Legendary crooner Tony Bennett dies aged 96 after selling 50 million records during glittering career
21 July 2023, 13:32 | Updated: 21 July 2023, 14:02
Legendary crooner Tony Bennet has died aged 96, several years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
Mr Bennett died in his hometown of New York. There was no specific cause of death given. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016.
He released over 70 albums during a long career and won 19 Grammy awards, winning admiration from music stars from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga.
He is considered the last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century.
His lifelong ambition - in his own words - was to create “a catalog rather than hit records.”
He won 19 Grammy awards during his career - all but two after he reached his 60s.
He described himself as a “tenor who sings like a baritone.”
In a 2006 interview, he said: “I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems.
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“I think people ... are touched if they hear something that’s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humor. ... I just like to make people feel good when I perform.”
In a 1965 interview, he was described by Frank Sinatra as ‘the best in the business.’
“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”
In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco” - a cover of a song first released in 1954. His first hit was ‘Because of You’ which sold over a million copies and reached number one in the charts in 1951.
He was drafted into the army in 1944, fighting during the final stages of World War II as a rifleman, serving in France and later in Germany.
He joined fighting on the front lines and later described the experience as a “front row seat in hell.”
He not only survived the rise of rock music but endured so long and so well that he gained new fans and collaborators, some young enough to be his grandchildren.
In 2014, at the age of 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a number one album on the US Billboard 200 chart for Cheek To Cheek, his duets project with Lady Gaga.
Three years earlier, he topped the charts with Duets II, featuring such contemporary stars as Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording.
His rapport with Winehouse was captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Amy, which showed Bennett patiently encouraging the insecure young singer through a performance of Body And Soul.
Bennett's final album, the 2021 release Love For Sale, featured duets with Lady Gaga on the title track, Night And Day and other Porter songs.
For Bennett, one of the few performers to move easily between pop and jazz, such collaborations were part of his crusade to expose new audiences to what he called the Great American Songbook.
"No country has given the world such great music," Bennett said in a 2015 interview with Downbeat Magazine.
"Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern. Those songs will never die."
Ironically, his most famous contribution came through two unknowns, George Cory and Douglass Cross, who in the early 60s provided Bennett with his signature song at a time his career was in a lull.
They gave Bennett's musical director, pianist Ralph Sharon, some sheet music that he stuck in a dresser drawer and forgot about until he was packing for a tour that included a stop in San Francisco.
The singer recalled: "Ralph saw some sheet music in his shirt drawer ... and on top of the pile was a song called I Left My Heart In San Francisco. Ralph thought it would be good material for San Francisco.
"We were rehearsing and the bartender in the club in Little Rock, Arkansas, said: 'If you record that song, I'm going to be the first to buy it.'"
Released in 1962 as the B-side of the single Once Upon A Time, the reflective ballad became a grassroots phenomenon staying on the charts for more than two years and earning Bennett his first two Grammys, including record of the year.
By his early 40s, he was seemingly out of fashion. But after turning 60, an age when even the most popular artists often settle for just pleasing their older fans, Bennett and his son and manager, Danny, found creative ways to market the singer to the MTV Generation.
He made guest appearances on Late Night With David Letterman and became a celebrity guest artist on The Simpsons.
He wore a black T-shirt and sunglasses as a presenter with the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards, and his own video of Steppin' Out With My Baby from his Grammy-winning Fred Astaire tribute album ended up on MTV's hip Buzz Bin.
