Tony Bennett, the eminent stylist whose devotion to traditional American songs and knack for creating new requirements graced a decades-long profession that introduced him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday. He was 96.
Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed Bennett’s demise to The Associated Press, saying he died in New York. There was no particular trigger, however Bennett was identified with Alzheimer’s illness in 2016.
Bennett typically stated his lifelong ambition was to create “a hit catalog rather than hit records,” which he completed by means of greater than 70 albums, garnering 19 Grammys — all however two after he reached his 60s. If his singing and public life lacked the emotional drama of Sinatra’s, Bennett appealed with a simple, courtly method and an uncommonly wealthy and sturdy tenor that made him a grasp of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo quantity.
“I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he instructed the AP in 2006. “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.”
Bennett obtained many accolades from fellow singers, however none so significant than when his good friend and mentor Sinatra stated in a 1965 Life journal interview: “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 2014, at age 88, Bennett broke his personal report because the oldest dwelling performer with a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for “Cheek to Cheek,” his collaboration with Lady Gaga. Three years earlier, he topped the charts with “Duets II,” that includes such up to date pop stars as Gaga, Carrie Underwood, and Amy Winehouse in her final studio recording.
For Bennett, one of many few performers to maneuver simply between pop and jazz, such collaborations have been a part of his campaign to reveal younger audiences to what he referred to as the Great American Songbook.
“No country has given the world such great music,” Bennett stated in a 2015 interview with Downbeat Magazine. “Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern. Those songs will never die.”
Ironically, it was two unknowns, George Cory and Douglass Cross, who supplied Bennett together with his signature track when his profession was in a lull. They gave Bennett’s musical director, pianist Ralph Sharon, some sheet music he forgot about till he was packing for a tour that included a cease in San Francisco.
“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 stated. “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 a B-side, it turned a grassroots phenomenon, staying on the charts for greater than two years and incomes Bennett his first two Grammys, together with report of the yr.
At instances, Bennett struggled with recording corporations for the suitable to sing the music he cherished, however he refused to compromise by singing “cheap songs” that pandered to the most recent musical fad. That method served him nicely in a profession that noticed him turn into one of many solely artists to have albums chart for seven a long time.
After turning 60, Bennett might have accepted profitable gives for prolonged runs performing previous hit for older followers. Instead, his son and supervisor, Danny, discovered inventive methods to market the singer to the MTV Generation with out compromising his musical integrity.
“I wanted to be able to bring my music to as many people as possible, regardless of their age,” the singer wrote in his 1998 autobiography “The Good Life.” “I wanted to be one of the keepers of the flame when it came to great music. I knew that if I brought the best songs and the best orchestrations to people, they’d respond to it, because great music transcends generations.”
He appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman” and was a star visitor artist on “The Simpsons.” He wore a black T-shirt and solar glasses as a presenter with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards, and his personal video of “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” ended up on MTV’s hip “Buzz Bin.”
That led to a suggestion in 1994 to do an episode of “MTV Unplugged” with particular company Elvis Costello and okay.d. lang. The ensuing album that received two Grammys, together with album of the yr.
Bennett would go on to win Grammys for his tributes to nice feminine vocalists (“Here’s to the Ladies”), Billie Holiday (“Tony Bennett on Holiday”), and Duke Ellington (“Bennett Sings Ellington — Hot & Cool”). He additionally received Grammys for his collaborations with different singers: “Playin’ With My Friends — Bennett Sings the Blues,” and his Louis Armstrong tribute, “A Wonderful World” with lang, the primary full album he had ever recorded with one other singer.
It culminated with “Duets: An American Classic” in 2006 celebrating his eightieth birthday. Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder have been amongst those that recorded with him in his most well-liked method — face-to-face within the studio.
“They’re all giants in the industry, and all of a sudden they’re saying to me you’re the master,” Bennett instructed the AP in 2006.
Bennett could have sung about San Francisco, however he his coronary heart belonged to Astoria, the working-class group within the New York borough of Queens, the place he grew up as Anthony Dominick Benedetto in the course of the Great Depression. The singer selected his previous neighborhood as the positioning for the “Fame”-style public highschool, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, that he and his third spouse, Susan Crow Benedetto, helped present in 2001.
AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this story.
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