On a typical Sunday afternoon when the director Martin Scorsese was growing up on Elizabeth Street in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York, the family apartment was filled with both the aroma of a simmering sauce and music from the popular Italian-American crooners of the day.

“Aside from Sinatra, Tony Bennett was the authority in that sense,” the filmmaker recalled in a recent interview. “He had such an extraordinary range and was top of the line. And of course, Dean Martin and his coolness. But it was Jerry Vale who we listened to pretty much all the time.”