LEGENDARY singer Tony Bennett announced his retirement this week – were you one of the lucky ones to have seen him in concert in Glasgow?
On hearing the news, Times Past HQ was reminded of a great story about a Glasgow waitress who was once serenaded by Bennett.
Wilma Watson was the larger-than-life singing hostess at The Cabin restaurant in Whiteinch, famous for belting out Doris Day numbers.
She became a TV star in the 1990s on the BBC Scotland show Hoots Las Vegas, and was flown out to the US to meet a host of celebrities, including Bennett and Engelbert Humperdink.
It was the highlight of her life, she once told our sister newspaper, The Herald. She was taken to Nevada to meet the stars, was serenaded by Tony Bennett, got chummy with Engelbert Humperdink and chatted to Debbie Reynolds.
“Bennett is a real superstar,” she said at the time. “Such a gentleman, yet he is ordinary, such a lovely wee man.”
She sang on US TV and radio and a sign was put up in cascading lights outside her hotel: “Wilma Watson, Welcome to Las Vegas.” Sadly, Wilma died in 2003, aged 64.
Bennett performed in Glasgow many times, the most recent when he was in his late 80s.
The Herald noted: “Over the course of a non-stop 75-minute performance, he positively romped through a programme of no fewer than 26 songs, without pausing for anything more than the briefest chat and acknowledgement of the massive outpouring of affection for him from the packed Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
“The longer he was onstage, and the more he sang, the more animated he became - and it seemed that the enthusiastic response from the audience was fuelling his staggeringly lively performance.
“Bennett, who is now 88 and set to return to the Concert Hall in early September, is not so much driven by the need for applause as he is by the desire to entertain, and by his own enormous pleasure in singing. ‘I love doing it,’ he says, ‘and I like to try to make people feel good.”
Bennet’s career stretches back over an incredible six decades, from when he started as a youngster growing up in New York, to his championing of the Great American Songbook, to his reinvention in the 1980s performing on MTV and duetting with Lady Gaga and the like.
“My father adored opera and had a reputation himself as a singer,” he once told The Herald in an interview.
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“I was told that he would sing on the top of a mountain in Calabria and the whole valley would hear him. This inspired my older brother and myself - and we both became singers. My brother was very successful - at age 14 he was hired by the Metropolitan Opera House. So he was called Little Caruso. Of course I became a bit envious so I just became interested in jazz and started improvising.”
Bennett has always been happiest, he says, singing jazz with his quartet.
“I like working that way,” he said. “I don’t want to be the biggest. I’d rather be one of the best.”
Did you see Tony in Glasgow? Get in touch to share your memories and photos.
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