Tony Bennett, the legendary pop, jazz and big-band vocalist, has died after a seven-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 96.
Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed Bennett’s death, revealing he passed away in his hometown of Latest York. His official reason for death — just two weeks shy of his 97th birthday — has not yet been announced.
“I come from good Italian stock — but I’ve tried to remain fit through the years,” Bennett told me nearly 20 years ago.
On the time he was a spry 72, meeting and greeting concertgoers with swagger before a profit performance within the blazing hot Sonoran Desert of Tucson, Ariz.
For twenty years beyond that, the 20-time Grammy winner kept swinging as easily as ever — making history as considered one of the one artists to chart recent albums within the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and the primary three a long time of the twenty first century.
Anthony Dominick Bennedetto was born right into a poor family of Italian immigrants living in Astoria, Queens, on Aug. 3, 1926. His father Giovanni, a grocer, died 10 years later, forcing his seamstress mother Anna Maria to seek out recent ways to win bread amid the Great Depression.
It wasn’t long before little Tony was cashing in together with his vocal chords, acting at the opening of the Triborough Bridge in 1936. The legendary baritone belter was a young tenor way back then, and reportedly received pats on the top from Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
While attending the High School of Industrial Arts, the teenager realized he desired to be a skilled singer — but additionally began training for his other lifelong artistic passion: Painting. (Many years later, his one-time hobby became a very classy — and lucrative — side hustle.)
He took a profession hiatus to serve in World War II. After returning home, he was discovered in 1949 by Bob Hope — working with Pearl Bailey at a Greenwich Village club — and signed a take care of Columbia Records.
The 25-year-old entertainer now rechristened as Tony Bennett scored his first No. 1 hit in 1951 with “Due to You,” sparking seven a long time of chart success.
Well over a half-century after it hit the charts, Bennett said he never got sick of singing his 1962 signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
But there have been indeed dark times.
Bennett revealed within the 2011 book “All The Things You Are: The Lifetime of Tony Bennett” that multi-pronged addictions left him broke, “drug addled” and near death.
Bennett also confessed to snorting cocaine and smoking marijuana in a “reckless effort” to forget his financial woes within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s.
“I used to be in a very self-destructive tailspin. I used to take pills — uppies, downies and sleepies,” he said. “I owed something like $1.2 million, which was a fortune in those days. At the least half of it was in back taxes I couldn’t afford to pay.”
But he bounced back like a professional, defying the popular culture odds to win over the “I need my MTV” generation with the assistance of his famously protective, career-saving recent manager: Son Danny Bennett, now 69.
“I’ve at all times been unplugged,” Bennett quipped as he took the “MTV Unplugged” stage in 1994. His comeback recording of those interpretations of classics went on to surpass platinum (million-selling) status and won the Grammy for 1995’s Album of the Yr.
Fast-forward through a long time of Billboard bows and Grammy wins: One in all America’s last legit living legends stayed busy promoting a 2014 duets album with Lady Gaga — and maintaining a world tremendous arts profession.
Two years within the making, Tony and Gaga’s “Cheek to Cheek” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart and features classic covers starting from Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” to Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” and Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes.”
Bennett revealed in February 2021 that he’s affected by a progressive, degenerative brain disease. The family told AARP that his decline began in 2016, but his battle with Alzheimer’s became seriously concerning in 2018 when he was recording “Love for Sale” with Lady Gaga.
“Life is a present, even with Alzheimer’s,” he tweeted on the time.
The not-so-unlikely duo reunited in August 2021, mid-pandemic, for a pair of heartwarming/breaking farewell concert events at Radio City Music Hall.
The show was a celebration with a component of control: Phone cameras weren’t allowed. Simply to make sure, attendants locked them away in security pouches as fans arrived.
But The Post was there to capture the moment.
Billed as “One Last Time: An Evening With Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga,” that cryptic title had many within the audience fretting aloud that it was the “last probability ever” to see Bennett live.
It was.
Besides being a farewell for the duo, nonetheless, it was also a time for revelations. Gaga, 36, recalled the story of her first meeting with Bennett in a backstage dressing room: “Hi, I’m Lady Gaga,” the industry newbie said bashfully upon encountering the legend in 2011.
That’s when Bennett looked the “Fame Monster” pop provocateur and future “A Star is Born” Oscar winner in the attention and said, “I do know who you’re — you’re a jazz singer.”
An unabashed fan, Gaga may need summed up Bennett best in her intro to their final music video together, declaring: “Tony’s at all times ready.”
Bennett is survived by his wife, Susan Crow Benedetto, 4 children — Antonia, Danny, Dae and Joanna Bennett — and two grandchildren: Kelsey and Rémy Bennet.
The Post mined the archives for some sage advice from a survivor — in his own words.
Best job security
Bennett once said the important thing to his longevity is maintaining high standards: “I joined the American Theatre Wing (after fighting in World War II) and it was the most effective selection I ever made.” The very first thing he learned: “Whether it was music or dancing or singing, they taught everybody, ‘Never compromise, only do quality.’ And now it’s all paid off.”
Best mass appeal
“Within the ’50s, after I would do seven shows a day on the Paramount Theatre, by the top of the night you’ll have sung to everybody: The young teens, the married couples, the senior residents. I learned that it’s at all times higher to play to a big demographic. It’s higher business and it implies that you may have to decide on excellent songs which have a universal appeal.”
Best show of respect
Don’t phone it in: Most duet recordings are done 1000’s of miles apart today, because of digital technology, but Bennett insisted his award-winning duets be exactly that; humans singing together in a studio.
Best survival tip
Get a hobby. Bennett said it was crucial to maintaining his sanity: “It is especially helpful as a performer to have one other art form to pursue. Each time I get a bit burned out from performing, which is a really gregarious activity in front of 1000’s of individuals, I can find time to be all alone and just give attention to painting, which is a more internal activity.”
Best trade secret
Hearken to recent voices: “Besides having the entire word having fun with [Lady Gaga] without delay, she has an enormous group of young individuals who love her, and so they’ve never heard of popular jazz music, classical American music,” Bennett once told the Associated Press. “And my ambition was to do that album in order that they would get acquainted with that music.”
With Post wires.
