Singer Tony Bennet died on Friday at the age of 96. Bennett was one of the last of a generation of jazz singers, but his career spanned two centuries and spanned several generations.
“In American popular music, no one has been recording for as long and at such a high level of skill as Tony Bennett,” AllAboutJazz wrote about the singer, who has edited over 70 albums, has been at the top of sales since the 1950s and has gained consensus among artists and the public.
In an interview with the Associated Press in 2006, ten years before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Tony Bennett said he was a tenor who sang like a baritone and that he enjoyed “entertaining the audience and making them forget their problems.”
“I think people like it when they hear something sincere and honest, and maybe with a bit of a sense of humor… When I act, I like to make people feel good,” he said in the same interview at the age of 80.
In an obituary this Friday, the AP writes that Tony Bennett was the last of the great bar and club singers – and casinos – of the second half of the 20th century to survive the rise of rock and conquer the “MTV generation” with a repertoire of songs by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin or George Gershwin.
First success at 36
The first major success of his career came in 1962, when he was 36, with the theme “I left my heart in San Francisco” by the then unknown George Corey and Douglas Cross.
Tony Bennett was born Anthony Dominic Benedetto on August 3, 1926 in Queens, New York to an Italian family. He studied music and painting, two arts he did in parallel, but dropped out of school to help his family.
He was a courier, worked in restaurants, joined the army during World War II, and sang for American troops in Germany.
The AP reports that the singer’s first known recording dates back to 1946, “St. James Infirmary” for US military radio.
The following year, he would record George Gershwin’s “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” under the stage name Joe Bari.
In an official biography published in 1998, the singer recalled that it was comedian Bob Hope who dubbed him Tony Bennett and predicted international success after seeing him perform in New York as Joe Bari.
In his 70-year career, which was also marked by financial and drug problems, there were many musicians with whom Tony Bennett performed and recorded, such as Count Basie and Bill Evans, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga or Amalia Rodriguez.
Oldest at the top of the Billboard chart
In 2014, at age 88, Tony Bennett became the oldest active artist to date and reached the top of the Billboard sales chart in the United States with Lady Gaga’s “Cheek to Cheek” project.
The singer performed several times in Portugal, the last of which was in June 2003, at Estoril and Povoa de Varzim casinos, recordings of his concerts in the country, in 1988 and 1998, are still preserved.
Among the partnerships that stood out in his career was an encounter with jazz pianist Bill Evans (1929–1980) which led to several live performances and the albums The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album in 1975 and Together Again in 1977 in which he performed such classics as Leonard Bernstein’s Some Other Time, Betty Comden and Adolf Green, Waltz for Debby” by Bill Evans with Gene Lee. and A Day of Wine and Roses by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer.
In a 2017 interview with Mark Myers’ digital magazine JazzWax, Tony Bennett looked back on the partnership and how working with Bill Evans marked him. He then recalled a dialogue with the pianist before the concert, when the pianist told him that “he was only interested in following the truth and beauty” of the music and “stopping there”.
“I followed Bill’s advice [Evans] and I thought about his words during the whole concert. I still think about what he said to me that night before moving on.”
Advised not to emulate Frank Sinatra’s style, Tony Bennett won 19 Grammy Awards, most of them over 60, and two Emmy Awards.
His latest album was released in 2021 under the title Love for Sale.