easy listening

Although his music was dismissed as "easy listening" at the time, he was hugely popular, playing arena tours and performing at the White House for presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Taking inspiration from his father’s favorite film, “Apollo 13,” Chaz eventually joined the big team of engineers that put the rover Curiosity on Mars — though it was easy, listening to Morantz boast, to think his son had done it single-handedly.

“It was an easy listening hit,” he recalled.

"Because with Rod it is the dream. We did this little show in this club called Pryzm in Kingston. This music is swing music, but it's not like you'd imagine a Frank Sinatra show. It was like a Faces gig or a Squeeze gig. It was like punk almost. Oi! Oi! It's exciting, and that's why I love it. It's bit more aggressive. It's not easy listening."

That cover was all Bernhard, 68, would reveal about “Easy Listening,” which runs Dec. 26 through New Year’s Eve.