'I've always followed Sinatra's advice. I tried to find composers who write in the tradition of Jerome Kern -- good craftsmen of song. There aren't too many. I think it's a marriage of music and lyrics to get a popular classic It's just there. I love interpreting songs. I get a great kick out of it. It's like painting -- it's not what you put in it's what you leave out. 'There's so many aspects to singing you never really learn the whole thing. That's the joy of it. 'Frank Sinatra pays himself and me a wonderful compliment when he says we are the only two saloon singers left in the world. When he talks about saloon singers he's talking about entertainers who came from humble beginnings. We both came from the streets ( in Bennett's case the Astoria area of Queens , New York ) like Al Jolson. I was a singing waiter so I know about singing in saloons. This kind of background trains you to deal with the unexpected, the unpredictable. It's not like singing correctly in front of a captive audience at Carnegie Hall. When people go to saloons they're not just going to see a performance -- they go to dance, eat dinner, prepare to make love. 'There are all kind of things happening besides the show -- the clinking of dishes, some drops a tray, the hecklers. A saloon is like a school of improvisation. No matter how much your act is set, you have to roll with the punches and still come out making the show work,' says one of the finest popular singers of this century. And if he keeps being rediscovered by oncoming generations maybe a little of the next. 'It goes with the advice Sinatra gave me:"Always do the unexpected." Each song is a different style of popular singing. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes there's a little dirt in it, most of the time it's sweet. 'But I'm not a middle-of-the-road act. I don't even like the phrase. Middle-of-the-road means your weak. People like Sinatra, Nat Cole, Peggy Lee, Count Basie and Joe Williams, we spearheaded popular music. Every single one of us had hit records. We sold in the millions and companies were always in the black. No label ever overshipped anything and it was all very healthy.' But there was a little illness in 1979 when the demographics people at Columbia Records tried to force different styles of songs on him. after 88 albums in 21 years. He followed the 'don't do cheap songs advice' and split up with the company. He found himself supplying earwash for the Las Vegas crowds twice-a-night, eighteen weeks a year. His sons changed that:' They swooped in and said:"Hey, Dad, you're an apple -- why change an apple?" They had heard me saying I like to give concerts. Before I knew it I was just giving concerts. 'Danny is of an age (40) that he knows what's happening on the contemporary scene. So, I was the first one that they did on "The Simpsons". And then I was on all these rock stations and the 'phones were lighting up.
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