Tony Bennett Talks Amy Winehouse On ‘The Daily Show’: “She Was In Trouble”

Robbie Daw | September 30, 2011 9:05 am

This week Tony Bennett’s Duets II became his first #1 album on the Top 200 chart in his 60-year career. To keep the momentum going, the New York crooner hit up Jon Stewart’s politically-charged talk show The Daily Show last night. Ironically, Bennett’s recent controversial comments about 9/11 didn’t come up in conversation at all. Instead, the pair talked about the late Amy Winehouse, who Tony called “the only singer that sang what I call ‘the right way’.” Bennett was very candid when discussing Winehouse, who he recorded “Body And Soul” with at London’s Abbey Road Studios for Duets II.

“She was in trouble at that time because she had a couple of engagements that she didn’t keep up,” the 85-year-old singer said on the Daily Show. “But what people didn’t realize at that time was she really knew — in fact, I didn’t know when we were making the record, now looking at the whole thing — she knew she was in a lot of trouble, that she wasn’t going to live. And it wasn’t drugs. It was alcohol towards the end.”

As Tony continued, he praised Winehouse, who he says was a bit reluctant to do the recording.

“It’s such a sad thing… since Elvis Presley and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the whole contemporary change that came in, she was the only singer that sang what I call ‘the right way’,” Bennett said. “She was a great jazz-pop singer. She was a little apprehensive about the whole thing when we were doing the record.”

Luckily Bennett gave her the inspiration to mimic the vocal delivery and phrasing of Dinah Washington, one of Amy’s idols.

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