Music Legend Tony Bennett Dies at Age 96 in New York

Tony Bennett, the last of a line of great American crooners whose never-ending good cheer spanned generations to make him a hitmaker for seven decades, died on Friday in New York. He was 96.

Bennett, who grew up in an era when big bands controlled US pop music, had an unlikely second act when he began winning over youthful audiences in the 1990s – not by reinventing himself, but by expressing his genuine joy in belting out the standards.

Then, in 2014, at the age of 88, Bennett became the oldest person ever to hit number one on the US album sales chart with a collection of duets with Lady Gaga — who became his buddy and travelling partner but was only one of a long list of younger stars who hurried to work with the singing great.

Sylvia Weiner, Bennett’s publicist, reported his death.

Tony Bennett had been compared to Frank Sinatra since the beginning of his career, and he first tried to distinguish himself from him, but he soon followed much of the same path as other crooners of the day, singing in nightclubs, on television, and in movies, though his attempts to act were short-lived.

Tony Bennett’s theatrical presence proved to be his gift

He sang with vigour and a smooth vibrato in a powerful, clearly enunciated voice that he kept in shape via training in the operatic Bel Canto tradition, with a welcome grin and stylish outfit.

Beginning with his rendition of the film song Because of You in 1951, Bennett had a string of songs including Rags to Riches, Stranger in Paradise, and I Left My Heart in San Francisco, which earned him two of his career’s 19 Grammy Awards.

However, the British Invasion led by The Beatles had its toll on the vocalist, whose songs became quaint and antique. He nearly died of a drug overdose in 1979 before recovering and resuming his career.

“When rap, disco, or whatever the new fashion was at the time, I didn’t try to find something that would fit whatever the style of the entire music scene was,” Bennett told the British culture magazine Clash.

“I just stayed myself, sang sincerely, and tried to be honest with myself — never compromising, just doing the best songs I could think of for the audience.” “And, luckily, it just paid off.”

Bennett Grew Up in Poverty

Tony Bennett was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in the Queens district of Astoria on the recommendation of entertainment A-lister Bob Hope.

His father was a poor grocer who moved from the Calabria region of southern Italy, where his mother also had ancestors.

He demonstrated early promise as an entertainer, singing with famous New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia when he ceremoniously launched the city’s Triborough Bridge, now known as the Robert F Kennedy Bridge, at the age of nine.

However, his father’s death at the age of ten, at a period when the United States was still battling to recover from the Great Depression, caused him to drop out of school and work odd jobs such as singing in Italian restaurants and caricature drawing, which he continued to do for the remainder of his life.

Bennett was enlisted into the 63rd Infantry Division during WWII and deployed to France and Germany. However, he was punished after yelling out a Southern officer who objected to Bennett sitting with an African American buddy in the army’s then-racially segregated dining hall.

Bennett’s punishment was to spend his tour of duty digging up bodies and shipping them. Bennett gained an unexpected break into music after the Allied triumph while waiting with fellow troops in Wiesbaden, Germany to return home.

With the city’s opera house still standing, a US Army band put on a weekly entertainment that was aired on military radio throughout Germany. Bennett was hired as the band’s librarian and rapidly excelled with his voice, earning him a spot as one of four vocalists.

“During this period in the army, I enjoyed the most musical freedom I’ve ever had in my life,” Bennett said later in his book, The Good Life.

“I could sing whatever I wanted, and there was no one around to tell me any different,” he wrote.

Outspoken opponent of racism and war

When he returned to the United States, he enrolled in official singing classes under the GI Bill, which provided educational assistance to returning troops.

Bennett’s experiences shaped him into a lifelong liberal. He became extremely upset in the 1950s when he performed in Miami alongside jazz pioneer Duke Ellington, who was denied entry to a press party owing to hotel discrimination.

In a bold move for a popular musician at the time, he accepted singer Harry Belafonte’s offer to join civil rights leader Martin Luther King in the 1965 march from Selma, Alabama to support equal voting rights for African Americans.

In his memoir, he later said that the antagonism of the white state troopers reminded him of Nazi Germany.

He was also an ardent opponent of war, causing controversy at times.

“The first time I saw a dead German, that’s when I became a pacifist,” he told popular radio personality Howard Stern in the days following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Still cool late in life

Bennett married three times and had four children, including Antonia Bennett, who has followed in his footsteps as a singer of pop and jazz standards.

But it was his son Danny Bennett who was most influential in his father’s career, actively recruiting MTV and other music industry figures as his father’s manager.

Bennett was performing in music videos on MTV and singing warm-up at performances by alternative rock heavyweights such as Smashing Pumpkins and Porno for Pyros by the early 1990s, his style and appearance little changed from the 1960s, except for more grey hair.

Bennett was back in 1993, when he presented a trophy at the MTV Video Music Awards alongside the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, who praised his cool quotient and sang a portion of I Left My Heart in San Francisco.

His career grew steadily, and a decade later, he released three popular duet albums. On one of them, Body and Soul, he sang with Amy Winehouse in her final recording before her death at the age of 27 in 2011.

He celebrated his 90th birthday with a star-studded concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, which became a television spectacular and record.

Bennett’s song “The Best Is Yet to Come” inspired the title

Bennett travelled the United States and Europe into his final decade, performing in New Jersey on March 11, 2020, before the coronavirus epidemic prevented travelling.

He soon stated that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016. He had kept his illness hidden for years.

Bennett performed two more birthday concerts with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall when he turned 95, billed as his farewell to New York.

On “doctors’ orders,” he then cancelled the balance of his 2021 tour dates.

“And let the music play as long as there’s a song to sing / And I will stay younger than spring,” he sang in a rendition of his ballad This Is All I Ask during the first of his farewell shows.

“You’ve been a good audience,” Bennett stated as he prepared to perform his encore. “I’m in love with this audience.”