A story about Tony Bennett
I met him several years ago during the Christmas holidays while working in a record store in San Antonio. One of the managers had gotten a phone call from someone who said they were Tony Bennett’s manager and that he would be stopping by that evening to do some shopping. We all thought it was a joke because he was on tour and was schedule to perform in town the following month.
About 2 hours later I was standing in the DJ booth at the center of the store and looked up just as he walked in the front door. I looked around the store to see if any of the other employees or customers had noticed him. He walked up to the first row of CDs (where we had Jazz) and started looking. I waited a couple of minutes and walked over, said hello and offered my help. He said hello and shook my hand but said he was fine on his own.
I went back to the DJ booth and waited a couple of minutes before I went over to the manager who took the phone call.
I walked over to her and very quietly told her that Tony was in the building to which she very loudly responded “where?”. I told her to quiet down because he was only standing about 10 ft from where we were. When she realized it was him she got so excited because her dad loved him and she hadn’t bought his Christmas present yet. She raced over, grabbed his latest CD, tore open the package and ran over to get his autograph. She shaking with excitment.
Our store had a walled in classical section and when I noticed Tony was looking there as well, I again approached him and let him know that he could make all of his purchases at the register there since it was usually quiet and there probably wouldn’t be a line. I went over to the employee who was working in that section (a 20 y/o music composition major) and told him that Tony was in the store. He asked, “who is he?”. I thought it was ironic that someone who majored in music (I had myself) had no idea who Tony Bennett was but he was just a kid so after I figured out he didn’t even know “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”, I told him to ask his parents.
