Bill on Tony - "I just hear music."

 "He's a late “arriver" - somebody who digs away and develops and develops and develops and then they bust through.

Tony Bennett is somebody I appreciate that way. I couldn't understand his thing, really, when I was young. I thought his vibrato was bad, his voice was thin, and yet Tony is the kind of person who loves and respects music on a very deep spiritual level. He just has gotten more inside himself, and more inside his art all the time, until finally he has the ability to transport the listener that's unmatched. I think it's a great art, in that type of singing, to take a straight song and sing it relatively straight and somehow put more meaning into it and be able to grab the listener and transport them. When I listen to Tony I don't hear words, I don't hear a vocalist - I just hear music. That's why I really love his singing. I find it is a much harder journey for the later “arrivers" but what they have at the end of it is something much richer."

- Bill Evans as told to Ted O'Reilly, July, 1980