Tony Bennett - The Movie Song Album (1966) [2014 Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

The Movie Song Album is a studio album by Tony Bennett. The album consists of songs from films, opening with the theme from The Oscar, in which Bennett had recently appeared. With this project of such high quality of song material and collaborators, he was to describe the album in his autobiography as his "all time favorite record".

Johnny Mandel was the musical director, and he and Neal Hefti and Quincy Jones arranged and conducted their own compositions on the album. Luiz Bonfá played the guitar on his two songs, "Samba de Orfeu" and "The Gentle Rain". The pianists Tommy Flanagan, Jimmy Rowles and Lou Levy all collaborated, each on one song.

Bennett's recording of "The Shadow of Your Smile" won Mandel and Paul Francis Webster the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards of 1966, and Bennett performed the song at the 38th Academy Awards, where it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

By the mid-1960s, retreating from the rock & roll onslaught, that old-time staple of the pre-rock days, the big romantic ballad, had been relegated to Hollywood, where it turned up in the opening and closing credits of movies. Like other classic pop singers, Tony Bennett had sought it out there, and with this album, coincident with his first (and last) acting role in The Oscar, he devoted himself exclusively to movie themes, everything from "The Trolley Song" (Meet Me In St. Louis) to "Days Of Wine And Roses." Some of the tunes were not first-rate, but in "The Shadow Of Your Smile" and "The Second Time Around" (previously recorded by Frank Sinatra), Bennett found material worthy of him, and even when he was faced with minor material, be sang movingly. Reviewed by William Ruhlmann of allmusic.com

Track Listing:

01. Song from 'The Oscar'(Maybe September)
02. Girl Talk
03. The Gentle Rain
04. Emily
05. The Pawnbroker
06. Samba De Orfeo
07. The Shadow of Your Smile (Love Theme from "The Sandpiper")
08. Smile
09. The Second Time Around
10. Days of Wine and Roses
11. Never Too Late
12. The Trolley Song


Album Released: January 31, 1966


Performance Personnel:

Tony Bennett - vocals
Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mandel, David Rose - arranger, conductor
Larry Wilcox, Al Cohn - arranger
Tommy Flanagan, Lou Levy, Jimmy Rowles - piano
Luiz Bonfá - guitar
Zoot Sims - tenor sax (on track 12)