Boasting two superb Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this black print Stereo 360 pressing
Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience (maybe too much ambience), dead on correct tonality, and wonderfully breathy vocals – everything that we listen for in a great record is here
Huge amounts of three-dimensional space and ambience, along with boatloads of Tubey Magic – here’s a 30th Street recording from 1962 that demonstrates just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
The title track became a gold-selling Top Ten hit that stayed on the charts for almost three years (!) and earned Bennett two Grammy Awards (Record of the Year and Best Solo Vocal Performance)
To hear the real Tony Bennett, play “Once Upon a Time” – it’s here and nobody sings it better
5 stars: “…Bennett had been searching for a … musical approach beyond his long-gone pop work…. With this album, [he] found the key, not only by happening across a signature song in the title track, but also in the approach to songs like ‘Once Upon a Time’…and Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s ‘The Best Is Yet to Come,’ which Bennett helped make a standard.”
