Tony Bennett died on Friday, July 21, in New York, his publicist confirmed to the Associated Press. He was 96, a few weeks short of 97. No cause of death was given.
Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, he won 18 Grammy Awards over a career of nearly seven decades.
Astoria to Columbia Records
Bennett was born in Astoria, Queens, on August 3, 1926. At the High School of Industrial Arts he listened to Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland and Bing Crosby, and found a love of painting. As a teenager he sang in local Italian restaurants, hoping for a professional career.
The Army drafted him in 1944, near the end of World War II, and he served in France and Germany. After his discharge in 1946 he studied at the American Theatre Wing in New York. Three years later comedian Bob Hope saw him perform and suggested the more Americanized name Tony Bennett. Columbia Records signed him not long afterward.
His debut album, “Because of You,” came out in 1952. He hosted the short-lived NBC variety program “The Tony Bennett Show” in 1956 and had released nine albums by the end of the decade. In 1962 he headlined Carnegie Hall, and that year he won his first two Grammys, Record of the Year and Best Male Solo Vocal Performance, for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
The slump and the comeback
The late 1960s through the late 1970s were rough. He left Columbia for Verve, his career dipped, and his marriages ended. After the second one broke up he developed a drug addiction, and in 1979 he survived a near-fatal cocaine overdose.
Seven years later he signed with Columbia again. Younger listeners found him through the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards and an MTV Unplugged taping the following year. He won a Primetime Emmy in 1996 for A&E’s “Live by Request,” a second Emmy later, and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.
The last chapter
In 2007 he married Susan Crow, a former schoolteacher 40 years his junior. Together they founded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria.
He kept recording and appearing on television through his 80s and 90s. Duets albums in 2006 and 2011 brought in Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Billy Joel, John Legend, Amy Winehouse, Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey. In 2014 he made “Cheek to Cheek” with Lady Gaga, which made him the oldest artist to land a No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The pair toured behind it for 36 dates and recorded a follow-up in 2021.
Doctors diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease in 2016. Crow told AARP in 2021 that he “didn’t understand” the illness, but “felt great” physically and kept making music to stimulate his brain. “He’s not the old Tony anymore,” she said. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”
