TONY BENNETT: Cold, Cold Heart


The charming Valentine’s Day ‘doodle’ on Google’s splash page.

RELATED: Valentine’s Day 2012 is celebrated with a video-animation Google Doodle that also showcases the tender crooning of Tony Bennett at age 25, sweetly hitting the high notes of “Cold, Cold Heart.” The song was written by country boy Hank Williams, who said on “The Kate Smith Evening Hour” in a 1952 appearance that “Cold, Cold Heart” had “been awful kind to me and the boys,” providing them with “quite a few beans and biscuits.” It was a moneymaker. And it also was kind to Bennett. His version, with an orchestral arrangement by Percy Faith, spent 27 weeks on the U.S. Billboard chart. But Bennett, a self-described “city boy,” had his qualms about singing a country ballad. In an appearance on “Imus in the Morning” in 2006, Bennett recalled saying at the time that it was a great song — “Hank Williams knows how to write songs. But I’m a city boy, and I wouldn’t be able to sing a country song.” Bennett did record “Cold, Cold Heart,” and — as they would say on “American Idol” — he made it his own. MORE

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