“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.’”
“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,” Bennett said. 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. 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. “Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern.
“No country has given the world such great music,” Bennett said in a 2015 interview with Downbeat Magazine. His final album, the 2021 release “Love for Sale,” featured duets with Lady Gaga on the title track, “Night and Day” and other Porter songs.įor 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. 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.” 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. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for “Cheek to Cheek,” his duets project with Lady Gaga. In 2014, at age 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a No. 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. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.” … I just like to make people feel good when I perform.”īennett was praised often by his peers, but never more meaningfully than by what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. “I think people … are touched if they hear something that’s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humor. “I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he told The Associated Press in 2006. If his singing and public life lacked the high drama of Sinatra’s, Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner and an uncommonly rich and durable voice - “A tenor who sings like a baritone,” he called himself - that made him a master of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo number. Unlike his friend and mentor Sinatra, he would interpret a song rather than embody it. The last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century, Bennett often said his lifelong ambition was to create “a hit catalog rather than hit records.” He released more than 70 albums, bringing him 19 competitive Grammys - all but two after he reached his 60s - and enjoyed deep and lasting affection from fans and fellow artists.īennett didn’t tell his own story when performing he let the music speak instead - the Gershwins and Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. There was no specific cause, but Bennett had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016. Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed Bennett’s death to The Associated Press, saying he died in his hometown of New York. He was 96, just two weeks short of his birthday. NEW YORK (AP) - Tony Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday.
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