Legendary vocalist Tony Bennett died this morning in New York City, according his publicist, Sylvia Weiner. The 20-time Grammy Award winner was 96.
Unlike most contemporary artists, Bennett wasn’t known for reinventing himself according to the latest trend in music or fashion. In fact, his life was marked by a gentle but steadfast resistance to fads. At times, it almost cost his career—but ultimately, that authenticity saved him in more ways than one.
He was born Anthony Benedetto on August 3, 1926, in Astoria, Queens. His father died 10 years later, leaving Benedetto’s seamstress mother to work two jobs and care for three children. “She made a penny a dress,” Bennett remembered in 2015. But despite their financial precariousness, she refused to tailor “cheap” clothes, and would sooner discard anything shy of her best work. Meanwhile, her young son was absorbing a powerful lesson in dignity.
To help his family earn money, a teenage Bennett worked as a singing waiter before he was drafted into the Second World War in 1944. After the war, he declared himself a pacifist and recalled his combat experience as a “front-row seat in hell. Anybody who thinks that war is romantic obviously hasn t gone through one.”
On the GI Bill, Bennett went on to study at New York’s American Theater Wing, where he learned the Italian singing technique bel canto, characterized by its romance and nostalgic undertones. Soon he was opening for humorist and singer Pearl Bailey at a club in Greenwich Village, where vaudevillian Bob Hope discovered him. In 1950, Hope invited Bennett to join him on tour—but first, he insisted that he drop Benedetto for something that could fit on a marquee.
Tony Bennett rose to fame in no time. By 1951, his saccharine hit “Because of You” had melted hearts and attracted a growing horde of female fans, followed in later years by the big-band number “Rags to Riches” and Bennett’s signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Thousands dressed in black and mourned outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral when Bennett married his first wife, Patricia Beech, in 1952. The pair had two sons, D Andrea (Danny) and Daegal (Dae), before divorcing in 1971. In 1965, Frank Sinatra told Life magazine, “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me.”
But, truth be told, by the mid-1960s Bennett had hit a wall as an unprecedented clamor for rock ‘n’ roll was unleashed by the likes of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Despite evolving his early, naïve pop tunes into a more distinguished jazz repertoire, Bennett simply couldn’t compete. What’s more, he wouldn’t; the 1970 album Tony Bennett Sings the Great Hits of Today!—which included covers of contemporary songs like “My Chérie Amour,” “The Look of Love,” and “Eleanor Rigby”—pleased no one and made Bennett “physically sick.” He insisted, “If something is good, it’s always good. You don’t have to change it.”
A year later, Bennett married actress Sandra Grant, with whom he fathered Joanna and Antonia. The family lived in Los Angeles while Bennett tried his hand at running his own record label, Improv. But poor distribution and unpopular pop songs dug its grave by 1977. A few years later, he was divorced, living in Las Vegas and experimenting with drugs. He turned to his sons for help.
Danny Bennett soon transformed his father from a popular jazz performer into a international superstar and household name. All it took was a little marketing—ironically, to a cynical generation that rejected most establishment music. Gen X saved Tony Bennett: His performance with k.d. lang on MTV Unplugged in 1994 cemented him with the grungy coffeehouse set (and won him two Grammys). To them, Bennett hadn’t sold out—yes, he was old-fashioned, but more importantly, he was pure.
“Everything he sings is utterly confidential, completely distinctive,” Elvis Costello once said. “He’s always done the songs he loves and by becoming available again he is introducing those songs to a generation that has never heard them before.”
Bennett capped the millennium with a string of high-profile collaborations with Elton John, Bob Dylan, and later Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse, and Lady Gaga, with whom he recorded two albums. After Sinatra died in 1996, Bennett inherited his place as the keeper of traditional American balladry. He was music royalty, with over 50 million albums sold, a raft of Grammys won, and many more lifetime achievement awards to his credit, including a Kennedy Center Honor. “Believe me, it’s just wonderful to be accepted throughout my whole life,” he told Billboard in 2017.
But what set Bennett apart wasn’t just the quaint romance of his bygone standards; it was his insistence on making listeners feel good. He smiled while he sang, slapped his knee and belted affirmations of love. His ageless presence filled and refilled the human spirit. “The thing about this guy,” said Alec Baldwin, who played a bouncy, elated Bennett on Saturday Night Live, “is that he’s so positive—if I were as talented as him, I’d be positive, too—and so old-school, meaning the lesson you get under everything Tony does is that performing should be fun.” Besides music, Bennett was also a gifted painter and devoted humanitarian, passionate about relief efforts and racial equality. Later in life, he earned the nickname “Tony Benefit” for his devotion to charitable causes.
Bennett performed to sold-out audiences into his 90s, plunging ahead even after his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016. (He played his final shows with Lady Gaga at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 2021.) His voice remained remarkably strong due to daily vocal exercises in his expansive Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park and a serene lifestyle with his third wife, Susan Crow. “Susan is a blessing. We’re very much in love and I can’t say anything nicer than that,” Bennett said in 2017.
Now he’s said it all, and we’re still smiling. He is survived by Susan; his four children; and his nine grandchildren.