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It is Perry Como's great gift that he can sing just about anything. Whether performing the turn-of-the-century songs, for which he has shown a considerable fondness, or the most current popular music, Como always seems at home and at ease. His legendary relaxation ? the result, really, of not only professional skill and assurance but the painstaking care he takes in the preparation of a song ? is always in evidence.
Gene Lees - 1968
Perry is particularly fond of the old songs himself. "There?s something about the old songs that has an exceptional appeal," he says. "With an old tune, you not only have a melody that has remained fresh and attractive through the years, but there comes with it that indefinable something, nostalgia. For example, when I made a recording of If You Were the Only Girl, which was originally written in 1911, it was an entirely different musical experience from recording a brand new song. I made my first professional singing appearance with that ditty. Somehow I made the grade, but I?ll never forget those first few months when I faced that hard-boiled dance crowd. Now every time I sing Only Girl, I get an added kick with those memories. Maybe to lots of youngsters it?s a brand new tune, but I?m sure it holds a pocketful of dreams for others of the slightly older generation. That?s the way with most revivals. And that?s why I like so much to sing an old favorite."
Perry Como (May 18, 1912 - May 12, 2001) was one of America's most popular crooners during the last half the the 20th century. Following in the footsteps of the legendary Bing Crosby, Perry began his recorting career in 1936 with Ted Weems' Orchestra, and a novelty tune titled "You Can't Pull the Wool Over My Eyes", recorded for the Decca Records label. His exclusive recording contract with RCA Victor in 1943 began an association that would last for almost 50 years without parallel by any other recording artist of the era.
Pierino Ronald Como was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. Although he always like to sing, his first great ambition was to be the best darned barber in all Canonsburg. After graduation from high school, he opened his own tonsorial establishment that featured the special Como haircuts plus some mighty pleasing Como singing in the background. In 1933 Perry joined Freddy Carlone?s band in Ohio and three years later moved up to Ted Weems? Orchestra and his first record dates. In 1942 Weems dissolved his band and Perry went on to CBS where he sang for a couple of years without any conspicuous success. By this time the erstwhile barber had definitely decided to return to Canonsburg, his family and his barbering. Just as Perry was about to abandon his singing career once and for all, Fate in the person of two NBC producers felicitously stepped in and wheedled him back into show business ? specifically for the NBC "Supper Club," followed by very successful theatre and night club engagements.
Came 1945 and Como?s practically perfect reading of the Buddy Kaye-Ted Mossman pop ballad, ?Till the End of Time (based of course on Chopin?s "Polonaise"), and the rest is not only recording but also TV history: Perry is the only artist who has ever had "ten" records to go over the magic million-copies mark (including, incidentally, ?Till the End of Time, Prisoner of Love, Because, When You Were Sweet Sixteen and Temptation ? all in this album) and, although he is "just a singer," as he puts it, his television show has achieved a much higher rating than that of any other vocalist so far. Can any other barber equal that record? !
By the 1980s the atmosphere of recording had changed dramatically from the early days Perry had remembered and throughout his long association with the RCA Victor Records label. Perry's recording sessions had always been filled with laughter and joy, as evidenced by his performances, but in later years he likened the recordings sessions to that of recording in a morgue which was more the fault of the times than anyone in specific. Perry walked away from the label in the early 1980s but he returned to record his own album with his trusted friend and associate Nick Perito in 1987. His recording of The Wind Beneath My Wings was almost autobiographical and a fitting end to a long and successful recording career. Perry would record only once more in 1994, but privately, for his well-known Irish Christmas Concert. Had this been for RCA Victor (then BMG), he would have been with the label for a solid 50 years.
He had numerous Christmas television specials, beginning Christmas Eve, 1948, and continuing to 1994 when his final Christmas Special was recorded in Ireland. His regular television show, at first a spin-off from the Chesterfield Supper Club. It continued through the early 1950s, becoming The Perry Como Show and then for five years as The Perry Como Kraft Music Hall, where he became the highest paid performer in the history of television to that date, earning mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. Prior to this Perry battled Jackie Gleason in what was billed The Battle of the Giants and won. This is rarely mentioned due to the fact that Perry commonly diminished his own achievements. He recorded many long-play albums of songs for the RCA Victor Records label between 1952 an 1987, and is credited with numerous Gold records. Perry had so many recordings achieving Gold Record status that he refused to have many of them certified. It was this characteristic which made him so different from his peers and endeared him to legions of fans throughout the whole world. Throughout the decades, Como is reported to have sold millions of records but these figures were commonly suppressed by Perry himself.
Not long ago a hardened Broadway talent agent said, "If I was the State Department, what would I do? I?d take this Perry Como guy and send him to every country in the world ? as a sort of an Abe Lincoln of American pop singers. Twenty years ago, what was he doing? He was cutting hair ? fifteen bucks a week! And now ? one million, count ?em, American dollars per year! A success that Horatio Alger could not have even dreamed of! The most popular singer in the world whose records have sold more copies than those of anyone else ? the staggering total of 400,000,000 discs! Plus the highest rating ever achieved by any vocal artist in the history of TV! Plus an ideal marriage with a lovely wife and three kids. Plus the fact that everybody, from the president of the company down to the page who ushers his fans around, calls him ?Perry.? Is that is, I am asking you, or is that not American democracy at it?s best?"
And it would be hard to find anyone who would not agree with that evaluation, for the relaxed Mr. C. is not only the Number One interpreter of popular music but is also probably the nicest and unaffected guy in the entire vicious welter of show business.
When you consider its scope, the field of American popular music does have a surprisingly large number of very different interpreters. Amid all the trends of the times there stands out the honeyed baritone of Perry Como singing away hit after hit as eloquently, as beautifully and as effectively at any time as he was doing in 1946 ? indeed, perhaps even more so.
His secret? Perhaps more than anything else it is his unique, and typical, relaxed presentation of songs. Other singers take vocal lessons and spend a great deal of time practicing. Perry, on the other hand, merely saunters into the studio, opens his mouth and there you have one best-selling record after the next, as smooth and rich, as mellow and effortless as the most fastidious aficionado could desire.
In January, 1994, Perry Como traveled to Dublin, Ireland, for what would become an auspicious moment within his long career of more than 60 years. The year 1993 would have marked his 50th anniversary with the RCA Victor Records label, now owned and controlled by Bertelsmann and operated under the "BMG" logo, as well as his 45th year of television specials celebrating Christmas and its importance throughout the world to people of all faiths. Perry's very first Christmas television special was broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1948, a founding moment within the new medium and the beginning of one of television's most successful and enduring traditions. Within ten years of that first show, his contract with Kraft Foods for what became "The Perry Como Kraft Music Hall" entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest ever signed in the history of the new medium. His television specials would continue for the next thirty years, changing only from weekly to bi-monthly, then monthly followed by seasonal specials celebrating Easter, Spring, Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities, ending in 1987, from all parts of the world including England, Rome, Austria, France and many locations throughout North America. Perry's Christmas Concert in Ireland would be his final special and the last of his commercial recordings albeit not for his original label RCA Victor.
For those who have admired Perry throughout his long career, his final concert in Ireland is bittersweet. It's difficult for anyone to watch this touching performance and not be emotional, easily understood by anyone who has experienced the aging of a beloved father and grandfather. Added to all of this, Perry had difficulty with his performance, not feeling well and even losing his voice at one point throughout the long taping which began at 8pm Dublin time and ran well beyond midnight. His reputation of being unflappable and dealing with the normal adversities of 'live' performance, during the earliest years of his television career, served him well during what would have been a traumatic experience for an otherwise uninitiated performer. But Perry's class shines through the evening like a beacon as he completes his performance to the overwhelming applause and general understanding of everyone concerned. It's not uncommon to hear of people who were moved to tears as Perry turns the evening into a triumph. The professionalism of the Choirs and all who participated with Perry is simply remarkable but absolutely nothing could be as wonderful to observe as the energy and dynamism of Perry's longtime conductor, arranger and colleague Nick Perito. Mr. Perito handles the baton with aplomb and the true extent of his many talents is clearly evident.
Perry's Irish Christmas was produced for the American PBS public television system and was re-broadcast annually for many years beginning in 1994 continuing to this day. The performance is commonly available on VHS Hi-Fi Stereo format recordings, in addition to compact disc, audio cassette, a special CD-ROM Windows version, and in 2003 an unofficial DVD Audio has been pirated and sold with regularity. The program has yet to be transferred legitimately to high resolution DVD but this will no doubt happen in due course.
This final television special will be cherished by all who value the life-long contributions of this very special man.
For millions of people throughout the world Perry Como was the personification of integrity. He once said, I now have the things money can buy, whereas the things money can't buy, I've always had! Perry was his own person from beginning to end and achieved recognition beyond his wildest imagination but he did this strictly on his own terms. He neither courted the media nor used it and this respect was mutual as the media treated his passing with the privacy he so richly deserved. As Bing Crosby said, Perry Como invented casual with his laid back style and silky baritone voice. He may have been casual in appearance but his high standards, personally and professionally, were second to none.
Perry died May 12, 2001 at his residence in Jupiter, Florida, six days before his 89th birthday.
When music-business conversation turns to the subject of the great singers of popular music, certain names invariably come up: Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Billie Holiday. Perry Como is rarely mentioned; and this puzzles me.
Not that Mr. Como has lacked for success. Few singers in the history of popular music have reached the pinnacle he has. The public loves him. Even the profession loves him. In my ten years in the music business, first as a critic and then as a songwriter, I have never heard a word spoken against this man. In a business shot through with jealousy, gossip, intrigue and animosities, both petty and major, this is remarkable.
Despite his immense popularity, Como is rarely given credit for what, once you stop and think of it, he so clearly is: one of the great singers and one of the great artists of our time. Perhaps the reason people rarely talk about his formidable attributes as a singer is that he makes so little fuss about them. That celebrated ease of his has been too little understood. Ease in any art is the result of mastery over the details of the craft. You get them together to the point where you can forget about how you do things and concentrate on what you are doing. Como got them together so completely that the muscles don?t even show. It seems effortless, but a good deal of effort has gone into making it seem so. Como is known to be meticulous about rehearsal of the material for an album. He tries things out in different keys, gives the song thought, makes suggestions, tries it again, and again, until he is satisfied. The hidden work makes him look like Mr. Casual, and too many people are taken in by it ? but happily so.
I have of necessity given a good deal of thought and study to the art of singing, and Como?s work consistently astonishes me. He is a fantastic technician. Listen in this album to the perfection of his intonation, the beauty of the sound he produces, the constant comfortable breath control. And take notice of his high notes. Layman are often impressed by the high note you can hear for five blocks. Professionals know that it is far more difficult to hit a high note quietly. Como lights on a C or D at the top of a tune as softly as a bird on a branch, not even shaking it.
And then there?s his phrasing. A number of our best singers phrase well. The usual technique is to rethink the lyrics of a song to see how they would come out if you were saying them, and then approximate in singing the normal speech inflections and rhythms. This often involves altering the melody, but it is a legitimate practice and when done well can be quite striking. But Como is beyond that. He apparently does not find it necessary to change the melodic line in order to infuse a song with emotion. A great jazz trumpeter once told me, "After fifteen years of playing, I?ve come to the conclusion that the hardest thing to do is to play melody, play it straight and get feeling into it." Como has been doing this from the beginning.
Stylistically, he comes out of the Bing Crosby-Russ Colombo school. That was all a long time ago. Como has been his own man for many years now. He sounds like nobody else. And nobody sounds like him, either. He is hard to imitate precisely because his work is so free of tricks and gimmicks. There are no mannerisms for another singer to pick up from him. All one can do is try to sing as well and as honestly as Como, and any singer who does that will end up sounding like himself, not Como.
I don?t say these things out of friendship or loyalty. I don?t even know Perry Como. As a matter of fact, he?s probably the only singer in the business I don?t know. I saw him once, though. It was evening, and he was standing with a couple of friends or business associates on Sixth Avenue in front of Rockefeller Center laughing at something, his hair grayer than I had expected it would be, his face deeply tanned, a strikingly handsome man with a smile that lit up the street. I wanted to rush up and say something about how much I dug his work. But that would have been uncool. Right? And besides, think how many times he?s heard it all before. The stoplight turned green and Perry Como crossed the street in that wintry sunset, and that was that.
So I don?t know him from the proverbial hole in the ground.
I just listen to him.
Appreciatively.
Very appreciatively.
Gene Lees
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