LAS VEGAS — Al Bernstein is a man of many microphones. He’s ubiquitous in the boxing space, analyzing major fights for Showtime. He makes other television appearances, while frequently appearing on radio stations and podcasts. And—this is the fun part—the man can sing.
Bernstein is part Bud Crawford, part Buddy Holly, part Leigh Wood (featherweight champion) and part Bernstein (as in the journalist).
He laughs into the phone on Tuesday when the subject of microphones comes up. Has he really held onto and spoken into one for more than four decades, in one way or another? He has, through job changes and shifts in medium, throughout his wife’s cancer battle, through hundreds and hundreds of fights, not to mention dozens of shows. The mic is his constant, a friend of sorts.
Believe it or not, Bernstein emphatically believes it’s easier to broadcast on television for millions of viewers than to perform his lounge act/variety show, like he did twice last week, back-to-back, two days before Crawford squared off with Errol Spence Jr. for the undisputed welterweight crown. Analyzing boxers and their match-ups is muscle memory for him at this point, and Bernstein likes to treat the cameras filming him like real people, like he’s addressing them directly. But actual real people? That’s a different story—one he’s telling in a different way.
It's all very boxing, in that there are characters involved; rich, multi-dimensional, cannot-be-boxed types. Bernstein is one of those, and his shows—a mishmash of signing, directing, interviews, a love story and boxing trivia—are very him. He’s the self-proclaimed third-best singer in his own family (after his wife, Connie, and their son, Wes). But he’s also a renaissance man of sorts, an actor and endorser as well as broadcaster and crooner (and, in former iterations, a writer and publisher and many other things).
So, yeah, that’s one of America’s most recognizable boxing voices on stage at the Tuscany Suites & Casino in Las Vegas. Boxing hardly comes up until the show’s second half. Music, instead, takes center stage, while the odd prospect of a singing broadcaster becomes less stunning with each song.
Bernstein grew up in a musical household. He first started listening to music as a child, in the mid-1950s, became obsessed with the Great American Songbook, immersed in numerous genres and found that notes and melodies, concerts and radio hits, symphonies and music scores all called like sirens to his soul. He came to adore country music and blues, above all others, and draws from both on this Thursday in Las Vegas.
The crowd filters in early for the first show. All pass through the kind of just-off-strip casino where souls go for abandonment and last dollars are coughed up to the gambling gods. It’s brighter and cheerier inside the lounge where the broadcaster will belt out his setlist. By 8 p.m., the scheduled start time, the space is pretty much full. Cocktails have been ordered; cameras set up in the middle of the room to record. Several of Bernstein’s colleagues at Showtime Championship Boxing are in attendance, as are managers and promoters and publicists from the fight game.
The lighting dims. The band begins to play. And there it is, that silky smooth baritone deployed more often for its other applications, like that Saturday night’s Pay-Per-View telecast. Bernstein kicks off his show with a nod to his hometown, spinning through a rendition of “Sweet Home Chicago,” while audience members whistle and clap. “I know,” Bernstein quips, “when you think of blues artists, you think of me.”
Bernstein is dressed in all black, from suit to shoes, except for a crisp white dress shirt. He recalls a Sinatra-era singer: dressed up, in Vegas, amid a blockbuster fight week. If you didn’t know him, or what he did for his day job, you wouldn’t find him out of place in this particular setting. His wife watched, while sitting in a wheelchair, near the front. Connie was the family’s star singer, an actual performer, with enviable pipes.
He begins to tell a story that ties all the disparate parts of his life together. “And there’s my wife, Connie, who had a more than 35-year career in show business,” he starts. He cites one such show, when Connie and her sister went on just before Joe Frazier, at some sort of charity event. Connie held a comb in one hand, and she was walking down stairs, when her heel caught and she fell forward into Frazier, stabbing him with the comb. “He went down to one knee and uttered these immortal words: the b—h stabbed me.” Drums are banged to sell the joke. “So let me introduce you to the woman who did something even Muhammad Ali couldn’t do,” Bernstein says, as the audience breaks out in laughter. “She put Joe Frazier down. Connie Bernstein!” The roar grew. You should have seen the look on Connie’s face. Pure joy.
What a life. Bernstein transitioned from inked-stained newspaper man to burgeoning fight commentator with ESPN, starting in 1980. The classic bouts from that decade's welterweight heyday defined his start in a new field. By 2012, he had been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Even then, it’s a mistake to define him by boxing alone. “I’ve always been a person who wanted to do different things,” he says, before pausing the interview to tend to his wife in another room. Connie was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer in 2003. Al watched her fight the disease with more fortitude than any in-ring classic he witnessed from the front row. That’s clear when he sings directly to her, selecting “If I Were You I'd Fall In Love With Me,” or trying to, as he struggles to finish the last verse. His eyes moisten as he looks at Connie in the audience, then, perhaps involuntarily, places a hand delicately over his heart.
But, yeah, he always wanted to do different things, do everything; or, at least, everything that called to him. Which were many things, of course. Sports called to him. Writing called to him. Managing a string of newspapers in Chicago called to him.
One night, way back in 1987, Bernstein put two of his favorite things together. His father had been a sometimes-writer who often crafted jokes for comedians like Henny Youngman. For Al, his dad’s example planted an entertainment seed, the first step toward so many mics. He began covering boxing after the first Rocky movie, inspired by its portrayal of one of the oldest and most vicious and most artful sports.
He never lost his love for music as his career took off, in all its variations. Bernstein adored movies like Mr. Holland’s Opus for the soundtrack as much as any scene. He studied Finian’s Rainbow, his favorite Broadway score. He saw music as no less than the world’s one, true universal language, a way to communicate with emotion and intellect and grace. (At least when Connie sang!)
Bernstein was already a competitive horseback rider. He competed in team-roping competitions and trail riding competitions and celebrity competitions. That hobby marked one sanctuary, a break from everything else. And that sentiment also applied to music, especially after he gave up the horseback endeavors about seven or eight years ago. Music bubbled back to the forefront, just as it had that night in 1987.
At that time, Bernstein recalls being frustrated with ESPN and his bosses’ decision to not allow him to cover other sports, save for the rare NFL draft or the occasional moonlighting on college hoops. He grew anxious, then antsy. Then, one night the week before Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard would clash at Caesars Palace, Bernstein ate dinner with some casino executives. One asked, “Don’t you sing?” Yes, he did. Would he perform? Yes, he would—and did, that very same weekend, becoming the headliner of three shows rather than the person analyzing the headliners in any bout.
Michael Landon was in the crowd that evening. As were Tommy Hearns, Marion Barry, Rodney Dangerfield, John Madden, Ron Jeremy (yes, that Ron Jeremy!), Bob Arum, Bill Clancy and Victor French from Little House on the Prairie. In 1988, Bernstein recorded “My Very Own Songs,” his very first album. Bits of sports and boxing were sprinkled on that record, same as his album from ’96, titled, Let the Games Begin. While performing, he rehearsed, added and featured musicians and generally took a similar approach to how he prepared to analyze fights. He was thorough, self-aware and reflective. And Bernstein performed for years.
He stopped, eventually, due to time constraints, all the fights, travel and meetings that ate into his time. He cooked up a show with his writing partner that was part music, part monologue, part story time with Uncle Al and part question-and-answer session. The Boxing Party, they called it. Bernstein eventually performed all over Vegas, at Mandalay Bay and the Riviera and the Tuscany and others, which led to Let the Games. At some point, though, after Connie’s diagnosis, the public appearances for Bernstein (the singer) simply vanished. There wasn’t one particular reason but the accumulation of many factors.
He continued listening to fulfill his wide-and-varied musical palate. He drew from Sammy Davis Jr., Ray Charles, Mel Tome, Van Morrison and Bob Seger. He was inspired by country, blues, rock and roll and all the rest.
He became an actor who once bumped into James Caan, who hilariously told Bernstein he had to leave because there was only room for “one Jew” on set. “It’s me,” Caan told him. Bernstein continued acting, even in a Rocky V to come full circle, while picking up cameo roles in real shows and films. He worked with Woody Harrelson (Play It to the Bone) and Antonio Banderas (same) and boxing champ Vinny Pazienza (Bleed For This). He started messing around with impressions. He did everything he could for Connie. He called fights.
The music eventually resurfaced. Hence the appearances on Thursday, 48 hours before a bout that all hoped would recall the welterweight heyday. Bernstein hoped his show would do the same. He planned to sing Georgia On My Mind by Charles, maybe Hello from Lionel Richie. And interview his fellow commentator, the world champion Abner Mares. And give Showtime boxing swag to audience members who answered trivia questions correctly.
Bernstein performed with a bandleader (Kenny Davidsen, on keys), a singer-songwriter-comedian (Dennis Blair, on piano), a saxophonist (Rob Mader) and a drummer (David Ramirez). He hosted a singer, Celena Sasso, and her angelic pipes. Sasso even wore her own version of suit/dress shirt/dress shoes, which she referred to as her “Al-fit.”
In some ways, performing songs and performing in fights are more similar than might seem obvious. For both, there’s science that leads to art. There must be the right elements, the correct strategy, the proper preparation. That’s the science. How any performer puts them together—like Crawford would do in his obliteration of Spence that Saturday—is the art.
“Just an amazing performance,” Bernstein says.
The same could be said about his own. But not for pure song quality, or voice inflection, or the crowd that gave him a standing ovation afterward. No, Bernstein’s “amazing” was more elemental.
He performed one song about ESPN sports announcers and their blues. He sang next to a beer bucket filled with water and ice; not exactly the Rat Pack and their martini glasses. He kept stealing glances at his wife, the brave one, and she blew him kisses on the stage. There was a Gilbert Gottfried impression. Beautiful music. An entertained crowd. But their love, its depth—that’s what stood out on Thursday night inside that lounge in Vegas. Not the singer but who he sang for, why it mattered and what it meant.
