不知道你對Jazz這種音樂是否陌生，但我首次接觸都只是近一兩年的事，全因Tony Bennett的一首cold cold heart。可能聽膩了pop song，使他的jazz更能觸動心靈。
Tony Bennett，原名Anthony Dominick Benedetto，生於1926年，一位意大利裔美國歌手，同時是一位畫家，創立了Frank Sinatra School of the Arts。他曾參與二戰，直到1951，他發表了第一首”Because of You”。直到今天，他86歲了，仍然致力投入音樂藝術，從沒想過退休。他曾經說過：”If you study the masters – Picasso, Jack Benny, Fred Astaire – right up to the day they died, they were performing. If you are creative, you get busier as you get older.”而且，他的音樂風格都沒有改變，多年來沒有因而變得商業化，反而保持著他的信念。2010年的訪問中他表示：”I’m not staying contemporary for the big record companies, I don’t follow the latest fashions. I never sing a song that’s badly written. In the 1920s and ‘30s, there was a renaissance in music that was the equivalent of the artistic Renaissance. Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and others just created the best songs that had ever been written. These are classics, and finally they’re not being treated as light entertainment. This is classical music.”
Tony Bennett & Lady gaga
Jazz音樂起源於非洲，並於19世紀在美國新奧良形成，由藍調和福音歌曲演變而成。藍調是憂鬱的、福音歌曲是祈求平安的，當初Jazz就是來自低下層，來自於當時美國內戰過後的貧窮黑人。即興創作之下，發展出Jazz。
送上Tony Bennett的cold cold heart：
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbg7-kVtPKs
Teach You Something Useless 