Happy 94th birthday to Tony Bennett!
Here’s a great performance of a Duke Ellington song you may not know… from Tony’s “Bennett Sings Ellington: Hot & Cool,” which has occupied a nearly permanent slot on my car cd player since I bought it for a dollar!
Not everyone knows that Tony fought in WW2 and has been a pacifist ever since, which to me is a rare and brave (and correct) position for a member of the so-called Greatest Generation…
“The first time I saw a dead German, that’s when I became a pacifist….
“Anybody who thinks that war is romantic obviously hasn’t gone through one…. Actually the war comedies like M*A*S*H and Catch-22 are probably a more accurate depiction of war than the ‘guts and glory’ films, because they show how pathetic the whole enterprise is…Every war is insane, no matter where it is or what it’s about. Fighting is the lowest form of human behavior…No human being should have to go to war, especially an eighteen-year-old boy.”