“For more than 70 years, Tony Bennett didn’t just sing the classics – he himself was an American classic,” Biden said in a statement. “Resisting the urge to conform to the times, his distinct voice provided melody and rhythm about the good life, how the best is yet to come, the way you look tonight, and leaving your heart in San Francisco.”
Tony Bennett was a 96-year-old American singer who died on July 21, 2023. He was a beloved and regarded singer of the twentieth century. During his seven-decade career, he won 19 Grammys and released 60 studio albums. His hallmark tune was “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
Bennett, the son of an Italian immigrant, served in WWII and was a vocal activist and supporter of the Civil Rights Movement.
“He helped in the liberation of prisoners at a Dachau subcamp.” He took part in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. “He performed for Nelson Mandela, John F. Kennedy, and Queen Elizabeth II, as well as recording music with everyone from the Count Basie Orchestra to Lady Gaga,” Biden said. “His stage name was given to him by Bob Hope. His mentor was Frank Sinatra.”
“There’s no doubt about it — Tony Bennett’s life was legendary,” said the president. “And his contributions to the arts in America will endure.”
at age 96. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP, File)
Bennett, who died on Friday at the age of 96, was “the last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century,” according to The Associated Press’ Charles J. Gans. That summary, however, befits a man trapped in time, bound to a single age, and Tony Bennett was anything but.
Bennett, on the other hand, spanned decades in a way that few musicians have.
Older audiences adored him for the way he portrayed the works of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and George Gershwin in a strong and steadfast voice that lasted into his 90s. He was influenced by jazz and helped popularize it, and he marched for civil rights alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King.
He was also admired by individuals who, if they were to leave their hearts in San Francisco, they would do so at Haight-Ashbury or a popular dance club.
“I have to think it comes down to the man himself,” remarked musician Ben Folds, 56, four decades Bennett’s junior at the time.
“You hear his voice, and it’s super kind, casual, and in the moment,” Folds explained. “His phrase is similar. Nothing about this sounds stuffy. It’s quite generous. Many people in his generation lacked that attractiveness because, at the end of the day, you didn’t believe they cared about you.”
Many of Bennett’s popular late-career duets were a result of his son and manager, Danny, who kept his father’s career going long after most of his contemporaries’.
However, famous duet partners could have declined. Few people did.
Don’t think they didn’t notice his kind and tender demeanor in the studio while working with Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse, Folds stated. Bennett’s duet with Winehouse on “Body and Soul” was her final studio recording before her death.
Gaga, the New Yorker born Stefani Germanotta, who could appreciate the New Yorker born Anthony Benedetto, treated him like family and guided him to artistic accomplishments with affection even as he battled Alzheimer’s Disease. Bennett sketched and signed a drawing of Miles Davis’ trumpet, which Gaga had tattooed on her arm.
When she took her strong voice to a series of outstanding performances with Bennett in the 1990s, k.d. lang bowed to no one.
Lang told the Associated Press, “He was a refuge for the American songbook.” “He made certain that he liked a song. He would never sing a song he didn’t like.”
Make no mistake: Bennett delivered. Watch a video of him performing “New York State of Mind” with Billy Joel on a Shea Stadium stage. Joel grins as he sees his guest steal the song.
Tony Bennett has just blessed his handiwork.
Folds was surprised a few years back at a San Francisco fundraiser when Bennett seamlessly transitioned from words to a few bars of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” in perfect pitch.
Bennett exuded an older generation’s sophistication, often performing in a tuxedo or fitted suit. When an earthquake struck a Los Angeles hotel room before morning in 1994, Bennett took the time to change into a suit before joining bathrobe-clad evacuees, according to the Los Angeles Times.
According to music writer Jim Farber, he never sounded age inappropriate in any of his work with modern musicians. Bennett claimed that he always molded them to his musical will, never the other way around.
“There are so many singers, from Lady Gaga to Diana Krall to John Mayer,” Lang explained. “Now they can carry with them a certain understanding that they received firsthand from him.”
In most cases, something more important was going on in the crowd.
Christine Passarella, a writer, recalls sitting in lawn chairs in a Brooklyn park with her mother and her daughter in the 1980s, listening to Bennett sing.
“Watching him live felt like an uncle embracing me and my mother, as his music helped us remember my father, my mother’s one and only love,” she wrote.
Countless people have similar experiences with family members throughout the years, hearing Bennett’s voice wash over them while sitting with a mother or father, a son or daughter. I’m one of them.
Finally, that is a legacy to be treasured above all.
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