Tony Bennett has died at the age of 96.
The singer’s publicist, Sylvia Weiner, confirmed his Press on Friday morning, cause of death, battling Alzheimer’s disease.
No one was more surprised by the duration and arc of Bennett’s career than Bennett himself.
“I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel about all this,” Bennett said during a 2006 interview , on the occasion of his 80th birthday.“I never really thought I’d be doing it this long… and it’s so much more than I ever imagined it would be.So I’m just thrilled.”
Bennett went out on a high note, too.Having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, he kept working as able, bringing his performing career to a close with duet partner Lady Gaga and a pair of triumphant concerts during August of 2021 at New York’s Radio City Music Hall — a week after his 95th birthday.He and Gaga released their second album, Love For Sale , during the fall of 2021.The collaborative LP launched atop the Billboard 200 at No.8 (chart dated October 16th).
His passing ends what was arguably the greatest career of any popular music singer, who Frank Sinatra famously proclaimed “the best singer in the business.” Bennett certainly had the numbers of a genuine icon, with more than 60 studio albums and worldwide sales of more than 50 million records, appearing on the charts every decade of his recording career.
He won 19 Grammy Awards, including a 2001 Lifetime Achievement prize, and a pair of primetime Emmy Awards and was a Kennedy Center Honoree and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.
He holds two Guinness World Records: one as the oldest person to have a No.1 album in the U.S.at 88 for 2014’s Cheek to Cheek , his first Gaga collaboration; the other for the longest time (68 years, 342 days) between releasing the same single, “Fascination Rhythm.”
Story continues Bennett was also recognized as a painter, with works commissioned by the United Nations and Kentucky Derby and one, Central Park , hanging in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees gave him a Humanitarian Award in 2007, the same year he was inducted into the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame.
Those accolades only tell part of the story, however.It’s impossible to overstate Bennett’s impact on and importance to popular music, as a stylist, an educator and, in some ways, an archivist.He was both a student of and a voice for the Great American Songbook, revering its composers and pledged to provide a platform for that work, from concert halls to MTV Unplugged and three Duets albums that snared a whole new following for the tuxedoed master.
“I want to teach young people about Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and all the great music they created,” Bennett, who co-founded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, N.Y., said while touring with Gaga to promote Cheek to Cheek .“It’s great music, and it’s never going to become dated.It’s never going to become old fashioned.
It’s very intelligent music that everybody, and especially these young people, need to know and appreciate.”
Bennett certainly found willing acolytes among the younger artists he worked with over the years — k.d.lang, with whom he also toured, Aretha Franklin, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Billy Joel, Sting, Elvis Costello, Michael Bublé, Carrie Underwood, Mariah Carey, Diana Krall and many more.
“It was great to see the master at work,” Sting said of recording “The Boulevard of Broken Hearts” with Bennett for Duets: An American Classic in 2006.“I think Tony’s phrasing is so unpredictable and so characteristic that when you sing harmony with him you have to try and second guess what he’ll do.
I want to be that way when I’m approaching that age.”
Gaga, meanwhile, has said that Bennett’s friendship and guidance “is the reason I am still singing today.” She told the last Radio City audience that Bennett is “my friend.He’s my musical companion.
He’s the greatest singer in the world.”
Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, Bennett was raised in Queens, N.Y., and knew early on what he wanted to do with his life — and it wasn’t running his father’s grocery store.“I always just wanted to sing and paint,” he said back in 2006.“Those are the only two things I’m very passionate about.They’re all I do, even now.”
A fan of Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby, Bennett attended Manhattan’s High School of Industrial Arts and earned money by waiting tables, where he sang to the customers.
He performed in military bands while serving in the U.S.
Army during World War II — where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate a concentration camp — then returned home to study bel canto style singing at the American Theatre Wing school under the G.I.Bill.
“I had the best teachers you could ever have, and I had great training,” Bennett recalled .“So I know how to handle myself, and it’s by being disciplined about it.
I maintained my voice.I never got tired of working.I love to sing, and I love to entertain people and make them feel good, make them forget their problems for 90 minutes or so.It’s a wonderful occupation.”
Bennett played his first nightclub show in 1946 with trombonist Tyree Glenn in Queens.Three years later he caught a break when Bob Hope heard him on a bill with Pearl Bailey in Greenwich Village; Hope helped the fledgling singer land a recording deal — and gave him his truncated stage name.
Signed to Columbia Records and under the tutelage of producer Mitch Mitchell, Bennett began his parade of hits in the ’50s with songs such as “Because of You,” “Rags to Riches” and a version of Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart” that hit No.1 in 1956.The latter prompted Williams to call Bennett to jokingly thank him “for ruining my song.” Bennett’s signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” hit the Top 20 in 1962 (a statue of him at the city’s Fairmont Hotel commemorates the connection), but singles and chart placements were never a great concern.
“I try not to look for hits, an immediate hit that’s forgotten,” Bennett said .
“My criteria is, ‘Will this song last? Does it have the quality of the American Songbook that makes a song stay a standard? Are the words and music matched so it’s beautiful to listen to?’ That’s how I record.I don’t want a hit record; I want a hit catalog, something that’s never going to sound dated throughout my life.
“There’s an old Duke Ellington expression; it ain’t what you do, it’s the way ‘tcha do it.’ If you hear Sinatra sing a standard, or Nat King Cole or Ella Fitzgerald, it just stands out.They’re definitive versions of the songs.There doesn’t have to be just one.”
Bennett notched 20 Top 20 hits between 1951 and 1964, when the Beatles and the British Invasion consigned he and his peers to the lower rungs of the charts.Nevertheless, Bennett remained popular, and even iconic, as the years wore on, continuing to record and tour regardless of how tastes and trends treated him — although he suffered a near-fatal cocaine overdose in 1979, which led to his son Danny Bennett taking over as his manager and getting his father back on track.
1986’s The Art of Excellence was Bennett’s first album to hit the Billboard charts in 14 years, but it was his 1994 appearance on MTV’s Unplugged series — with guests Costello and lang — that gave Bennett an unexpected beachhead in the alternative rock market.
Thanks to that new audience, the companion album went platinum and won a pair of Grammy Awards, including the coveted Album of the Year, and the notoriety led to a variety of opportunities, including the Duets projects.
More honors followed as well — a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a lifetime achievement award from ASCAP, induction into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame.
He performed for 11 U.S.presidents and received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Music in 2017.
After the chart-topping triumph of Cheek to Cheek , his later albums included The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern with pianist Bill Charlap in 2015 and Love is Here to Stay , a Gershwin collection with Diana Krall in 2018.
Bennett is survived by his third wife Susan Benedetto, with whom he founded the non-profit Exploring the Arts.In early 2021, she told AARP magazine that “singing is everything to him.Everything.
It has saved his life many times.” He’s also survived by sons Danny and Daegal, with first wife Patricia, and daughters Joanna and Antonia with second wife Sandra.
Tony Bennett, Legendary Voice of American Standards, Dead at 96
Gary Graff
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