Tony Bennett passed away on Friday. He was a renowned and enduring stylist whose love of traditional American melodies and talent at writing new standards, including “I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” adorned a decades-long career and won him fans from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga. Just two weeks away from his 96th birthday, he was alive.
Bennett’s death was verified to The Associated Press by his publicist Sylvia Weiner, who stated that he passed away in his native New York. Bennett had been identified with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, but the cause was unknown.
Bennett, the last of the great saloon singers of the middle of the 20th century, frequently stated that his life’s goal was to build “a hit catalogue rather than hit records.” In addition to having more than 70 albums released, he won 19 competitive Grammy Awards—all but two of them after turning 60—and won the enduring love of his fans and fellow musicians.
When Bennett performed, he didn’t use his own narrative; instead, he let the songs of the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern speak for themselves.
Unlike his friend and mentor Sinatra, he would interpret a song rather than embody it. 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.
“I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he told The Associated Press in 2006. “I think people … are touched if they hear something that’s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humour… I just like to make people feel good when I perform.”
Bennett received a lot of acclaim from his contemporaries, but none was more significant than Frank Sinatra’s assessment of him in a 1965 interview with Life magazine: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.” When I watch him, he makes me excited. He affects me.
He is the singer who most accurately conveys the composer’s intentions and perhaps a little more. In addition to surviving the rise of rock music, he persevered for so long and did so well that he won over new admirers and colleagues, some of whom were even his grandchildren’s age.
Bennett, who is 88 years old, shattered his own record in 2014 by being the oldest living musician to have a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 list with his duets album “Cheek to Cheek” 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”.
