Tony Rihan

Anthony Lawrence Carey (born October 16, 1953, Watsonville, California) is an American-born, European-based musician, composer, producer, and singer/songwriter. One of his earliest musical experiences was in a band called Blessings, in which he played until 1975 when Ritchie Blackmore hired him as keyboardist for Rainbow…

Iremember clearly the day I moved into my dorm on the campus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, January 1979. I put on my headphones and listened intently to California Autumn. As the record began, the sound that hammered into my brain that day is one of those musical memories I will never forget. I must have listened 40 times over. Recently I listened again on my new Bose headphones to see if it was as utterly awesome as I remembered. It was.

Tony Bennett has so many adoring celebrity fans it should come as no surprise that when a major duets album is planned, he's able to draw a roster of the biggest recording stars from the rock and vocal worlds, plus a pair of country music wildcards. (This despite the fact that he recorded an album with several duets in 2001, and a full-album collaboration one year later with k.d. lang.) One surprise is how well producer Phil Ramone paired Bennett with both duet partners and fitting standards – among them Barbra Streisand on the optimist's anthem "Smile," Dixie Chicks for the flapper standard "Lullaby of Broadway," Bono on the wickedly spiteful "I Wanna Be Around," Tim McGraw on "Cold, Cold Heart" (the Hank Williams song that was Bennett's biggest country crossover hit), Stevie Wonder on his own "For Once in My Life," Juanes for "The Shadow of Your Smile" (which was a hit first for the Brazilian Astrud Gilberto), and Sting on the torch song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."