The Essential Tony Bennett

Disc 1
1	Because of You
2	Cold, Cold Heart
3	Blue Velvet
4	Rags to Riches
5	Stranger in Paradise
6	Sing You Sinners
7	The Boulevard of Broken Dreams
8	Just in Time
9	It Amazes Me
10	Love Look Away
11	Firefly
12	Put on a Happy Face
13	The Best Is Yet to Come
14	Tender Is the Night
15	Once Upon a Time
16	I Left My Heart in San Francisco
17	I Wanna Be Around
18	For the Good Life
19	This Is All I Ask
20	When Joanna Loved Me
21	The Rules of the Road
Disc 2
1	Who Can I Turn to?
2	If I Ruled the World
3	Fly Me to the Moon
4	The Shadow of Your Smile
5	Smile
6	The Very Thought of You
7	For Once in My Life
8	Yesterday I Heard the Rain
9	My Favorite Things
10	I Do Not Know a Day I Did Not Love You
11	How Do You Keep the Music Playing?
12	When Do the Bells Ring for Me?
13	Night and Day
14	Last Night When We Were Young
15	Steppin' Out With My Baby
16	It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing
17	Mood Indigo
18	New York State of Mind

Barnes & Noble

What an amazing career Tony Bennett has had! From his days as a young crooner to his glory years in the spotlight as Sinatra’s hit-making heir apparent to his amazing comeback in the 1990s, Bennett has always represented the best in American popular singing. The Essential brings together his signature tunes and amends this treasure trove with select tracks from his more recent albums. Bennett could always put his own spin on any kind of material; here we find him spinning vocal gold with everything from Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart,” to Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life” to Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo.” The secret of Bennett’s success quickly becomes clear as we hear him bringing the same kind of quality and conviction to each and every song. The set concludes with Bennett’s rousing duet with k. d. lang, “Keep the Faith Baby,” a sentiment that could stand as Bennett’s motto. He stayed true to the music, and the music ultimately paid him back in full. William Pearl

All Music Guide

Like most entries in Sony/Legacy's Essential series, 2002's The Essential Tony Bennett is an excellent, exhaustive retrospective of a lengthy, hit-filled career at Columbia. Although Bennett spent time at other labels -- particularly in the '70s -- he made his best-known and greatest recordings for Columbia, from the late '50s through the '90s, which is what provides the bulk of the material here. Though this skips through the '70s material, it does provide what amounts to Bennett at his best, whether it's on "Rags to Riches" and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" in the '60s, or on latter-day classics like "Steppin' out with My Baby." Bennett surely recorded more great material than can fit on a two-disc, 40-track collection, but this contains the cream of the crop and it's hard to imagine a collection like this being executed better than this. Stephen Thomas Erlewine