Tony Bennett accepted the boundaries of his universe.
In the last few decades of his life, the period of his greatest success, he never tried to do a Rick Rubin/Johnny Cash-style album of recent pop and rock hits tweaked to suit his voice. Instead, he transported the contemporary artists he worked with — Lady Gaga especially — to his preferred musical arena: the Great American Songbook classics of Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, and so many more. Without seeing the cover, you’d never even know his “MTV Unplugged” album was an “MTV Unplugged” album just by listening to it. His last studio album, “The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern,” speaks to his appreciation of the craft of...