? What other songs would you tell them to listen to?

John Pizzarelli: I think the idea of who the songwriters were, he was a big fan of Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh. He found material that he introduced, like Firefly was a song that he introduced, and Because of You. He had a singular repertoire, like Sinatra, like Nat Cole, and that's what's interesting about it. I tried to find a few of those songs that were like that.

Alison Stewart: If you could pick a 13th song to put on the record, what would you have put?

John Pizzarelli: Well, that's a very good question. There was a song called Moments Like This that I really like, that's a Burton Lane song. Irving Berlin's I Used to Be Color Blind from an album called Life Is Beautiful. My dad was on that record playing rhythm guitar with the orchestra. I always loved that record.

Alison Stewart: Tony Bennett would have been 100 this year. What else do you have planned for his centennial?

John Pizzarelli: Well, we'll be back at Birdland in August, and we'll have an extra five tracks that we recorded for the record. It'll be a P.S., Mr. Bennett in August.

Alison Stewart: Ah, love that. Okay, you've been at Birdland, you said last night, and you're there until Saturday. What do you think about when you're performing his songs?

John Pizzarelli: Oh, it's a very personal adventure, what the songs have to say. Also, there's something about the audience really sitting on the edge of their seats and listening to the music. I find that fascinating. There's really a reaction to this music, that it's a little more personal, I think, for people than some of the other things I've done. I'm quite moved by it.

Alison Stewart: I said we could get a fourth song. Do you think so?

John Pizzarelli: Yes. This is Waltz for Debby. My daughter's getting married in August.

Alison Stewart: Aw, fabulous.

John Pizzarelli: It's one of those personal songs.

Alison Stewart: Mazel tov, by the way.

[laughter]

John Pizzarelli: Thank you very much.

[MUSIC - John Pizzarelli: Waltz for Debby]

Alison Stewart: My guest has been John Pizzarelli. His new Tony Bennett tribute album is called Dear Mr. Bennett, in honor of Bennett's centennial birthday this year. You can see John perform at Birdland tonight through Saturday, March 7th. Thank you for being here.

John Pizzarelli: It's always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.