Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com
You probably know that Bill Evans and Tony Bennett recorded their second duet album, Together Again (Improv), in September 1976 for release in 1977. What you don't know is that soon after they finished, Tony and Evans went into a studio and were videotaped performing nine songs from the new album and from their first duet album in 1975 for Fantasy. Songs captured in the video include The Bad and the Beautiful (solo by Evans) Lucky to be Me, My Foolish Heart, When in Rome, Some Other Time, A Child is Born, Make Someone Happy, We'll Be Together Again and a reprise of The Bad and the Beautiful.
The program was produced and directed by Bernard Picard, a Canadian, and was likely taped in Montreal. Tony's team says it was aired once by the Canadian Broadcast Corp. in May 1977. (As a side note, Tony and pianist Bill Charlap won a Grammy last night for their 2015 album, The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern.)
Improv has an interesting history. Tony partnered with Buffalo-based businessman Bill Hassett in 1975, and Improv released 10 albums in all. According to Tony in his 2007 memoir The Good Life, written by Will Friedwald, "The idea began to gel around 1972 when I met Bill Hassett, a successful realtor in Buffalo who owned the Statler Hilton Hotel there. We thought that between his business acumen and my musical know-how, we ought to be able to get something going. It turned out that it took a lot more than that, but I wouldn't find that out until a couple of years and a couple of hundred thousand dollars later. We named our company Tobill Enterprises and I called our label Improv."
Here's 30 minutes of Bill Evans and Tony Bennett on-camera in late 1976 or early 1977...
A special thanks to Jan Stevens.
Used with permission by Marc Myers
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