Tony Bennett Dies: Legendary Singer Who Endured For Generations Was 96

Tony Bennett, the legendary singer who won 19 Grammys spanning nearly 60 years and whose singular career enjoyed a resurgence that extended into his 90s, died July 21. He was 96.

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“Tony left us today but he was still singing the other day at his piano and his last song was, ‘Because of You,’ his first #1 hit,” read a message on his official Twitter account. “Tony, because of you we have your songs in our heart forever.”

Bennett battled Alzheimer’s disease, but even after that diagnosis, he continued to perform, including a memorable series of final concerts in New York in 2021, where he was joined by Lady Gaga. An album with Gaga won a Grammy in 2014. A 60 Minutes segment last year showed how Bennett had difficulty having extended conversations but transformed when it came time to perform; he did so with ease. His neurologist told Anderson Cooper: “That’s true of many great people, that they have an over-abiding passion that guides them and everything else is secondary. And for Tony, it’s always been music. And so, it’s no wonder that his brain has pretty much built itself around his music.”

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His career over a 70-year span suffered its ups and downs, particularly as musical tastes changed. In the late 1970s and early 80s, he was facing financial problems and his second marriage, to Sandra Grant, was ending, and he had drug problems. His son, Danny, helped him turn things around, taking over the management of his career and setting the stage for a comeback.

Bennett’s late resurgence took off in the 1990s. With more than 70 albums, many of his Grammys came late in life. He celebrated turning 90 in 2016 by singing for Stephen Colbert, and NBC celebrated that milestone birthday with a star-packed special. He retired officially in 2021.

Bennett was active in the civil rights movement, joining with Harry Belafonte, who died in April, and Martin Luther King Jr. in the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965, a response to the brutal attacks on voting-rights protestors at the Edmund Pettus Bridge weeks earlier. Bennett and others performed at a rally at the state capitol, mobilizing public opinion and support for the eventually passage of the Civil Rights Act.

He continued to speak out on social causes later in life, particularly on gun violence, and was close friends with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, traveling to Washington to attend her swearing-in ceremony when she returned to the speakership in 2019. “He helped free the concentration camps during the time of World War II. He marched with Martin Luther King,” Pelosi said at the time. “He is a true American patriot.”

Bennett was 18 when his Army unit was shipped to France in 1944 and served as replacements for troops who fought at the Battle of the Bulge. His unit eventually pushed into Germany in March 1945 and later helped liberate a German concentration camp about 30 miles south of Dachau. He was discharged in August from the Army 1946.

Bennett’s endurance through generations was all the more unusual in that he didn’t change his musical style, and instead brought pop and jazz standards from the Great American Songbook to new audiences. One of his best known was 1962’s “I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” which became one of the city’s anthems and was selected for the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress in 2018. The song won Record of the Year and another Grammy and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1994. It peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the album of the same name reached No. 5, went platinum and spent nearly three years on the Billboard 200 chart.

The previous year, when Bennett was recognized with the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, he was feted by Stevie Wonder, Gloria Estefan, Josh Groban and others and told the crowd, “I’ve performed all over the world, but this is the best I’ve ever felt onstage.”

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Often cited was the praise that Bennett received from Frank Sinatra, a friend, who told Life magazine in 1965: “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.” Unlike Sinatra, Bennett avoided tabloid scandal, and in his performances and interviews, he projected a level of perpetual cheeriness.

Bennett’s hits included 1951’s “Because of You” and 1953’s No. 1 hit, “Rags to Riches” and No. 2 “Stranger in Paradise,” as well as the 1954 top-10 hit “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight.” His chart success was hindered in the rock era, with only 1957’s “In the Middle of the Island” making the top 10.

He boasts a half-dozen platinum albums and nine others that went gold. Among his most successful was 1994’s MTV Unplugged, which won Album of the Year and another Grammy and helped introduce Bennett to another generation of fans.

At age 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for Cheek to Cheek, the duets disc with Lady Gaga. With his 2021 disc Love for Sale — a tribute to Cole Porter, also recorded with Lady Gaga — Bennett holds the Guinness World Record for oldest person to release an album of all-original material. It reached the Billboard Top 10, and the pair recorded the live special MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga that same year.

His Duets II was released in 2011, in conjunction with his 85th birthday, and became the first No. 1 album of his career. It featured artists including Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording. Bennett also appeared in the Oscar-nominated 2015 Winehouse documentary Amy, where he was seen patiently encouraging a young, insecure Winehouse in a performance of “Body and Soul.”

Duets: An American Classic reached No. 3 in 2006, then his highest-charting set to date, topping the No. 5 peak of I Left My Heart in San Francisco in 1962. Viva Duets hit No. 5 six years later. Love Is Here to Stay, recorded with Diana Krall, hit No. 11 in 2018.

“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 humor. … I just like to make people feel good when I perform.”

In addition to his Grammy wins, Bennett earned Primetime Emmy Awards in 1996 and 2007 for Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program. He was named an NEA Jazz Master and Kennedy Center Honoree and was the founder of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria Queens, New York.

Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born on Aug. 3, 1926, in Queens. He early on had a passion for singing and painting, but his early career path was interrupted by the call to service in World War II. “Although I understand the reasons why this war was fought, it was a terrifying, demoralizing experience for me. I saw things no human being should ever have to see,” he wrote in his autobiography, an experience that made him realize “that I am completely opposed to war.”

According to PBS’ American Masters, Bennett served in the postwar occupation of Germany, and he was assigned to Special Services, responsible for entertaining troops. But he was demoted from the rank of corporal after he invited a Black friend to dine with him at a time when troops were segregated. He was assigned to a unit that exhumed mass graves.

“This was another unbelievable example of the degree of prejudice that was so widespread in the Army during World War II,” Bennett said.

Bennett eventually was reassigned again and joined the 314th Army Special Services Band under the stage name of Joe Bari, according to American Masters. That helped convince him to pursue a career as a singer. He later recalled that it was Bob Hope who took notice of him when he was performing in Greenwich Village in 1949 and told him that he didn’t like his stage name and instead would call him Tony Bennett.

According to the AP, Bennett is survived by his wife Susan, daughters Johanna and Antonia, sons Danny and Dae and nine grandchildren.

Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.