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TONY ALLEN
By Owen McNally, The Hartford Courant,
August 17, 2006 - Excerpt
When not singing the praises of his old Front Street neighborhood,
Hartford vocalist Tony DeDominicis Allen is one of New England's finest
interpreters of the Great American Songbook.
Allen, who grew up in Hartford's legendary East Side in the 1930s and
'40s, won much praise in 2003 with his second album, "I Remember Front
Street." With lyrics written by Allen's frequent collaborator, drummer
Joe Ronan, the disc's title tune is a nostalgic remembrance of Front
Street, a colorful, vibrant slice of city life that was demolished in
the 1950s to make way for urban renewal.
 Besides
his jazzy, upbeat homage to Front Street on his self-produced disc, the
rich toned Italian American crooner applies his well-honed craftsmanship
to 10 classic ballads that were popular when he was a kid growing up
less than a stone's throw from the old State Theater. His first album,
"Tony Allen and Friends," which came out in the mid-1980s, was also
devoted to his fine, from-the-heart renditions of mostly mellow ballads
smartly seasoned with jazz inflections.
There are two things to know about Allen, an affable, humorous man
who has sung at more weddings, proms, nightclubs, inns, hotels,
restaurants, halls, ballrooms and out-door festivals than anyone could
possibly tabulate.
One is that he is a savvy, expressive singer who knows how to phrase
and breathe properly. Unlike many untutored but avid singers half his
age, there is no gasping between long, legato phrases by this
golf-playing non-smoker.
Best of all, Allen knows how to coax the true meaning out of a lyric
by getting inside it and understanding it so thoroughly that he makes
you feel the song's sentiment really is a core part of his own personal
life. Also unlike many singers, he loves to sing not just a song's
chorus, but also its verse, a practice that brings an extra dash of
drama, variety and surprise to his performances.
 Although critics have compared his style to that of such famous
Italian-American singers as Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett,
Allen's favorite vocalist early on was Bob Eberly, a now lesser-known
but then quite popular vocalist of the Swing Era.
There are probably elements of all four singers at play in his voice.
But Allen, who has a naturally pleasant sounding voice, has his own
distinctive form of expression.
On ballads, he has his own approach to getting a song's message
across, whether by bending a phrase or embellishing a melody or a lyric
by accenting or sustaining a note or word just a shade longer or a split
second longer.
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