TONY BENNETT, SUAVE SINGER OF I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO WHOSE CAREER SPANNED 70 YEARS – OBITUARY
Tony Bennett, who has died aged 96, sang as much with his heart as his voice. Primarily a showman, he was a better technician than his crooner’s reputation implied, but his appeal was founded less on the skill of his singing than its committed sincerity. That simple virtue brought him two remarkable periods of success, the second an improbable – and sustained – renaissance of his fortunes some 30 years after his career had first faltered.
He was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto on August 3 1926 in Queens, New York. His father Giovanni, a grocer, was originally from Calabria and young Tony grew up in the Italian district of Astoria. His father died when he was eight and he was sent to stay with an unwelcoming uncle for two years while his mother, Anna, struggled at the height of the Depression to bring up his brother and sister.
This was a profoundly unhappy experience that laid down reserves of resilience in Tony. While his older brother joined the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera, Tony’s initial interest was painting. He later claimed that his working-class background prevented him from winning a place at the more prestigious Brooklyn Academy, having to settle for Manhattan’s School of Industrial Arts. The need to support himself led to a part-time job as a singing waiter and his discovery of a hitherto dormant vocal talent.
In 1944 he was drafted into the Army and served in Germany. He was stripped of his corporal’s stripe by a racist sergeant for inviting a black friend to Thanksgiving dinner, and he found himself reassigned to excavating mass graves. The episode firmed up his liberal instincts and rid him of a lingering innocence.
Having sung with Army bands, he then studied music at what would later become the Actors’ Studio in New York. He failed numerous club auditions, so while working as a lift attendant entered a television talent contest in 1949. He came second to Rosemary Clooney and was quickly taken up by the singer Pearl Bailey, the only white performer in her revue. There his potential was spotted by Bob Hope, who took him on tour, first changing his stage name from Joe Bari to Tony Bennett.
Bennett’s direct vocal style grew out of a residency in 1950 at the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn. Playing up to seven shows a day to audiences ranging from truant schoolchildren to pensioners, Bennett’s repertoire became one chosen for ease of communication rather than emotional depth or musical complexity.
In 1950 he was signed by the renowned producer Mitch Miller to Columbia Records. His first release, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, was a minor hit. His next two, Because of You and a cover of Hank Williams’s ballad Cold Cold Heart, each sold more than a million copies.
For the next decade Bennett rivalled the older Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby as America’s top-selling male vocalist. Originally a tenor influenced by Caruso and Lanza, his voice now deepened to a masculine ranginess which would later be echoed by Tom Jones.
Bennett’s voice was rarely set against anything sterner than light piano and strings, although his longtime English pianist, Ralph Sharon, managed to sift a little of the sugar from a style that was always sentimental.
Bennett also credited Sharon with steering him at an early stage towards jazz, for which he had the necessary command of phrasing, broadening his appeal beyond the audience for ballads and show tunes. That market, however, was quite large enough to ensure massive success for songs like Stranger in Paradise, Firefly, and Always. When he married in 1952 two thousand women dressed in mourning gathered outside the church.
His popularity began to falter in the late 1950s with the advent of rock and roll music and its younger idols. Paradoxically, it was now that he had his greatest success, with the song that became his signature. His 1962 tour was due to finish in San Francisco and Bennett was keen to find a tune with local appeal.
While staying in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Sharon played him a little-known song by Billie Holliday’s writers, Cross and Cory. Bennett was unsure at first, his judgment finally being swayed by the enthusiasm of a listening bartender.
I Left My Heart in San Francisco became the second highest-selling record of the time, behind only Crosby’s White Christmas. It stayed in the American charts for over two years and was sung by Bennett at every performance he subsequently gave.
In the 1960s he gladly associated himself with the Civil Rights movement, giving benefit concerts and marching with Martin Luther King into Montgomery, Alabama. Unlike his inspiration Sinatra, he would later refuse lucrative offers to play in South Africa; the two also differed in their degree of rubbing shoulders with the Cosa Nostra.
Bennett’s reluctance to accept fraternal advice from Sam Giancana saw his family threatened and a concert at Carnegie Hall interrupted by stink bombs.
Bennett also steadfastly resisted pressure from Columbia to update his style and material, which drew solely on the Great American tradition of his youth, the songs of Gershwin, Kern, Porter and Berlin. In 1971 his recording contract was terminated. Two years earlier astronauts approaching the Moon had been listening to Bennett sing The Best Is Yet to Come.
The next 15 years seemed to give the lie to that hopeful song title, however, as he slid through two divorces, a heavy cocaine habit and near bankruptcy. He could still fill the clubs of New York and Las Vegas, for his audience remained faithful, but the fans were not getting any younger.
His career was rescued by his son, Danny, who became his manager in 1979. He persuaded Columbia to re-sign his father in 1986 and after New York’s influential Spin magazine declared, with little justification, that Bennett and James Brown were the two foremost influences on rock music, Bennett found himself touring with alternative rock groups a third his age.
He appeared on youth-friendly programmes like The Simpsons and on MTV, for whom his Unplugged performance won him a Grammy Album Award in 1995. His tours were sponsored by Microsoft. At the age of 70 he was approaching his 100th album and singing for a seventh American president. He played Glastonbury in 1998, encountering “nothing but respect from the younger, hipper artists I met there.” In 2002 he sang at the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.
Observers marvelled at the iconic status he was given by the cynics of Generation X. The attraction for some was perhaps an element of kitsch, but for most it was clear that his songs had eternal appeal. Moreover, with Sinatra’s performing days past, it was for this new audience their only glimpse of their musical heritage.
At 80 Bennett was still notching up some 200 concerts a year, and in 2006 he marked the birthday by releasing Duets: An American Classic, an album of standards – recorded together in the studio – with a host of stars including Paul McCartney, Elton John, Barbra Streisand, Diana Krall, Stevie Wonder and Elvis Costello. It won a Grammy and spent 10 weeks in the Top 40.
For its 2011 follow-up, Duets II, which hit the top of the Billboard chart, his collaborators were superstars from the younger generation, among them Lady Gaga, Norah Jones and Amy Winehouse, about whom he reflected, in an interview with the Telegraph’s Neil McCormick: “If she goes along the way she’s going right now, she’ll be bigger than Elvis.” Then came Viva Duets, this time partnering Bennett with Latin American singers including Gloria Estefan.
His work with Lady Gaga proved particularly fruitful, with critics praising the chemistry of their voices. They made two further LPs, Cheek to Cheek in 2014 and, five years later, Love for Sale. This was Bennett’s final studio album: again it was jazz-themed, and jaunty, uptempo versions of Cole Porter songs were selected for the singles: I Get a Kick Out of You along with the title track.
The LP Love for Sale came out in in 2021, also the year Bennett gave his last live performance, at Radio City Music Hall in the heart of Manhattan.
Standing 5ft 8in tall, powerful, and with a distinctively beaky nose, Bennett favoured tailoring that was as meticulous as his toupée. When his Los Angeles hotel was evacuated during an earthquake early one morning in 1994, he appeared five minutes after the other guests, having paused to put on a three-piece suit.
He continued to paint, especially on tour, and showed his art with some success. It was wholly in character that he preferred classical to avant-garde artists. His experiences had endowed him with a certain humility, if not profound wisdom. “The trick is to survive success,” he liked to say. “Anyone can survive failure.”
He had (perhaps) surprising literary tastes – Dostoevsky, Mann, Dickens. He published an autobiography, written with Will Friedwald, entitled The Good Life. He also liked poodles. With his wife Susan he set up an arts education foundation.
Bennett’s later years were clouded by Alzheimer’s disease, diagnosed in 2016; undaunted, he celebrated his 90th birthday in New York with a star-studded party and a light show at the Empire State Building, synchronised to four of his hits.
Tony Bennett’s first marriage, to Patricia “Sandy” Beech, was dissolved in 1971. They had two sons. He married secondly, in 1971, Sandra Grant; they divorced in 1984. They had two daughters. He married thirdly, in 2007, his companion of many years, Susan Crow, a teacher four decades his junior; she survives him, with his four children.
Tony Bennett, born August 3 1926, died July 21 2023
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