[Dixielandjazz] Pianist Ralph Sharon, . pianist for Tony Bennett, dies at 91-- Washington Post 4/6/2015

[Norman Vickers]

To:  Musicians and Jazzfans; DJML


From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola


 


Ralph Sharon, Tony Bennett’s longtime accompanist, has died at 91.  This from Boston Globe, reprinted from Washington Post 4-6-2015.   Bassist Steve Gilmore now of Panama City, FL alerted me to this.  Steve would occasionally substitute for Bennett’s regular bassist.  I look forward to hearing some “inside” stories from Steve.  Steve is saxophonist Phil Woods’ longtime bassist.


Thanks, Steve. 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 <http://www.bostonglobe.com/> The Boston Globe


 <http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries> Obituaries


 <http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/specials/tsarnaev> COVERAGE


Ralph Sharon at 91; longtime accompanist to Tony Bennett


By Matt SchudelWASHINGTON POST  APRIL 06, 2015

WASHINGTON — Ralph Sharon, a British-born jazz pianist who spent four decades as Tony Bennett’s accompanist and who discovered the singer’s signature tune, ‘‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco,’’ died March 31 at his home in Boulder, Colo. He was 91.

His son, Bo Sharon, confirmed the death, but the cause was not determined. He said his father last performed three months ago.

After beginning his musical career in London, Mr. Sharon came to the United States in 1953 and worked with top musicians, including clarinetist Tony Scott and singers Chris Connor and Johnny Hartman. He had never heard of Bennett until the singer called him for an audition in 1957.

‘‘He sang a few things and I played a few things,’’ Mr. Sharon said in a 2009 interview with the Boulder Daily Camera. ‘‘I thought, ‘This guy sounds pretty good.’ At the end, he said, ‘How’d you like to come with me?’ I said, ‘Come with you where?’ He said, ‘Everywhere.’ ”

Mr. Sharon was Bennett’s pianist during the singer’s heyday in the 1960s and helped guide his musical comeback in the 1990s, when Bennett found unexpected popularity with a new generation of fans. The singer and pianist toured the world together, and Mr. Sharon was the musical director for all of the 10 Grammy Awards that Bennett won between 1962 and 2002.

For years, Mr. Sharon was an unobtrusive onstage presence, hunched over the piano as he provided the buoyant grace behind Bennett’s singing.

‘‘No one understands me more than he does, and we’ve become as close as brothers,’’ Bennett wrote in ‘‘The Good Life,’’ his 1998 autobiography. ‘‘Ralph is my idea of the perfect accompanist.’’

Early in their collaboration, Mr. Sharon steered Bennett away from the pop music he had been singing and more toward jazz and standards. In 1957, he coordinated what remains one of Bennett’s most daring and original albums, ‘‘The Beat of My Heart,’’ which featured drummers Art Blakey, Jo Jones, and Chico Hamilton, and other jazz musicians.

‘‘He loved jazz, loved to listen to it,’’ Mr. Sharon told the Chicago Tribune in 1992. ‘‘So, if I may say so, I was like the missing ingredient for him. I could bring out the jazz element that already was there in the background.’’

In 1961, they recorded one of Bennett’s most intimate albums, ‘‘Tony Sings for Two,’’ in which the singer’s voice is accompanied only by Mr. Sharon’s lithe, swinging piano. Later that year, he introduced Bennett to ‘‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco,’’ a then-unknown song written by George Cory and Douglass Cross.

Bennett’s first public performance of the tune came at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel weeks before he recorded it in January 1962. It won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.

In the late 1960s, Mr. Sharon moved from New York to Los Angeles and worked behind singers Rosemary Clooney, Nancy Wilson, and Robert Goulet. He reunited with Bennett in 1979, when the singer began to launch his comeback.

Mr. Sharon was the pianist and principal arranger on many of Bennett’s later hit records, including ‘‘Perfectly Frank’’ (1992), which earned Bennett his first Grammy Award in 30 years, and ‘‘Steppin’ Out’’ (1993), which won another Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal.

He retired as Bennett’s musical director in 2002 and settled in Colorado, where he worked in jazz clubs and hotel lounges.

Besides his son, he leaves his wife of 41 years, Linda Noone Sharon, and two grandsons.

During his years with Bennett, Mr. Sharon selected many of the singer’s songs, and the two worked out the arrangements at the piano. Each of them knew the music and lyrics to thousands of tunes, but none could match the unexpected success of ‘‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco.’’

In a 1988 interview with British jazz writer Les Tomkins, Mr. Sharon recalled that the songwriters, Cory and Cross, gave him the sheet music in about 1960, but ‘‘I put it away in a drawer and forgot all about it.’’

When he and Bennett were about to embark on a nationwide tour in 1961, Mr. Sharon said, ‘‘I was looking through a drawer for some shirts; I pulled this sheet out, and it said: ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco.’ So I thought, ‘Well, we’re going to San Francisco — I’ll just put this in my case.’ ’’

He showed the song to Bennett one afternoon at a hotel bar in Hot Springs, Ark. After they played it once, the bartender said, ‘‘If you guys record that song, I’ll buy the first copy.’’

Over the years, as the song grew in popularity, audiences began to demand it every time Bennett took the stage.

‘‘It’s Tony’s signature tune now,’’ Mr. Sharon said. ‘‘Yet it was a complete accident — if I hadn’t looked for that shirt in that drawer, it would never have happened.’’