(audience cheering and applauding)
That was great.
Thank you.
It's a real pleasure to meet you.
Well, it's a pleasure to meet you.
I feel like I know you because
I really enjoy your show so much.
Oh, thank you very much.
I love you and everything that's going on,
especially that band here.
You've got...
Yeah we have a great band. This is real music.
So nice, we have a great band.
(audience cheering and applauding)
I am blessed, I'm a blessed man.
You really are, it's very good.
It's a nice warm set, I love it.
Yeah I know, we're having a good time.
Good.
And you're having a good time yourself actually,
lately you've had an incredible rising popularity
and you're being played on alternative radio stations.
I know.
You've been on MTV.
What's going on?
(laughs)
I'd like to know it's a new vein, but I'm not knocking it.
It's fantastic, all the young adults
in America consider me cool.
(audience cheering and applauding)
That's great.
Now do you see them, when you do concerts now?
(audience cheering)
Thank you very much.
When you do concerts now, do they show up?
It's really unbelievable that because, when this happened
the first time and I was like the Madonna
and the Michael Jackson of my day.(chuckles)
(crowd laughs)
But it was also new to me, I was very nervous.
But now the second time around just being a troopy
and traveling so many years, doing it 45 years.
To have this happen with the young adults is fantastic.
'Cause I really know what to leave out now
and what to put in and, I'm having more fun with it.
We're doing all these Rock Christmas Shows
all over the country in Washington
and San Francisco and Los Angeles and Dallas.
Have you been changing what you're doing
or you're just doing the same thing
and they're coming to you.
No, I'd been un-plugged for years.
(laughter)
I go straight ahead with my great trio.
Ralph Sharon's been with me 25 years now.
And we just play acoustical and it works for some reason.
There's a change happening with the young people
that start and accept all kinds of music now.
That's great. It is.
And, I was gonna ask something, you did an album
I guess a few years ago where you recorded
all of Frank Sinatra's music.
Yes, we won the Grammy
for that Perfectly Frank, it's called.
(audience cheering and applauding)
That's very good.
What's your relationship with Frank Sinatra?
Do you think that you disappointed that he's not recorded
an album of your music or do you think that's...?
(audience laughs)
Well he did.
He did?
Yeah, he did when he recorded with...
I was the first guy to sing with Count Basie's Band,
and the first vocalist, white vocalist.
So, then he did an album with Basie
at The Sands Hotel years ago,
with Quincy Jones being the producer,
and he did most of the songs
that were very current at the time.
And there was the "Good Life" and "I wanna Be Around"
and "For Once in My Life", all these different songs
that I introduced originally.
So he did many of my songs.
And what's your relationship with the...
Right here in Median city.
You're the two big crooners from that era?
Well yeah, he's 10 years my elder but he...
When I was a really young kid,
I went to him for advice at the Paramount Theater
when he was there with Tommy Dorsey
and he gave me some great advice that I've have stuck to
and insisted on and it's really helped me survive.
'Cause he said, "Just stay with great songs."
Many years later just as recent as last year, I said,
"Why do you think we've been around so long?"
He said, "'Cause we stayed with great songs."
That's terrific,
I was really hoping it was advice I could use.
(all laughing)
But I don't sing.
You don't need advice.
What do you have is a great sense of humor
and a good brain, you see and that pays off in the long run.
The cream goes to the top, believe me.
Oh, that's nice of you to say.
I've got this incredible pompadour.
I think that's what it is.
(laughing) So am I.