The third in Michael Henderson’s series on 12 great popular songs is I Walk A Little Faster, by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, performed by Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett hit the jackpot in his twenties, with Rags to Riches and Boulevard of Broken Dreams. In his final years he became a roving ambassador for the American Songbook, trotting out to accept tribute from singers 50 years his junior.
There was something forced about his singing on those all too resistible albums of duets designed for the MTV generation. He was performing the role of favoured uncle and lapsed into the tiresome habit of chuckling at the end of certain lines, as though recalling an amusing story from childhood.
When he took the stage at Glastonbury, that parade ground of nincompoops, it felt more like a punishment than an endorsement. As Woody Allen told Dianne Wiest in Hannah and her Sisters, after they had heard Bobby Short play at Café Carlyle, “you don’t deserve Cole Porter”.
In between those career peaks were years in the valleys. They followed his best-known recording, which proved to be as much a curse as a blessing. I Left My Heart in San Francisco is only a second division song, however winningly Bennett sang it. But sing it he had to, night after night, so that punters would not go home grumbling.
The Seventies was a decade of wrong turnings, undermined by an expensive cocaine habit. Even so, he recorded two outstanding long-players with Bill Evans, the master pianist. Their performances of But Beautiful, My Foolish Heart and A Child is Born are particularly fine.
Accompanied by his long-time associate Ralph Sharon at the piano he rediscovered his self-respect in the Eighties, and enjoyed that glowing autumn. Sharon didn’t make Bennett, but he wouldn’t have been the same performer without him. One of his party tricks in those late years was to turn off the mic and sing Fly Me To The Moon, though it would have sounded better had he been amplified.
Bennett was brought up in Astoria, in Queen’s, the largest borough of New York, and I Walk A Little Faster carries the imprint of that city. Cy Coleman, the melodist, and Carolyn Leigh, who supplied the words, were raised in the Bronx, so, given Bennett’s involvement, it’s a classic slice of the fabled songbook: two Jews and an Italian combining to great effect in the city that welcomed all-comers to the land of the free.
Coleman went on to write Sweet Charity in 1966 with Dorothy Fields. That show gave us Big Spender, If My Friends Could See Me Now, and The Rhythm of Life, performed to the power of 10 by Sammy Davis in the 1969 film. He also enjoyed a fruitful partnership with Leigh, with whom he wrote Witchcraft and The Best Is Yet To Come. Frank Sinatra made sure the world would never forget those songs.
The pair composed I Walk A Little Faster in 1959, and it was performed originally by Blossom Dearie. Bennett, recording it five years later, launches the song with an unaccompanied preface, like a tuneful tour guide:
‘Up Madison, down Park,
Every day, and often after dark…’
Just to remind us we’re in Manhattan. At a guess, somewhere in the Sixties, near those cafes where ‘the ladies who lunch’ drain vodka stingers.
‘Pretending that we’ll meet
Each time I turn a corner,
I walk a little faster’.
Now that’s a fine way to start a song! Leigh gives us a sense of mystery, romance and motion, and Bennett rises to the challenge of holding Coleman’s twisting melody. After a repeat of the title line in the second verse, with a shift of key on ‘walk’, we’re into the body of the song.
‘Can’t begin to see my future shine as yet.
No sign as yet, you’re mine as yet.
Rushing toward a face I can’t define as yet,
Keep bumping into walls,
Taking lots of falls’.
Every T in ‘yet’ Bennett pronounces with the clarity of Professor Higgins instructing Eliza Dolittle. It’s formal, and it’s effective. Somehow this precision enhances the sense of anticipation, which is of course part of the pleasure. Or is that pain?
The piano part, taken by Sharon, could only have been composed by an authentic jazzer, which Coleman was. There is a misty clarinet in there, too, which helps to create a dream-like mood. A daydream that a walker might well have, moving through the gears on a Manhattan street, distracted by the sights and sounds of a great city humming with life.
We never meet the intended, nor even know that she is there. Maybe she’s lurking on Lexington instead! We’re left with Bennett, heart pounding, pulse racing, pausing for two whole beats after ‘and thinking you’ll be there’ before completing the song with its declarative title.
This is mid-summer Bennett. He was 38 when he recorded it, and his voice had the sweetness and amplitude of youth, allied to an expertise gleaned from 20 years in the business. The deep burgundy tones came later, and they were lovely, too. But Bennett was close to his best on that September day in 1964.
Note the date. That was the year The Beatles conquered America, and changed popular music beyond recognition. The Billboard charts were chock-full of British acts. The Animals, Manfred Mann, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman’s Hermits and (this takes some believing) the Dave Clark Five were all on the prowl, as well as the Fab Four.
Bennett, in his blue cardigan, already looked old-fashioned. The beat groups had barged into the room without let or hindrance, and they weren’t too bothered about who they upset.
To everything, though, there is a season, as The Byrds sang the following year. Bennett eventually returned in glory, and left this world wreathed in honours. He enjoyed his biggest triumphs towards the end of a long life, surrounded by people who realised the Songbook they had considered an obstacle to be cleared was in fact an incomparable gift. But he never sang better than he did on that day in September 1964.
Tony Bennett: I Walk A Little Faster; by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh.
Hendo’s Dozen, so far:
Fred Astaire: I’m Old Fashioned; Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer.
Lena Horne: It Could Happen To You; Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke.
Tony Bennett: I Walk A Little Faster; by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh.